Much of the research has been done to analyze the intended effects of advertising and commercial messages on consumer choice. Ideally, advertising is intended to promote awareness of the products, enhancing their appeal and encouraging purchasing the good. Every commercial is produced with not only informative but also persuasive appeals which are aimed at creating the market for a specific product or service and to maintain the loyalty of consumers. Nevertheless, there is another side of the issue – the consumers’ choice. Television advertising increases the demand for goods and services in a negative way and makes more people become consumers of unnecessary goods. Television commercials force people to buy products they do not need. In addition, television advertising has a significant influence on the children who force their parents into unreasonable buying decisions.
Advertising Essence
Consumers’ choice has a significant implication for every organization because consumers shape the global market of goods. Taking into account that TV watching is the most widespread leisure activity, it has become the medium through which companies can reach their consumers in the most effective way. Unlike newspaper or the journal which may cover the local area, television offers the opportunity to reach a national audience. Television advertising is powerful because it empowers the producers to appeal not only to the hearing and sight but also increase the interest in the product other techniques (dimension for example). Television commercials carry the purpose of informing and showing the potential consumers the product and demonstrating or telling about the benefits of having it.
While watching the television commercial, the consumer sees how the product is packaged, how it works and continuous repetition of the commercial makes the consumer feel a psychological need to have it. Television advertising, while being the most expensive, is referred to as the king of advertising for its power to influence human behavior and buying decisions. For example, the commercial might promote the product as if its possession will make the teenager the most popular person in the school. Every teenager wants to be popular at school and after viewing advertising with this appeal for 20 times, the teenager is ready to go and buy this product, even though the chances that his image will immediately improve are not increased with the purchase of it.
Another concern is that television commercials reach the national audience in a short period of time and give the product instant prominence. The most dangerous aspect of television advertising is that it is skillfully targeted at potential consumers. Children are reached during the cartoon watching, working people are reached in the evening, while housewives are reached in the afternoon during the soap operas. Companies are able to collect information about the preferences, needs, and choices of each consumer group and are skillfully using this information to make the commercial very appealing and, moreover, deliver it during the time when the majority of representatives of the target audience are watching TV. Thus, it is almost impossible to avoid being influenced by television advertising.
Television commercials are multiply exposed to achieve message retention and consumer action. Even though viewers tend to have little loyalty to the particular stations, the multiple repetitions of the commercials will still reach the target audience. It is worth noting that television advertising is the most expensive promotional technique, as the result, the price of the product is increased and consumers pay more they might be. When consumers are driven by the commercial to buy the specific product, they might feel excited about getting it and the strong desire to possess the advertised product makes them blind to the price and possible weaknesses of this product. Deceitful commercials are not rare today and show only the positive sides of the product. Consumers might buy the advertised product and later find out that another product (which is cheaper) is much better than the one they bought.
As Andersen has noted, “most advertisers are selling magic” (14). Television commercials are focused on human problems such as fear to fail in love or in business and offer the solutions to these problems as clear-cut as the snap of a finger. Commercials promote that all problems can be solved by the new pill, deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, shaving lotion, or car (Andersen 14). In other words, commercials depict the human problems which are revealed in the complexity and emotional motivations and offer the easy solution to them. Of course, the new car might add some confidence to the person, but the purchase of the car will not solve the problem because the root psychological problem is not addressed. It is hardly possible that the person was unconfident because he had the cheaper car. The problem is definitely rooted much deeper and involved not only economic factors, but also self-image, psychological factors, and family background. The deceitful claim that the new car will make the person confident, forced numerous consumers to buy the car they either cannot afford or do not need at all.
Why is Advertising Negative?
As Fox has noted, we “live in the market-driven economy in which we consume more than we produce” (62), and for this reason, advertising flows constantly and influences consumers to buy the goods which need to be sold but are not needed by most of the buyers. If in the 1970s the daily number of commercials targeted at the average American was approximately 500, by 1999, this number increased to 3,000! Advertising effects are mostly unseen by the consumers, especially children who grow up in a world that promises everything to everybody for the price. Children are the potential long-term buyers and they are so intensively targeted by advertising because it is believed that brand loyalty is developed from the early years.
