The Influence of TV and Radio on Worldwide Food - Term Paper Example

The Influence of TV and Radio on Worldwide Food AFFILIATION: The influence of TV and radio on worldwide food Introduction There is an immense amount of media impact on consumers in influencing them towards purchase of products or giving them a new direction to think and act. TV and Radio programmes and advertisements can change the way consumers think and feel about products, places and service. Advertising on media helps in creating mass awareness to target market at a global level. Purchase decisions of consumers are influenced highly through television advertisements and programmes. TV viewers and radio listeners have a target market which caters all age groups from young to old. Television is one of the most commonly used sources of entertainment and communication amongst communities and societies. Television provides visuals as well as sounds which allows the message to be communicated clearly and effectively. Many viewers learn about various different things via television (Scannell, 1996). For children and teenagers, television is an important source of entertainment and they invest a lot of time in watching TV on a daily and weekly basis. Influence of Media There have been immense amount of studies conducted that reflect upon the fact that television programmes and advertisements influence the decisions taken by consumers to a very large extent. Television and radio programmes have the power to influence the way consumers thinks about any particular thing or scenario (Krcmar and Vieira, 2005). Young generation tends to make ideals rapidly and hence try to imitate whatever their idea thinks and acts on television. Talk shows, reality shows, movies, sitcoms, food shows and many other programmes has the potential in influencing upon the lifestyle and ideology of people and has immense power to affect the decisions taken by consumers regarding anything. Globalisation and Media Media has played an important role in enhancing globalisation activities successfully around the world. Television and Radio have allowed mass globalisation to spread at a fast pace and awareness about products and services have spread successfully. The television and radio programmes have educated consumers of all types to know what is happening around the world. The number of television viewers and radio listeners have constantly increased since its invention and increased drastically after the 20th century. The effects of video and audio have attracted consumers of all age groups and they use these two media sources (television and radio) as a source of entertainment. The illiterate people of any community can also be targeted through the television and radio media as through different languages, the message could be delivered (Hartley, 2004). Initially television emerged with only a few programmes and channels being aired but now it can be observed that due to customer demand; the number of channels and the types of programmes being telecasted have increased numerously. On each channel, a number of different programmes and advertisements can be viewed. In the time duration of watching television, the audience views various different commercial ads of different countries. Different genres are catered on television and hence all age groups are attracted towards one programme or another. Television is an important source of gaining information about different countries around the globe, their culture, the tourism places, the lifestyle, the food and culture and many other things about various countries can be known through television programmes and advertisements. Both eastern and western culture and lifestyles can be known via television and radio programmes (Govers, Go, and Kumar, 2007). The Chinese nation has taught the English language to their community via television and radio programmes (Areddy and Sanders, 2009). This depicts that television and radio media is very powerful in educating consumers about different things and also is a source of learning for consumers. The climate changes of various countries, the various social, economic and political problems being faced by the countries, the tourism popularity and their norms are all highlighted in TV and radio programmes. Consumers when view such programmes develop interest in various cultures and countries and have a desire to visit them. Television and radio allows the viewers and listeners to understand the different people living around the world. India for example, represents many attractive markets to corporations around the world that cater contents of television programmes and services. This way Indian culture has created its awareness in various regions of the world. Global products have created its awareness in the world via the mediums of television and radio. Many of the programmes such as Startrek, Full House, X-Files and others as such have allowed viewers to be aware of American lifestyle and culture (Tuunanen, Myers and Cassab, 2008). Radio is found to be in everyone’s house, regardless of them being rich or poor. Radio serves as an important medium for delivering messages to masses across the globe. Radio channels have both news and entertainment programmes running on them which allows listeners to know about diverse information about people, places and culture. Changing Cultures and Food Choices The food selection carried out by consumers is influenced by a variety of factors such as age and gender of the consumer, family and friend circle of the consumer, the culture and lifestyle of the consumer and other such factors. Food is considered as an entertainment for majority of the people. Food allows family relationships to strengthen and it is a source of enjoyment for people. Food is selected by the consumers on the basis of the taste, the appearance of the food and its texture. Cost is a major deciding factor when people buy food. The new people and different places visited by people also affect and influence the food preferences. Persuasion has a lot of power in influencing people towards buying food from grocery stores or trying out different restaurants. Food producers and restaurant owners ensure that they make the food appearance in advertising appealing and attractive for people to try out the food. Intercultural societies are present in majority of the countries. At workplace also we can observe that we have a diversified workforce and the entire workforce have to communicate with each other to get the work done. Cultural diversity allows people to know more about different lifestyles and the type of food preferred by various people. Such type of interaction allows people to have a likeness of different types of cuisines. Hence preferences of cuisines have gradually started to be catering various types of continental dishes for consumers. Consumer’s tastes have gradually started to shift from their local to tastes to food products advertised on television. For some trying out certain food products has become a status symbol. For example in many Asian regions, fast food such as burgers and pizzas are completely different from the local