Advertising Industry - Essay Example

ADVERTISING INDUSTRY Student’s Name Professor’s Name Subject Code and Name Date Submitted Advertising Industry Advertising is a tool organizations use to get their products or services gain the much needed popularity in their target markets. There is a debate between Jones (1990) and Ehrenberg (1999) in determining whether advertising is a weak force or a strong one. This paper is about establishing the points of view of both intellectuals. Jones (1990) says advertising is a very strong force and has done some analysis in sales concerning the statement to prove that advertising has both direct and positive impact on the same. The strong school of advertising works based on the persuasion theory. The theory has the following assumptions: The customers are said to take up a lot of time in decision making activities, which are considered to be informative at the end of the process. Decision making is an important process and it is only natural that the customers take their time before arriving at a final decision that they can be persuaded. This is common to the customers especially if they are attracted to the idea at hand. Therefore, where one was set on a particular decision, they can still be persuaded to Change their mind that advertising can change customers’ attitude (Stayman and Frank,1992). This is seen where the introduction of a product to the market was not taken greatly by the customers but with advertisements, they can be able to change the initial perspective they had on the product. That consumer behaviour progresses in a linear fashion – they learn, then they feel, finally they do. Consumers like to take their time to adapt to the new fashion trend in the market hence it is only normal that they learn about it first then they finally fully adapt to it. That sometimes they are less motivated and less likely to think so can be persuaded through peripheral cues. It may take a lot for the consumers to be motivated to make decisions therefore, can be persuaded through peripheral cues. According to McGaan (2010), persuasion is meant to perform five major functions: Creating a feeling of uncertainty- this one happens by making the audience just a little less convinced and unsure of their current standing. This is necessary especially when they are strongly against the persuader’s view (Howard, 1991). Reduce the resistance from the audience. This works especially when the audience is not close-minded it means they can be convinced to accommodate the views of other people. They can be convinced to neutrality per se. Change the attitude of audience. This depends on the topic. It also is determined by whether or not the audience is strongly committed to any attitudes on the topic. Amplify their attitudes. This is practical when the audience is in support of the views of the speaker. The speech is to reinforce their decisions so that they are not convinced otherwise by the opponents (Hoyland et.al., 1953). To gain behavior i.e. it is not enough for the persuader to get the audience convinced, the important point here now would be to get the audience to take action concerning their convictions. The first model in this category is the AIDA model. The acronym represents Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Attention is all about grabbing the attention of the viewer or target audience. Nivea is a company that deals in skin care products. They use this principle very well. They have big billboards with their products everywhere. For one they are all catchy, one can never miss them that easily. They have a tradition where they focus on drawing attention to a particular product per time. Some few months ago, they were advertising the female product that does away with the cellulite, of late; they are focused on the male products (Nivea.com, 2010). Interest is about making the points that are relevant to the target audience as clear and direct as possible. If it is a television commercial, the audience should not have to wait till the end of the commercial to realize how the product is of essence to him or her. If the advertiser can catch them at the beginning, they have a better chance of not losing them. The audience will want to find out some, hence growing their interest in the product whether consciously or not. Mercedes have a mechanism in their advertisements where they make one feel the worth of the car. They talk about all the features of the car, in relation to scientific facts and ergonomics about the body. One feels the desire to have the car because they know how it is going to benefit them. They are thorough in their tools of advertising (Mercedes-benz.co.uk, 2004-2010). Action is the ultimate of any advertiser. Everyone wants to close a deal after all the persuasion. There has to be a conviction in the audience that the decision is worth it. The advertiser should have communicated effectively in the desire and interest stages for the action to eventually, take place. Strong (1925) developed the AIDA model. The next model of interest in strong advertising is the DAGMAR. The acronym stands for defining advertising goals for measured advertising results. The model works on the idea that there has to be measures or standards in place before advertising so that at the end there is something to measure against to determine the effectiveness of the advertising done (Colley, 1960). Awareness of the product is the first step. The audience have to taken from the state of not knowing to knowing the product or service (Mind tools, 2010). There are product with high awareness and those with low awareness. In the examples Nivea and Mercedes above, Nivea has more awareness as compared to Mercedes as a brand. Not to say that Mercedes as a brand is not well advertised, it is, but not as much as Nivea. It could be because they reach their target audiences via other means. Some firms at this point especially when introducing a new brand, use celebrities to create some form of association. Using celebrities creates an edge to the product attracting more consumers. Celebrities are mostly used to advertise body products due to their glamour and people tend to try them out hoping to get the same results. Looking at the Revlon advertisements, whenever they introduce new beauty products they tend to use celebrities like Jessica Alba. This has helped them attract crowds of consumers helping them achieve their advertising goals. They keep at repeating the messages until the viewers associate the product with the celebrities and get familiar with them (Ray and Sawyer, 1971). That is where some companies may engage the marketing mix. Observing the DAGMAR hierarchy, it is evident that at the beginning the consumers are not aware of the product in the market. Therefore, the first effect that the advertising will have on the consumers is creating awareness (Best, 2005). This is not easy as capturing the attention of the consumers is not easy considering equal competition from other products. Hence use of celebrities comes in handy in such a situation. Comprehension follows the process some convincing and then finally the action taken by the consumer. While this is an elaborate and focused plan in the strong school of advertising the weak school takes a different approach at advertising. Focusing on the habit theory where adverting is used as a defense strategy. Where in the strong school advertisement is usually meant to introduce consumers to new products and