Female Representation in Advertisement & its Affect

A study of Purchasing Behavior of the Customer, at Shopping Malls of Gujrat, Pakistan


Bachelorarbeit, 2011

74 Seiten, Note: None


Leseprobe


Table of Contents

Introduction

Literature Review

Theoretical Framework

Methodology

Finding

Summary

References

Annexure

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Representation of female in advertisements and its affect on the purchasing behavior of the customer, the study reflects representation of female in advertisements and its affect on the purchasing behavior of the customer. TV was selected as the medium for the study to check the female representation in TV advertisements affects the customer purchasing behavior. How much it influence on them. Study proved that female are represented negatively in the advertisement now a day’s. Research tries to find out that how consumer perceives it and how it affects. Cultivation theory and social responsibility theory were used to check research.

Communication is the conversation that can be written or oral between two or more persons. Mass as indicated, refers to a large number of people heterogeneously dispersed around the globe. The term mass communication is used to portray the academic study of the different ways by which persons and entities get information from mass media to huge divisions of the population at the same time. It is very important in a way that it makes a global connection around the world

Communicating to the masses has developed with the passage of time. What began as limited and basic exposure has evolved into a complex stream of messages that surrounds us in every aspect of our daily lives. Different researchers’ studies have made it clear that the mass media we are continuously consuming have great impact on us. It plays a vital role in shaping our beliefs, attitudes, awareness and expectations of the world around us. It became a power source to control, influence and innovation in society.

The significance of the media today is massive. Never before in mankind's history, media had such an important impact on our behavior and lives and it’s all due to development in mass media technology. As researchers try to study and explain how mass media affects our society, advertising becomes a popular source for study. Even if its messages may be small, it is the most influential, convincing, and powerful tool in shaping the behavior and attitude of consumers.

Advertisements

An advertisement is paid communication whose purpose is to inform and persuade the people to buy the product. “It is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media.”(Bovee, 1992, p. 7, as cited in www.wsu.edu) The conception of advertising has assumed an active form with the exercise of the different mediums of the communication. Starting from the newspaper, magazines, posters, signboards, billboards to the commercial on the TV, advertising has arrived extensive technique. The effort is terrifying as it leads a practice planned to attract, change, transform and persuade public opinion.

Each of us is exposed to so many advertisements every day and it has become the most powerful education tool in society. They sell values, images and concepts of success. They tell the general audience who we are and who we should be. Advertising transforms the practical value of using products into symbolic value of exchanging products into commodities. British writer and critic Judith Williamson calls this “metastructure,” “where meaning is not just decode within one structure, but transferred to create another” (Sex Roles: A journal of Research, Dec, 1997 by Mee-Eun Kang as cited in Akhter, 2008).

The influence of advertising has its skill to control people. It has capacity to change the audience into captivated and unconscious consumers. Typical ideas were planned through legend, literature; skill and history are currently born and maintained in advertising (Ravi @ Rsingh.net as cited in Akhter, 2008). Looking at the work of the typical models we shape ourselves. Yet the most boring advertisements shape us by the influence of the representations, and image of the people which propose us that how we could form ourselves.

The variation in advertisements picture and in the real life is that we do not practice the same delight proposed by the images advertisements when we use the product. However, it is the images that compel us to buy the product, whether “it is of Michael Jordan soaring through the air thanks to his cosmetics” (Ravi @ Rsingh.net as cited in Akhter, 2008). We are purchasing the images of advertisements, not the product. This lie is replaced with our thin truth that we are purchasing quality products, but in reality we are just purchasing the false images.

Advertising get a particular place within the economic institute of a modern society. Advertising treats with values, thoughts, beliefs, and give them cultural shape. Advertising offers importance to words and representations. Raymond Williams describe advertisement the ‘magic’ which can change products into attractive signifiers. The rising culture of advertisements has foot stepped into what we understand, what we concerned about, and our thoughts of correct and false, the means we look after our kids and lots of other actions in both our community and personal life.

Female Representation in Advertisements

Female representation in advertisements originally began with advertisements on goods like adult entertainment and alcohol products. The style then widens like a fire in the market and is continually broadly exercised while being inflated. It now becomes a fundamental part to have a gorgeous female model in every advertisement, which occasionally appears unneeded. They appear to advertise everything from bikes to shaving gel.

Several women right protesters speak that the women are creature assigned as just an object by these advertisements. Although the cruel reality is that advertisements portraying women is more persuading to audience of all ages and advertisers have adopted this. The advertisement begins with a pretty woman posturing in different ways chased by the goods or the service presented by the advertiser. The prettiness of the model already attracts the consumer, so advertisers do not try to make more efforts to inspire them.

Advertisements are persuasive and inspiring instrument, which can give a huge affect on the minds of the audience and plays a main part in shaping the attitude and culture of the people. Wide and expensive representation of female in this way simply limitized their picture to a product of excitement. Stress is laid only on the bodily attractiveness of the woman like facial appearance, and body curves. Afterwards the advertisement has been shot, exercising graphical equipment, and several type of flaw of the body is shown with an approach that gives the idea that only selective people are meant to make use of the product.