Advertising affects four types of health – physical health (choice to smoke and drink lulled by the media depiction of glamorous smokers), emotional health (television-imposed concepts of beauty and sexuality to which most of the consumers do not correspond), social health (advertising communicates attitudes and values including competition and materialism), and cultural health (consumers observe how certain groups of people are depicted in advertising) (Fox 62). According to the research completed in 1998, television advertising lowered the ability of teenagers to resist the temptation of low-nutrition food, and that sports celebrities promoting the use of chewing tobacco increased the number of teens using it. It is clear that television advertising shapes buying decisions in a negative way because it appeals to emotional and psychological levels.
In addition, television advertising shapes the awareness of physical appearance and sexuality. Not only young people but also adults start to develop emotional problems because they are surrounded by media depiction of sleek beauties. Based on the emotional desire to correspond to the beauty standards, consumers are influenced to buy shampoos, cosmetics, cars, and cigarettes which they either do not like or do not want. Thus, the decision to buy the product is shaped by the desire to correspond to the glamorous images from television commercials. Advertisements deliver messages reflecting ideologies and values which are not very conducive to social health; these include “valuing appearance over substance, instant gratification over delayed gratification, action over reflection, consumption over frugality and recycling, competition over cooperation, and materialism over spirituality” (Fox 64).
“TV commercials engineer our perceptions, attitudes, and behavior – commercials attempt to engineer us mentally” (Gamson 50). Advertising has become a part of the American culture and the average American kid sees as many as 500,000 commercials from birth to the age of 18. American commercial industry develops the “culture of sales-oriented deception” (Gamson 50) when people buy the goods only because the advertising says they need them. Advertising is the propaganda for consumerism and it became especially dangerous because consumers lack media literacy. Most of the commercials are funny or sexy, they are enjoyable to watch – they are aimed not only to influence the buying decision but also to shape the pleasure. For example, De Beers has managed to turn diamonds into priceless items which are promoted as the requirement to get married and people want to buy them. To understand why advertising modifies consumer behavior, it is necessary to take a closer look at how human cognition and the mind react to television commercials.
Theoretical Analysis
Advertising researchers have argued for a long time on the topic of recall vs. recognition with reference to commercials. It has started in the 1930s when the first brain theories were introduced by Starch and Gallup. It was extended by Krugman and related specifically to television advertising in the 1970s. As Du Plessis notes, all of the consumer decisions are memory-based” (75). Thus, recall and recognition are the measures to analyze the memory of the advertising. Norman and Challice have developed the so-called Supervisory Attention System in the late 1980s with the consideration that most television viewers are talking, eating, or doing something else while they are supposed to be watching commercials. Nevertheless, the commercials are somehow seen and printed in the memory even if it was only heard or partially seen (Du Plessis 75). By how? It is assumed that the Supervisory Attention System interrupts what the viewer is doing (eating or talking) and drives attention to the commercial. For this reason, advertisements are made interesting, with attention-getting sounds and words.
For example, people can perform several complex tasks at the same time (driving and talking), however, when difficult traffic situations appear, they stop talking and devote full attention to driving. This is the example of attention prioritization – paying attention to what is more important or interesting at the particular moment. Thus, commercials with the help of attention-getting techniques, force individuals to pay more attention to commercial viewing (and subsequent memorization) than to other activities. By why do people go and buy the product they do not need only because they have seen the commercial? Du Plessis answers this question as well – because humans have visual memory (78). To understand the power of visual memory, the following study was performed: subjects were shown 2,500 pictures at the rate of 1 picture every 10 seconds; one hour after seeing the last slide, they were shown the pairs of pictures with one picture of each pair being already seen and the other not; 95 percent (!) of the choices were correct (Du Plassis 76). It is possible to state that the percent of commercial memorizing is even higher because viewers are continuously exposed to it.
Moreover, it is worth noting that most of the advertisements, being thoroughly planned and creating, do match the consumers’ needs, and, at the same time, modify their decision to buy the product. The research indicates that attitudes are based not only on cognition but also on feelings and emotions (Chattopadhyay 82). While attitudes towards the products can be cognitive, they are predominantly effective at the same time. Affective (feel) and cognitive (think) techniques are applied in all types of advertising, including television, and motivate consumers to buy the products they feel are necessary for them. For example, consumers buy junk food even though they know it is harmful to them because advertisement of junk food matches the desire of the consumer to get the food they like, not need.
