What Do Australian Consumers Think About Current Advertising Standards - Research Paper Example

Research Evaluation Student’s Name College Research Evaluation What Do Australian Consumers Think About Current Advertising Standards? Introduction Actually, the community standards concept turns to be the Australia’s basis of self-control advertising. However, there exists little or no study on contemporary behaviours in regards to advertising and a near nonexistence of such information within the context of Australia. Thus, this research paper explores a questionnaire that was engineered for the purposes of assessing attitudes of consumers towards advertising. In this case, the respondents turned to be 872 adults living within New South Wales. The findings discovered high echelons of concern pertaining standards of advertising generally and a constant acuity that advertising, for instance, should not employ violent imagery or uncouth language, show men or women being objects of sex or portray nakedness, stereotype or mock people groups, or pass on messages which undermine authority of parents. In regard to executional elements and specific appeals, though the study portrays several statistically huge demographic disparities, there surfaced apparent majority outlook as to the unacceptable elements. That is, instead of the hypothesized vocal ethical minority, there exist steady opinions across the society on major advertising standards issues. The discovery that; merely a very minute percentage of community-oriented interviewees were aware of how they could make complaints to the suitable firms proposes that, researches using samples of complainants are not likely to be reps of the people who concern themselves with advertising. Australian Studies In recent times, several studies have been conducted with populations of students in different countries comprising of New Zealand and Australia in regard to the alleged indecency of the advertisements for contentious products and/or with regard to the indecency of particular executional elements like, the sexual appeals and racist imagery. In 1996 after the death of the Advertising Standards Council, the main commerce body, the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA), created the Code of Ethics for the Advertisers and instituted the Advertising Standards Board (ASB) together with Advertising Claim Board (ACB) for tackling breaches and complaints of that code. The community standards concept turns to be the Australia’s foundation of advertising self-control, having the ASB arbitrating public complaints on the grounds of existing standards of community. However, an important point to bear in mind is that ASB never openly describe such standards neither communicate nor conduct empirical research for the purposes of determining the standards. Further, the Board’s complains data reveal a continuous rise pointing out that a rising number consumers of Australia are anxious of the contemporary standards of advertising. There is insufficient research on contemporary manners in regard to advertising generally, and near lack of such data within the context of Australia. Some researchers put forward that a lot of research which prevails is derived from the United States and several times uses samples of students instead of the more representative consumers groups. Data Collection Methods How data was collected. In order to evaluate consumer attitudes in regards to advertising and to the utilisation of specific images and appeals in messages of advertising, a questionnaire was created. The creation of questionnaire items was notified by consumer-grounded exploratory study. That is, though it comprised items which matched the articles within the contemporary self-control code of advertising, it as well included items which came from previous qualitative researches which were created to recognise imagery and messages of concern to the consumers of Australia. Within those earlier studies, 20 focus teams in total were carried out for the purposes of exploring deeper attitudes of consumers to advertising as well as perceptions of contemporary standards of advertising. Two sequence of focus teams were held; every comprised of 10 followers of grownups of the Illawara community locals. Types of data collected. The initial sequence of focus groups investigated feelings and attitudes of participants towards content and advertising messages on a universal foundation. The other series involved participants watching 6 current advertisements (from the ones that were impulsively recognised by those who participated in the initial series). Thereafter, every participant was rated on the 13- item questionnaire utilising the Likert scale 5-point. The questionnaire comprised of items like, the degree to which participants perceived every advertisement was individually socially (un) acceptable and (in) offensive, where the participants perceived the advertisement marketed successfully the product, and the questions grounded on code of Ethics of AANA. Then, there was critical evaluation of the draft questionnaire via a 2-stage procedure. The first stage involved the two focus clusters within which participants read and discussed the entire questionnaire, spotting whichever response items or questions which were not clear, potentially leading or confusing. That process gave rise to small alterations to the phrasing of a number of items in addition to the inclusion of a number of clarifications and definitions within the directions. Afterwards, there was the pilot-testing of revised questionnaires on the expediency sample of twenty five individuals, with interviewees enquired to accomplish the questionnaire and afterwards (on the final page) write down whichever items which they had seen to be difficult or confusing to provide answers. The entire 25 interviewees accomplished their questionnaire objects, and zero additional changes were made or suggested. Respondents The other data was collected from the respondents as explained in this research paper. How data was collected. In this scenario, an electronic folder of addresses and names within