Introduction
Currently, the fashion industry plays an important role in many peoples’ lives. Most people in the developed world have heard of brands such as Chanel, Dior, and Dolce & Gabbana, among others. People spend a lot of time and effort in order to perfect their appearance. One of the most important factors that influence the increased level of attention given to appearance is the unparalleled development of media and digital technologies.
Due to these technologies, people are in a position to compare their outfits with others. Apparently, people compete with each other in life, and thus they end up buying things because their friends have done it. Another factor that influences the development of interest in fashion is advertising.
Combined with digital technologies and media, advertising is among the topmost factors that influence the choices that people make and subsequent behaviors. A study on the fashion advertising processes and their influences on people will help to understand some of the impacts created by increased advertising.
Advertising is a complicated phenomenon as it employs a number of aspects in a bid to reach the target market. It takes into account the peculiarities of different people, and this aspect is very important for every advertising company. In a bid to convince consumers to buy goods or services, an advertisement should influence their consciences in order to buy into the idea of that product or service.
Therefore, the importance of psychology and its influence on advertising could help to understand the main aspects of its functioning. Another factor in advertising is gender. Conventionally, it is believed that women devote more attention to their appearance and fashion as compared to men. However, nowadays, this belief is changing. In contemporary times, men have started to be conscious and concerned with their appearance. This aspect could have a great influence on advertising due to the different ways of influencing men and women to buy such products.
Some brands or names have great significance in the world of fashion such that associating products with these names or brands influences how they are received in the market. Therefore, authority is an important aspect in the world of fashion. Some of the well-known brands such as Chanel or Dior do not need special advertising companies as these organizations are known widely, and they have other ways of promoting their popularity.
As advertising involves different factors, viz. the people’s psyche, genders, and popular names, it affects the consumers’ lives in disparate ways. The methods used by the advertisers have to influence people towards the brands being advertised. This paper discusses how advertising affects people’s lives negatively. In addition, the paper identifies four major ways in which advertising affects the consumers’ lives by drawing arguments from various authors to support the thesis.
Advertising in fashion affects people’s perception
By using celebrity endorsement, fashion advertisers develop a harmonious image between the product and the customers in a bid to occasion certain advantages, which include increased attention towards a particular fashion brand, introduction of brand, and its repositioning (Carroll 150).
These celebrity endorsements, together with social media, are increasingly taking the leading role in influencing the consumers’ perceptions towards particular fashion products (Lahiri and Siddika 66-73). Marketers in the industry employ these advertising formats to influence people’s perception by imparting fashion behavior among them.
By using rational appeals (e.g., product’s quality, economy, value, or performance) as well as emotional and positive appeals, advertisers change the consumers’ beliefs about the advertised brand (Keshari and Jain 38). Since the consumers are different in the way they respond to rational and emotional advertising appeals, rational appeals elicit a favorable response from customers.
Due to the perceptions and beliefs imparted on consumers, other consequences arise, which include people working for many hours without saving, and thus they end up borrowing to finance their lifestyles. All these aspects arise from the fashion behavior created by advertising (Alexander par. 11).
Advertising appears dangerous due to social, cultural, and economic factors. Alexander notes other consequences of advertising as economic burdens, prevalent social inequity driven by extrinsic motivations, as well as high incidences of mental illness due to unresolved extrinsic motivations and personal debts (par. 12-14).
Monbiot sees advertising as either being ineffectual or raising enormous ethical questions every day (par. 4). According to Monbiot, some of the most pronounced consequences of advertising include poor working habits, individual debt, problems in family life, and the inability to save (par. 6). These aspects occur because advertisers use messages that are designed to trigger emotional responses instead of rational receptions from consumers.
The contemporary fashion industry is driven by wealth as opposed to loyalty to consumers (Dallas par. 14). Due to rapidly changing trends, consumers buy new products regularly regardless of their prices. Apparently, consumers are influenced by the fashion market to disregard perceptive shopping (Dallas par. 6). On the positive side, this aspect shows that fashion-driven customers have a positive perception of the brands in question.
Fashion advertising influences people’s intentions of buying
When top celebrities endorse a certain fashion, it increases attention towards that brand, thus polishing its image and repositioning it in the marketplace (Carroll 150). There is a feeling among consumers that any brand endorsed by a certain celebrity is the best, and thus their attitudes, values, beliefs, needs, and expectations shift towards that particular brand.
More consumers would intend to buy such a brand because it is associated with a celebrity personality. Fashion retail promotions create attitudes that are oriented to fashion, debts, and the tendency to spend on clothing among consumers (Lahiri and Siddika 65).
When marketing tools like TV shows, fashion advertisements, marketing displays inside stores, and fashion events in large shopping malls are used, they influence the customers’ purchase intention for fashion and designer apparel. This aspect brings another perspective of advertising related to the view that consumers can be influenced to shift their shopping behavior through relationship building and seasonal offers.
Therefore, the consumers’ preferences form on the basis of likes, feelings, and emotions brought by the advertisement. They may also be triggered by being exposed to the advertisements, but not the brand attribute information itself (Keshari and Jain 37). Marketers use advertising appeals that are designed to attract, develop, and mobilize the consumers’ feelings in favor of a particular brand or service (Keshari and Jain 38).