The same theoretical foundations are applied when celebrities are represented in television commercials. Bush emphasizes that in the process of consumer socialization (the process of acquiring skills and attitudes to function as consumers), the sources of influence are able to transmit their influence on the buying decision (108). Role models can be any individuals who come into contact with the consumer directly or indirectly. Numerous companies are using sports heroes and other celebrities as spokespeople for their products. Such sports celebrities as Michael Jordan, Nolan Ryan, Mia Hamm, and Shaquille O’Neil are promoting the products from television screens. Important, most of the teenagers do buy the product advertised by celebrities not because they need this product, but because it is promoted by the role model, by the person they like.
Effect on Children
Television advertising is aimed at influencing consumer behavior: to enter the market for the specific good, to switch from the rival, or to remain loyal to the advertised good. Advertising to children has the same aims, however, unlike adults, children do not have the capacity to buy the good and must rely on their parent’s decision. Thus, advertising encourages children to persuade their parents to buy the goods children do not really need (Blades 102). Television advertising aimed at children promotes candy bars, sugared breakfasts, and snack food. Twenty-five years ago (1980) Gorn and Goldberg analyzed the effect of advertisement repetition on children and found out that children have chosen the ice cream which was advertised to them even if other brands were of bigger weight.
Moreover, parents play the important role in the buying process of the products for children and, therefore, advertisement of children’s products is made appealing to parents as well. Apart from parents, peer groups represent another source of influence over consumer-related values and behavior. The power of advertising lies in what brands stand for in the symbolic sense, in the attributes of the promoted vision of the product (Blades 109). When children become teens and start to explore their self-identity, the range of products they purchase expands to include those that are not just related to entertainment but also to the projection of the particular self-image. Through advertisement, product producers promote the popular images and identities and motivate teens who want to correspond to these images to buy the product. For example, teenagers will not choose clothes that they believe their peers would dislike and desire to buy the shoes advertised by Michael Jordan.
Numerous studies have been conducted with the aim to explore whether children and their parents are affected by advertising or reacted to advertisements in a particular way. As Blades notes, such data does not represent actual value but may reveal insights into the way children engage with an advertisement (110). In particular, the study showed that parents often expressed concerns about their children being misled by advertising and also about the propensity to emulate risky behavior depicted in commercials. British parents and professionals do believe that television advertising affects children – pester power, direct copying of the behavior, and attitude change. For example, one of the commercials depicted the salesman who demonstrated the strength of the paper towels by supporting the pot of coffee on the sheet without tearing it. Children who were interviewed in the follow-up study indicated their willingness to repeat the test themselves (Blades 112).
Television advertising influences not only children’s own product purchasing but also their requests to buy something from parents. Advertising feeds children’s ideas about the product – in the United States television commercials were found to be the key source of information for gift desires. Advertising certainly plays the important role in enhancing product awareness and brand selection. Buijzen and Valkenburg investigated the extent of television advertising influenced Dutch children’s Christmas requests and found out that more than 50 percent of children asked for at least one product that had been advertised during the period of investigation (460). A similar study was conducted in the United States and 78 percent of children reported that they saw their requested toys on television.
Effect on Women
Women, similar to children, are more vulnerable to advertising influence. In addition, women are often presented in commercials in order to create sex appeals. A lot of research has been done to evidence the importance of physical attractiveness as the determining factor for effective communication and attitude change. According to the studies, physical attractiveness elicits positive emotional responses during initial contacts and attractive people are rated more desirable and influential than less attractive (Lin 461). The understanding of the notion that attractive people can influence others is the foundation of television advertising which uses the power of physical attractiveness in persuading their consumers to buy the product.
Even though the research has proved that nudity and erotic content did increase the consumer attention to advertising, but did not change the overall attitude to the brand. The initial aim of any advertising is to attack consumer attention and sex appeals are one of the most effective methods to achieve this goal. But how are women influenced by sex appeals in advertising? Women portrayed in television advertisements are liberated, they embrace their sexuality to express themselves rather than to please men. They are beautiful and have perfect bodies, men are looking at them with admiration. When the average woman sees such commercials and realizes that she does not correspond to the beauty standard depicted on television, she seeks a way to become beautiful as well. Thus, the woman might intentionally go to the store and buy the advertised product with the hope that her appearance and, as the result – life, will improve with the help of that product. The sad moment is that the product will not solve the problems and will not change the appearance and the disappointed woman will continue buying similar products with the hope they help even though she might not need these products at all.