Illawara, New South Wales Local Government Area (LGA) got bought from a mercantile research organization. That database comprised of 6097 addresses (subsequent to cleaning of data), where 4000 were selected at random to participate in the study. Why this data was collected. That sampling rim was regarded to be extra representative of the entire populace, provided the declining landline phone ownership rates. The study was carried in the month of April the year 2008. The first mailing received response of 656 accomplished surveys. On the other hand, those who had not responded were sent replacements reminder letters at the fall of May 2008. That resulted in 216 accomplished surveys being returned (that means the total surveys tallied 872 surveys which represented a 21.8% response rate). Out of the 872 surveys that were returned, 39.8% turned out to be males whereas the remaining 60.2% turned to be females. All the respondents had attained 18 years and others were older. The age division was the same as that of the original populace with 16.6% having the age of 35-45 years, 18.9% were in the age of 55-64 years, 19.8% were below 35 years, 22.3% were more than 64 years old and 20.9% were in the age of 45-54 years. Respondents identified themselves according to their individual religious affiliations that were classified for the analysis’ function into: other Christian (21.5%), Anglican (20.5%), no religion (23.7%), other (10.9%) and Catholic (23.4%). Many of the respondents (71%) possessed some post-secondary schooling (comprising trade certificate, bachelors, masters, or higher degree, diploma or other certificates). Several of the respondents (71%) possessed some higher education (comprising of diplomas, degrees, trade certificates and certificates). Further, 7.3 of the respondents were proven to have accomplished Higher School Certificate (that is 12 years in school), while the remainder (20.5%) had accomplished no or some secondary schooling. Roughly, 80% of the respondents reported having children (81.6% of females and 77.6% of males). As a section, the LGA of Illawara possesses a geographic silhouette which is the same as that of the entire nation. Data Analysis The entire data was entered in the statistical package version 17.0 SPSS (IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, US) for scrutiny. Essential frequency scrutiny was accomplished for the entire variables; tests of chi-square were carried out to scrutinize disparities between demographic teams (for example, parental status, education and gender) on all the items of the questionnaire. For the demographic changeable with small numbers and several categories in a number of categories (for instance, education, religion), the recording of responses was done in a lesser number of changeable. Results After asking respondents a sequence of questions regarding advertising, many of the respondents concurred or strongly concurred that sometimes people see media advertisements being offensive (93.9%). Some respondents (82.3%), pointed out that a number of advertisers purposely make advertisements that they are sure would cause an offence. Other respondents (94.4%) put forward that sometimes advertisements are deceptive or misleading in regards to the product. Other respondents (90.9%) suggested that sometimes advertisements promote behaviours within children which are not suitable at their age. Other respondents (91.9%) asserted that there should be consideration of moral standards the moment of crafting advertisements. However, only (16.1%) of the respondents concurred advertisements only offend individuals who are too perceptive, and roughly (33.8%) concurred that sometimes advertisers are not aware that their adverts might be distasteful. Limitations and strengths The first limitation in the study is the employment of convenience sampling technique. As such, despite the respondents being generally same as the wider population of Australia in key demographic terms, there was an over-embodiment of females together with those identifying to do possess zero religion. Although the scrutiny did comparisons of responses on those factors, still, care ought to be taken when generalising those results to the wider population. The other limitation is that as a result of the study’s investigative nature, and the limitations of logistics intrinsic within the mail-out study, data on customer reactions to particular advertisements was not collected and there was no testing of the acceptability of diverse executions (like different graphic violence or sexism levels). On the other hand, the first strength of the study is that within the study, the findings points out there were little huge disparities in reactions to the overall advertising behaviours’ items of survey by status of demography. In this case, the only differences that were identified were 11 across the 42 comparisons. The other strength of the study is that majority of the participants who were given questionnaires responded effectively. As such, it became easy for the researchers to come up with excellent results after analysing the obtained data. The other strength of the study is that it involved all adults irrespective of their religion, sex, colour, education and previous participation among others. Thus, the report findings turned to be inclusive. Conclusion Actually, the community standards concept turns to be the Australia’s basis of self-control advertising. Truly, the discovery that merely a very minute percentage of community-oriented interviewees were aware of how they could make complaints to the suitable firms proposes that; researches using samples of complainants are not likely to be reps of the people who concern themselves with advertising. Importantly, the study findings’ possess imperative inferences for the advertisers when making decisions on suitable advertisement appeals, and regulators in clarifying the expected standards of advertisements by the community. Reference Jones, S, C., & Eagleton, K. (2012). What Do Australian Consumers Think About Current Advertising Standards? Journal of Public Affairs. 12(4). 315-325. Read More