Advertising involves the use of appealing messages to attract consumers’ feelings towards a particular brand or service (Keshari & Jain 38). Therefore, it generates the need for the fashion brand because the advertising messages persuade the customers to invest in fashion by making purchase decisions. In this case, the purchase is driven by the advertisement and not need.
Advertising influences the people’s mindsets through pervasiveness and repetition, coupled with how consumers blindly or passively process and absorb the imagery and messages contained in the advertisements without objection. The messages used in advertising trigger responses that are emotional rather than rational (Monbiot par. 5).
This aspect makes advertising a way of enhancing the customers’ choices by offering very little choice about seeing and hearing, but no response (Monbiot par. 4). In the fashion context, this aspect shows how consumers are duped into buying fashion products from a broader pool of choices.
Due to the shifting market trends, customers buy fashion products without looking at the price worthiness. They are influenced by the fashion market to go for a full closet instead of slower shopping (Dallas par. 6). This aspect shows how the fast fashion industry contributes to repeat purchase decisions among consumers.
The format of executing hedonic advertising by highlighting the pleasures of having certain products helps customers to see the imagery of the consumption experience (Moore and Lee 107). The process of visualizing creates strong anticipation of emotions to be experienced by the customer after buying the fashion product. If the anticipated emotions are activated, the consumers are torn between impulse and restraint. They may concede to the purchase of the fashion product. Advertisements with hedonic dimensions of a product stimulate the effect instead of the cognitive processing system (Moore and Lee 108).
Advertising in fashion Leads to Impulse buying
Advertising engagement opens up the room for identifying means of persuading consumers (Phillips and McQuarrie 370). This aspect shows that the major objective of advertising is to persuade consumers to purchase products or services irrespective of their needs.
This aspect explains why advertising practitioners would use attractive celebrities to succeed in changing the beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes of consumers toward particular fashion products with the view of generating purchase intentions. In such cases, the image (celebrity endorsement) is used to shift the beliefs and perceptions of consumers regardless of their needs.
The involvement of customers in a fashion product depends on how they perceive it and how their peers respond to the resulting personality and change proneness (Lahiri and Siddika 65). This statement underscores the importance of friends and peers in perpetrating fashion behavior among consumers. It shows that advertising alone is not to blame for the upsurge of consumers who make decisions about their clothing styles based on public opinion.
In advertising, appealing messages are used to attract the consumers’ feelings towards a particular brand or service (Keshari & Jain 38). This assertion implies that advertising in fashion generates the need for the fashion brand, and the advertising messages persuade the customers to invest in fashion by making purchase decisions.
In this case, the purchase is driven by the advertisement and not need. In addition, due to advertising, some consumers are triggered to be in pursuit of status, financial prosperity, cultural goals, and self-interests (Alexander par. 11). As a result, such consumers spend such a lot of money on fashion due to the illusion of advertising.
Advertisers use evolving knowledge in science to enhance intuitive judgments that are made without conscious effort on the side of the customers where they purchase the goods (Monbiot par. 6). They use messages that only trigger emotional responses rather than rational ones. In the fashion context, this statement demonstrates how advertising is effective in igniting the emotional responses of consumers in order to elevate impulsive buying behavior.
Fashion advertising has shifted the consumers’ behavior towards a desire for instant gratification. The vicious cycle is maintained in the fashion industry by training consumers to buy more products without even considering the price or quality. As a result, consumers spend more just to keep up with the artificial expectations of the fashion industry.
The modern fashion market is motivated by wealth, as opposed to being loyal to consumers (Dallas par. 14). This statement shows the centrality of money in the contemporary fashion scene. The industry is driven by the power of buying, as opposed to the need for the products.
Advertising in fashion exploits Consumers (Socially, mentally, and economically)
Advertisers exploit consumers by using narrative transportation, which moves consumers into a story world by involving them in a tale (Phillips and McQuarrie 368). This assertion holds because advertisers engage in persuasive ads differently in ways that benefit the brands that created this imagery (Phillips and McQuarrie 380).
This aspect shows that advertising practitioners have mastered how to employ grotesque imagery and to use narratives to transport the same to consumers with the view of creating market opportunities for fashion brands. This move benefits the brand owners and not the customers. In the process, the customers are exploited mentally and financially.
Celebrity endorsement is a form of advertising, which creates a harmonizing image between the products and the customers. It results in certain advantages, which include increased attention towards a particular fashion brand, image polishing, brand introduction, and brand repositioning (Carroll 150).
Various forms of advertising (e.g., celebrity endorsement) continue to be employed as fundamentally important tools in brand image creation that functions by transferring cultural meanings and their implications from celebrities through the product to consumers (Carroll 155). This aspect exploits the cultural values of consumers.
Consumers are attracted to attractive people. This assertion explains why advertisers increasingly rely on attractive models to shift the people’s attitudes, values and needs toward particular fashion brands. When a celebrity image is used to shift the beliefs and perceptions of customers, their culture is exploited.