Rebuttal
Nevertheless, there is extensive research indicating that advertising does not influence the consumers to the extent they start buying the products they do not need, and advertising just adds to the existing knowledge on the product or brand. In particular, it is argued that consumers have more power and influence on how products are made and marketed. Consumers determine by themselves how much they are willing to pay, how to shop as well as what they buy. Weilbacher further notes that advertising, as current practices, ignores all that has been learned by cognitive psychologists (230) and advertising is not the stimulus, but nothing more than the addiction to everything the consumer has previously learned. He believes that marketers do not understand how consumers process and use the information received from television advertising. The beliefs that marketers can control what consumers think about brands through commercials and that the purchase is made as the result of the rational choice are both false.
“To be successful, an advertisement must establish a contact with the consumer in which the consumer consciously attends to the advertising” (Weilbacher 230). It means that the consumers are continuously searching for more information about the advertised product. The traditional view of advertising influence is based on the assumption that it is possible to predict whether or not advertising will be effective, it is easy to tell advertisers why their advertising will work, and that all brand decisions are rational. Thus, from a traditional perspective, the objective of the advertising is not to cause the consumer to buy the specific brand, but rather make the brand seem at least as acceptable as the other brands that the consumer is already using.
From a behavioral perspective, when the advertisement is seen by the potential consumer, it may or may not be perceived consciously. The following is the list of the unconscious ideas which appear in the mind of the consumer while he is watching the advertising: the information he already knows about the brand, recalling of the previous advertising, past experience with the brand (what friends or relatives have said about it), information from other sources of media, his personal attitudes to the advertising in general and to the product specifically (Weilbacher 232). Therefore, it is very difficult to influence the decision to buy the product the consumer does not need because there are trivial differences among the brands in product categories. Advertising communication should operate on a tactical day-to-day basis to be effective; otherwise, the commercial viewer will not even remember the advertised brand.
Moreover, as Mehta argued, in order for advertising to be influential and persuasive, rather than merely informative, the six perception concepts should be taken into account: “informational value, entertainment, interruptive nature, sexual content and use of women, ethics, and deception and falsehood” (67). The attitude to advertising is another important factor, which determines the commercial’s effectiveness. The results of Mehta’s study showed that the amount of attention that respondents pay to advertisements, measured as recall of the product in advertisement a day after exposure, is influenced by the respondent’s belief about advertising helping them to stay informed about the developments in the marketplace. Notably, if the advertising is perceived by the viewer as openly manipulative, the potential consumer develops a negative attitude to the advertised brand.
Moreover, even if the advertising influences the viewer to buy the product, the consumer will be led to perceive and evaluate the product’s effectiveness after buying it in order to decide whether the specific product is what he needs or whether it is nothing special. If the first trial of the product failed to meet the expectations of the customer, he will not buy the product again. Therefore, the influence of advertising on buying unnecessary goods might be present for the initial buying decision, not continuous. For example, if the advertisement claims that the product will make the teeth whiter, the consumer might test it and if the promoted result (white teeth) is not achieved, the consumer will not buy this product again.
It is worth noting that consumers tend to be very skeptical about advertising in general and they distrust the appealing messages about product effectiveness. Therefore, consumers will not buy the product only because it was advertised on television unless they were previously considering changing the brand. Sometimes consumers are so skeptical about the television advertisement that they might miss the product they really want and need. Following the above argument, television advertising does not force consumers to buy the products only because they were advertised on television because, first, consumers are skeptical about the reliability of promotional claims, and, second, consumers perceive advertisements as mostly informative rather than persuasive.
Discussion
Despite the presence of research rejecting the idea that television advertising does not influence buying decisions, my opinion is that in many cases it does shape the decision to buy the widely advertised product because of curiosity and hope that the product will bring the desired outcomes. Commercials are aimed at individuals who are not satisfied with some aspects of their life. For example, if the advertisement poses the car of a specific brand as the attribute of a successful life, the person might be motivated to buy this car only because he wants to be perceived as a successful person. It does not mean though that the purchase of this car was necessary or that the person really wanted or needed this brand of the car. Television advertising shapes the consumption decisions and when the person comes to the supermarket to buy food, he will rarely consider how healthy or nutritious is the food he chose, but he will buy it because the commercial said it was tasty.