cuisines. The local cuisines have many spices but fast food does not but still we can observe that a mass market prefers having fast food as television and radio ads have influenced the consumers highly. Food advertisements and programmes Advertisements can have both a positive and negative impact on the consumers. Television and radio advertisements are made appealing and the attractiveness of the ads can be as far as making exaggerations about the products or services. Nevertheless, it is these advertisements that creates awareness of products and services and persuades consumers to buy them. There are many programmes on television that allows users to take a tour across the different continents of the world. The cooking shows being aired on television allows the viewers to know about the food ingredients of continent specific foods. Such programmes allow tourists to know about the variety of dishes available in a specific country and accordingly tourists can opt for such cuisines when they plan to visit any country for tourism (Adams et al., 2011). Some food programmes have chefs from the original country of cuisine and hence these food programmes reflect upon the authenticity of the food recipes and ingredients being used in the food products. This strategy may convince the customers about the credibility of the food recipe and also on the process of making it. BBC Radio 4 food programme allows listeners to learn about different British food recipes. BBC is an international television news channel and has an international radio network. BBC food programmes aired on television such as ‘Saturday Kitchen Best Bites’ allows viewers to visualise and listen to the various food recipes (BBC, 2012). Many food advertisements impact children negatively. The junk food ads are made in an attractive mode which appeals highly to children. Children compel parents to buy them such food products. Intake of such types of junk food increases obesity and other symptoms of laziness in children. Therefore junk food advertisements such as chocolates, chips, candies and other such types of products affect the health of children (Young, 2003). International Food Items McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut are some of the international and global food outlets that are available in majority of the countries worldwide. Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks are two other food outlets that are available worldwide. The advertising of these food outlets are done on the television and radio on a regular basis. Majority of the people are well aware of these food products and hence when people go for travelling and leisure to other places, they prefer such types of known food. Many countries franchise international restaurant outlets and cuisines in their country and hence consumers get the taste and feel of other country’s food in their home country. Again television and radio plays an important part in advertising about other continental restaurants in their country (Daye, 2007). Arabic cuisines are another famous cuisine preferred by many of the people in the eastern region. The Arabic cuisine products are advertised on television in the Asian regions which allow consumers to try out the product. Tourists Concerns about Food When people plan to go for a vacation, they do research on the country where they are going to stay. They research on the lifestyle, culture, tourism culture, food, recreation activities, enjoyment activities, hotel and other such leisure activities. The main concern for tourists out of the above factors is the hotels and the food of the country. All tourists vary in their budgets set for the purpose of tourism. They choose hotels and food accordingly. High priced budgets allow tourists to rent out lavish hotels and dine out anywhere. Low budgets tourists have to select reasonable hotels and dine out spots (Ab Karim and Chi, 2010). The food market awareness for tourists is created through television and radio media. When tourists research about the tourism destination, they use television and radio as research sources for gathering information about the tourism spot. Thus, this way the restaurants and food specialities of particular tourism countries gain popularity and profitability (Sinclair and Harrison, 2004). Food in tourism is considered as a major attraction for tourists and it is challenged by the tourist experiences. The food programmes aired on television and broadcasted on radio focus on both local and international cuisine and at times share the experiences of the people who went for tourism. Conclusion It can be concluded that television and radio have influenced the cuisine marketing of various countries worldwide. Since the world now is a global village, all consumers are well aware about information of each part of the world. The media has allowed the food culture of various countries to be known by everyone and this information helps tourists to enjoy food of each tourist destination accordingly. People have started researching on the different cuisines available worldwide. Through advertising mediums the continental cuisines and food products have started gaining market share in different countries. References Ab Karim, S. & Chi, C.G.-Q., 2010. Culinary Tourism as a Destination Attraction: An Empirical Examination of Destinationsʼ Food Image. Journal of Hospitality Marketing Management, 19(6), p.531-555.  Adams, J. et al., 2011. Changes in food advertisements during “prime-time” television from 1991 to 2006 in the UK and Canada. The British journal of nutrition, 105(6), p.810-815. Areddy, James T. and Sanders, Peter, 2009. Chinese Learn English the Disney Way. [Online] Available at: < http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124017964526732863.html> [Accessed 10 November, 2012]. BBC, 2012. BBC- Food Recipes from Programmes: Saturday Kitchen. [Online] Available at: < http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/programmes/b006v5y2> [Accessed 10 November, 2012]. Daye, M., 2007. Developing a framework for the study of tourism and the media. In Culture Tourism and the Media. Nottingham University Business School, pp. 80-96. Govers, R., Go, F.M. & Kumar, K., 2007. Promoting Tourism Destination Image. Journal of Travel Research, 46(1), p.15-23.  Hartley, J., 2004. Television, Nation, and Indigenous Media. Television New Media, 5(1), p.7-25.  Krcmar, M. & Vieira, E.T., 2005. Imitating Life, Imitating Television. Communication Research, 32(3), p.267-294. Scannell, P., 1996. Radio, Television and Modern Life, Blackwell. Sinclair, J. & Harrison, M., 2004. Globalization, nation, and television in Asia: the cases of India and China. Television New Media, 5(1), p.41-54. Tuunanen, T., Myers, M.D. & Cassab, H., 2008. Challenges of Consumer Information Systems Development: The Case of Interactive Television Services. In D. Avison et al., eds. Advances in Information Systems Research Education and Practice. Springer US, pp. 89-100. Young, B., 2003. Does food advertising make children obese? International Journal of Advertising & Marketing to Children, 4, 19 –26. 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