Powerful advertising tools like television fashion shows, fashion ads, in-store displaying, and fashion marketing events in large shopping centers affect the transnational cosmopolitanism amongst consumers (Lahiri and Siddika 65). The distinctiveness of fashion features (e.g., designer brand, endorsements, and reviews) benefits the emotions of consumers to influence their purchase intention for fashion and designer apparel.
These elements influence fashion behavior among consumers. Celebrity endorsements are increasingly taking the leading role in influencing consumers’ perceptions regarding particular fashion products (Lahiri and Siddika 66-73). In this case, the consumers are forced to be like celebrities, hence being exploited culturally by being made to forget themselves.
Consumers form preferences based on elements such as what they like and their emotions, coupled with how they feel. These elements are induced by being familiar with a given advertisement, which is triggered by being exposed to the advertisements, instead of product attribute information (Keshari and Jain 37).
Therefore, consumers cannot decide for themselves. Advertisers use specific advertising appeals to please and influence the consumers’ feelings towards a particular product or service (Keshari and Jain 38). Therefore, advertising in fashion generates a desire for a fashion product. The advertising appeals convince the customers to buy fashion products by making purchase decisions under the influence of the appeals. This scenario is a form of mental exploitation.
Advertising was a good thing during the early days as it was employed for the intended purposes. However, this aspect has changed, and it is now becoming dangerous due to social, cultural, and economic consequences (Alexander par. 6). These consequences include economic burdens, prevalent social inequity driven by extrinsic motivations, as well as high incidences of mental illness due to unresolved extrinsic motivations, and personal debts (Alexander par. 12-14).
Humans are “naturally co-operative and competitive as they have self-interests driven by the desire to fulfill the purpose relative to their peers” (Alexander par. 10). This assertion summarizes many factors that make fashion hold consumers at ransom. Consumers have been entrapped in the snare of advertising, and something has to be done to free them from the vicious cycle of impulsive spending.
The fast-fashion phenomenon comes at a cost as business people use materials of low quality, and thus they sell items that cannot last for long (Dallas par. 6). Consequently, fashion-driven customers spend much, but they get less quality. The fashion companies take advantage of rapidly changing trends by selling items of very low quality, which cannot last, hence economically exploiting their consumers (Dallas par. 13).
The hedonic advertising execution format highlighting the pleasures of consumption plays a vital role in improving the ability of the consumer to see images developed by their experience of consumption. This visualization process leads to strong anticipation of the emotions to be experienced by the consumers upon buying the fashion product.
In the event that the anticipated emotions are activated, the consumers experience a conflict between impulse and restraint, and thus they may end up generating excuses to justify conceding to the purchase of the fashion product. Some consumers spend all their earnings on fashion products, and thus they are exploited.
Conclusion
Advertising is the way companies communicate to persuade or convince consumers to purchase their products. Advertisements are relayed in various ways. They include television and radio commercials, media, billboards, and product placements. Advertisements are placed strategically in a bid to reach the largest and the most relevant audience.
This paper has shown that advertisements have to raise the psyche of the audience in a bid to influence people towards a certain brand. In fashion advertising, advertisements are tailored to attract both genders because what attracts men may not attract women. This paper has shown that fashion advertising affects consumers in four broad ways. First, advertisement changes the consumers’ perception, thus making them perceive some brands as superior to others.
Consequently, the brands that are not advertised may be perceived as inferior even though this perception may be erroneous. Second, advertising influences consumers’ intentions of buying. This aspect leads to another effect, viz. the impulse buying. Advertising agents exploit consumers through advertisements.
Through ads, advertisers tempt consumers to buy what they do not need. In addition, advertisers fill images in their minds, which colonize the consumers to behave as if imitating the images. Moreover, advertisers dupe consumers into buying substandard goods at very high prices. Due to the superiority of the brands created by the ads, the consumers find themselves buying impulsively.
Works Cited
Alexander, Jon. “Advertising itself is not evil, but it has Certainly Got out of Control.” The Guardian. 2011. Web.
Carroll, Angela. “Brand Communities in Fashion Categories using Celebrity Endorsement.” Journal of Brand Management 17.2 (2009): 146-158. Print.
Dallas, Kelsey. “Shopping, Fast and Slow: How the Fashion Industry Drives Consumer Behavior.” Deseret News. 2014.
Keshari, Pragya, and Sangeeta Jain. “Consumer Response to Advertising Appeals: A Gender Based Study.” Journal of Marketing and Communication 9.3 (2014): 37-43. Print.
Lahiri, Isita, and Humaira Siddika. “Fashion Behavior: Detangling Promotional Factors.” Globsyn Management Journal 8.2 (2014): 64-76. Print.
Monbiot, George. “Advertising is a Poison that Demeans even Love – and we are hooked on it.” 2011. Web.
Moore, David, and Seung Lee. “How advertising influences consumption impulses.” Journal of Advertising 41.3 (2012): 107-126. Print.
Phillips, Barbara, and Edward McQuarrie. “Narrative and Persuasion in Fashion Advertising.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.3 (2010): 368-392. Print.