help them find comfort in them the weak school just wants to retain loyal consumers. This will help their products survive in the cut throat market (Innovation in business, n.d., p. 5). This theory is usually applicable to brands that have been in the market for quite a long time. Especially where innovation in the companies is minimal, then the advertisements will help the brands sustain their products in the markets (Truell, 2010, 14). In coming up with any product a company has to have some level of innovativeness to help accomplish that for the brand. An example would be the coca- cola Company, since they have been in the industry for long their products are still selling due to customer loyalty mostly. The argument between the strong school and the weak school of advertisement is based mainly on convincing the customers. The strong school is focused on introducing products in the market and capturing the interest of the consumers through their convincing advertisements. The message directed to the consumers is meant to capture their Attention and convince them of the positive qualities of the product. Some of the messages may be too convincing to make the consumers switch from one brand to another in the market. While the weak school of advertising looks at retaining loyal customers as they may be harder to convince otherwise about a new product in the market. Their hierarchy theory is based on the fact that consumers do not react immediately to advertisements based on new products in the market. Therefore, would rather focus on working to retain their old customers since loyalty is common among them (Learn marketing.net, n.d). There is also the habitual theory where consumers are known to purchase a product over and over again due to a formed habit. Although the weak schools tend to target the loyal customers, it does not necessarily mean that they do not target new customers as well. This is possible because at some point their will be introduction of new products from old brands and this will prompt them to target a new market as well. The strong school also manages to keep their loyal customers through their advertisement theories and approach. Sometimes the 4P’s of marketing are applied but not in this case (Truell, 1999). The next step after awareness is comprehension. An audience has to be able to understand the advert and then again, of what importance it is to them. Take for example, if marks and Spencer were to have a sale, and New Look were having a sale at the same time. Marks and Spencer have to find a way to make the customer feel their offers are better and give strong reasons about it. For Mercedes it could be about the environment, the fuel could be ozone layer friendly or something to that nature. Alternatively, in the same capacity it could be that it has sensors at the back and so when reversing it senses for any object (Griffin, 1997). This ensures the driver is safer as compared to no sensors at all. The third step is conviction, which comes from information given (DAGMAR, 2007). The last step is action. The audience has to be convinced enough to for the conviction to culminate into a purchase. Weak advertising is based on the habit theory. The habit theory is known to have the following features: Selective observation of ads with prior knowledge of products or current users Advertising is employed as a defence Retains loyal customers Reinforces existing attitudes(Rao and Allan,1991) Increases product or brand usage nudged to repurchase Post purchase dissonance The ATR model by Ehrenberg (1974), gives some stages in the process of weak advertising, which sum up to Awareness, Trial and Reinforcement. That revised later in 1997 has an additional stage known as Nudge. Awareness is the first stage in the ATRN model, where the consumer is made aware of a product in the market that did not have as mush publicity before or is new in the market. The product is then put to trial and later the reinforcement process is applied. All these stages will prompt the consumer to purchase the product this is called to nudge the consumer to try out the product on their own. The weak school’s argument is that people do not just rush to buy products because they have seen an advertisement about the products. It observes that, if advertising persuades people to buy then they would have collections of so many brands in their homes. It also observes that the decision to purchase is habitual, steady and predictable proving that the strong school theory does not work. Finally, the school is of the view that most branding looks almost the same and the audience is never given the time to separate one from the other, they are always too quick to respond (Keller et.al., 1998). They argue that people take steps in making decisions to make purchase. They could be either rational or emotional. There are three stages of dealing with the state: extended problem solving, limited problem solving and habitual decision making. Extended problem solving is occurs when one seeks for information without so they could make the decisions. They lack the required motivation to take steps so they weigh all their options concerning the decision to buy a certain product. This is employed when one is making decisions about large purchases like cars, houses or even holiday packages. One could include the use of emotional markers also. Limited problem solving is applied when the decision to be made is more straightforward and simple and requires less reasoning. One need to have prior knowledge (Chebat et.al, 2001).The time needed to come to a decision may also be limited and so it requires a prior knowledge of the product. One of the examples of a product that could need this kind of reasoning is Dove body lotion or purchasing clothing from H&M or Marks and Spencer as design houses (Marks and spencer.com, 2010). Habitual decision making comes naturally. It requires very little or no conscious effort. Some of the decisions are associated with jingles or even celebrities. This is applied when one is used to purchasing a particular product like take coffee for example. The modern population is used to the idea of having throughout the day. Starbucks as an experienced coffee house know this. This saves them a lot of advertising since it becomes a habit for the consumer and so it takes less if no time at all to decide whether to have a cup of coffee or not. Another example would be a deodorant. It is almost a sin to have natural body scent in this time and age, so companies making body products like perfumes and deodorants are saved hence practices weak advertising since they don’t have to do much convincing. Examples are Dove and Nivea. Strong advertising argues that vigorous advertising is what persuades buyers to buy what they buy while weak advertising models argue that buy the decision to make a purchase is habitual and has nothing to do with advertising but everything to do with everyday habits. Whether strong or weak, advertising is used for more or less the same purposes. Mostly it is to create awareness for the product or company or event to actually persuade the audience to buy an altogether new product. Both arguments hold some meaning to them and the writer is of the opinion a good management team in any organisation would employ a mixture of all the models or some of them at least. Bibliographies Advertising ,creativity and communication.2010. [slides]. 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