Television advertising is considered to be the most effective way to deliver information about the product to the target consumer segment because it is possible to apply both visual attributes and sound to gain the attention of the view and encourage him to buy the product. Even though some people do not trust television advertising, the continuous repetition of the commercial is printed in the mind of the person and when he comes to the supermarket and sees the advertised product, he has the sense of being aware of its qualities and is tempted to buy this product. As the study indicated, consumers tend to choose the product they are familiar with rather than the one they have never seen or heard about.
Children are especially vulnerable to television commercials and advertisers, at the same time, target them intensively to develop brand loyalty from the early years of life. Children, lacking the opportunity to purchase on their own, influence the buying decisions of their parents. The effect of television advertising on children is vividly expressed in the problem of American children’s obesity. Influenced by television advertising, children and their parents buy food that is not healthy but is widely advertised. They eat food high in fats, sugar, and salt; they drink soft drinks instead of water. Their parents also prefer to eat pre-prepared food which is not good for their health and body weight. Of course, in addition to advertising, there are other factors influencing the consumption of unhealthy food such as longer working days, lack of time, and increased income. Nevertheless, everyday exposure to persuasive messages does encourage the viewer to buy the promoted food.
Television advertisements are well-planned and emotionally appealing. Not a single commercial will point out the product disadvantages whether they are the high price or the functional limitations. Commercials depict the product as if its possession is the solution to all problems – both physical and psychological. Emotional appeals motivate the viewer to buy the product because he sees it almost as the prerequisite of a successful life. The teenager might want to buy the widely advertised mobile phone not because he needs it or because it is functionally supreme to other brands, but only because the commercial says that this mobile phone will make every person the star.
Special attention should be paid to the psychological appeals of television advertisements which make some people feel unsuccessful or not desired. The advertising of perfume, for example, appeals psychologically to women because it depicts the woman desired by all men only because she smells good. If the woman who watches this commercial feels not being very attractive to men, she will be influenced to buy this perfume with the hope that it will change the situation. Nevertheless, the chances that the attitude of men will change only because of the good perfume are very low. Thus, the woman buys the product she does not want or does not like only because she was touched by the psychological appeals in the commercial.
Many other examples can be provided to support the claim that television advertising has a negative influence on consumer buying decisions. Today’s advertising is very interesting, colorful, and joyful to watch; some of the commercials are truly informative, however, every commercial has the aim to motivate the potential customer to try the product. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to escape television advertising influence because people are also surrounded by promotional information in other media such as journals, magazines, and radio. If fifty years ago, the supply and the range of the products was provided based on the needs and desires of the consumers, today consumers are forced to buy the product because the advertising says they need it.
Works Cited
Andersen, Robin. Consumer Culture and TV Programming. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.
Blades, Mark, Gunter, Barrier, and Caroline Oates. Advertising to Children on TV: Content, Impact, and Regulation. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.
Buijzen, Moniek and Patti Valkenburg. “The Impact of Television Advertising on Children’s Christmas Wishes.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44.3 (2000): 456+.
Bush, Alan, Bush Victoria and Craig Martin. “Sports Celebrity Influence on the Behavioral Intentions of Generation Y.” Journal of Advertising Research 44.1 (2004): 108+.
Chattopadhyay, Amitava, Dube, Laurette and Anick Letarte. “Should Advertising Appeals Match the Basis of Consumers’ Attitudes?” Journal of Advertising Research 36.6 (1996): 82.
Du Plessis, Erik. “Recognition versus Recall.” Journal of Advertising Research 34.3 (1994): 75+.
Fox, Roy. “Warning Advertising May Be Hazardous to Your Health: Ads Pose a Threat to Physical, Emotional, Social, and Cultural Well-Being.” USA Today 130.2678 (2001): 62+.
Gamson, Joshua. “Ad Creep.” The American Prospect 11.3 (1999): 50.
Lin, Caroline. “Uses of Sex Appeals in Prime-Time Television Commercials.” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 38.5-6 (1998): 461+.
Mehta, Abhilasha. “Advertising Attitudes and Advertising Effectiveness.” Journal of Advertising Research 40.3 (2000): 67.
Weilbacher, William. “How Advertising Affects Consumers.” Journal of Advertising Research 43.2 (2003): 230+.