Introduction
Global market is increasingly becoming competitive. To sustain this competition, companies develop differentiation strategies. Advertising is an old marketing tool used to promote products. However, advertising has a lot of impacts on society. It may negatively or positively affect people. As a growing strategy in business, advertising influences society’s perception. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to describe the research procedure and discuss the effects of advertising on people.
Methods
Internet research
Through desktop research, the study explored various articles on different websites. These websites include The CEO Insight, smallbusiness.chron, and other social networks, such as Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter.
Survey
Survey was used to carry deep and extensive assessment of advertising on people. Therefore, surveys with questionnaires were distributed among the sample population that included university students between the ages of 18 to 24 years. Out of 80 surveys, students completed 30 percent.
Interview
Conducted to define both positive and negative effects of advertisement on people, an interview with Beth Ellis shed some light on the problem. An advertisement agent, a marketer and a has-been head of a business faculty, she answered the following questions in the course of the interview:
- What are the mechanisms of advertising?
- What are the major changes in advertising in the 2010s?
- What and whom are the XXI century advertising strategies targeted at?
- What are the impacts of advertising on people’s economical behavior?
- What are the impacts of advertising on people’s culture and identity?
Results
Internet findings
From different articles from the Internet, it is evident that advertising has been successful for many years. However, the academic argument notes that it has harmful effects on the society (Eisend, 2013). There are a lot of lies in advertising because the presentations are not realistic. Companies strive to make people live the world as presented in the media. Therefore, people have become inclined to the message presented in the media and fail to perceive the world in their own way.
From an article written by Lee, Park and Han (2011), “brain surgery” is a metaphor that means the impact of advertising on society. Advertising touches each aspect of our life (Batra, Myers & Aaker 2006). Thus, advertising affects people’s culture, which impacts on the way they live.
Advertising is a tool created to attract the attention of the consumer (Wuyts, Dekimpe, Gijsbrechts, & Pieters 2010), change their perception and guide them in life. It sends the society messages that idealize life. It presents this information in a luring manner to apply it subconsciously. Eisend (2013) criticizes advertising for bringing materialism to the verge of the society.
Survey findings
Results from the surveys indicate that advertising is a business strategy that substitutes consumers’ perception with its unrealistic ideas. 60 percent of the participants agreed that though the media provides the information that could, rather, have not accessed, there is a price for it. Media acts as a filter in the industrial society to the knowledge presented to the world.
Interview findings
As Ms. Ellis explained, advertising “replaces intrinsic happiness and self-drive with the motivation to increase the process of consumption”. “Hence the problem of consumerism stems from,” Ms. Ellis said. “Advertising affects people on the subconscious level; they stop asking why they want a particular product, they do not want to decide if they need this product – they do not want to make conscious choices anymore.”
Conclusion and recommendation
Advertising is a growing business strategy that companies use to promote their products. However, it has a great impact on people, which may be positive or negative. Though companies venture objectively into advertising to boost their profits, it makes people’s perception become irrational. The idealized messages presented by advertising have other effects, such as promotion of harmful products and stereotypic behaviors. Therefore, advertising should not send the messages that would distort peoples’ perception of products.
Advertising industry should also adhere to the state’s codes of sales promotion. This means that they should follow certain standards in their practices. Therefore, they should be truthful in their messages.
References
Batra, R., Myers, J.G. & Aaker, D.A. (2006). Advertising management. New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley.
Eisend, M. (2013). The moderating influence of involvement on two‐sided advertising Effects.Psychology & Marketing, 30(7), 566-575.
Lee, J., Park, D. H., & Han, I. (2011). The different effects of online consumer reviews on consumers’ purchase intentions depending on trust in online shopping malls: An advertising perspective. Internet research, 21(2), 187-206.
Wuyts, S.H.K., Dekimpe, M.G., Gijsbrechts, E. & Pieters, F.G.M. (2010). The connected customer: The changing nature of consumer and business markets. New York: Routledge.