The advertisers have an ethical responsibility in the society. These advertisements have a negative impact on the society and directs to difficulties faced for the common woman. The main sick result is the passion of the female to obtain those nearly perfected bodies. They are so forced to get thin bodies that they adopt the harmful methods to attain the set objectives. They make disorders in their physical conditions get artificial techniques which can at times result in severe harms. As well as those who never create it to that end faces embarrassment and teased by everybody in surroundings. Its outcome is in psychological diseases. Representation of females in commercials is not bad but to represent them in a negative way and conveying the false message in the society is harmful.

Purchasing Behavior

Behavior is the approach in which a person acts or proceeds. It is the approach in which a person behaves. Behavior should be observed in happening, an entity or individual. It can be observed in society norms, or the approach in which one behave others or hold objects. Behavior, thus, is the approach in which a person treats with society, individuals, or things. It might be either good or bad. It might be ordinary or unusual according to society customs. Society all times aims to make bad behavior right and attempt to get unusual behavior back to normal.

Every society has its own ways of life which are known as norms. The technique one matches to, or move away from, these norms will shape good or bad behavior. In African societies, meeting is a symbol of good manners. Even a stranger must be met. If anyone who passes without meeting to others is considered as bad manners. Other good behaviors include: respecting others, taking responsibility of the orders, and not talking while eating etc.

In a school, there are some rules everyday has to follow these rules. Any person who does not follow these rules is usually punished. Such a person has a behavior problem. Behavior might be considered disordered, normal, and abnormal. The difference among normal and disordered behavioral is usually of degree rather than kind. A non-disturbed boy does and disturbed boy does everything same. But the difference is that they do these things at different times and under different conditions, at different rates or in different degrees. For example a non-disturbed boy cry, fight, scream, shout, etc all are behaviors. A disturbed boy also do the same things, but to different degrees. The behavior of a non-disturbed boy is accepted by the community. However, a disordered boy behavior is unacceptable.

Consumer behavior is the study of where, when, why and how people do or do not buy a product. “It reflects the totality of consumer’s decisions with respect to the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, experience, people and ideas by human decision making units”. (Hoyer & Macinnis, 2009, p.3) It merges factors from economics, social anthropology, sociology, and psychology. It tries to realize the consumer decision making process, both independently and in groups. It deals with the personality of individual consumers such as behavioral variables and demographics in an effort to recognize people's desires and needs. It also deals to assess pressure on the purchaser from groups such as friends, family, society, and reference groups in general.

Consumer behavior study is based on customer purchasing behavior, Customer deal with the three different functions of user, purchaser and payer. It is due to the psychological processes that customers go through in identifying desires, trying to solve these desires, taking purchase decisions, understanding basic information, formulating strategies, and applying these strategies

Aspects that can influence consumer’s choice of product are:

1. What brand in a given product category was bought during the last, or a series of past, purchase occasions;
2. Whether, and if so, how many times a consumer has seen an ad for the brand in question or a competing one;
3. Whether the target brand (and/or a competing one) is on sale during the store visit;
4. Whether any brand had preferential display space;
5. The impact of income and/or family size on purchase patterns; and
6. Whether a coupon was used for the purchase and, if so, its value.

Consumer decision making involves a number of steps. The first step in consumer decision making is identifying problem—you identify that something is not as it should be. For example, your bike is getting harder to start and is not much speedy up well. The second step involves the search of information—what are some substitute ways of handling it? You might purchase a new car, take your car in for fix, hire a taxi, or travel the bus. The third step involves assessment of substitutes.You think that to hire a taxi is the best substitute.

Study Objectives

- Study is representation of female in advertisements and its affect on the purchasing behavior of the customer.
- TV was chosen as the medium for this purpose to check how female representation in TV advertisements affects the customer purchasing behavior. How much it influence on them.
- What perceived from the study that Female are represented negatively in the advertisement know a day’s and research tries to find out that how consumer perceive it and how much it affect on it. For this purpose cultivation theory and social responsibility theory used to check research.
- This research employed survey to discover findings. A survey was conducted on one hundred respondents equally consisting males and females belonging to four shopping malls of Gujrat.
- Stratified sampling method was applied for arrangement, subgroups of demographic characteristics, of the respondents and for data collection purpose convenience method was used.
- The data is presented graphically and in tables beside with interpretation to make it comprehensible

Chapter 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature Review

Representation

There is a massive concentration paid to the word “representation” in the media. However, fictional representation passes on to the action of representing or the condition of being represented. Representation is exercised in approximately all social fields like culture, law politics science and in any other fields. It represents picture or image of something. American philosopher Richard has assumed representation is, “The image which grasps traditional philosophy captive is that of the mind as enormous mirror, holding different representations – some precise and some not- and able of being non empirical, pure methods.”

It is the most vital part of the scientific procedure and treats with the method of knowledge construction. Numerous big like Mchel Foucault, Richard Rorty and Martin Heidegger has effort on the idealistic features of representation. Every one of them believed in the same spot and knowledge is constant mutually elements in the modern philosophy. Representation is not completed without knowledge. At starting representation is the theory of knowledge and since time exceeded representation developed a realistic instrument of knowledge in nineteenth-century. According to Foucault, “if representation continues an epistemological model in the Modern Age after 1800, representations as a creation of knowledge handle their limits as realistic cognitive instruments at the starting of the nineteenth-century.” (connykarlsson.se)

In advertisements, representations belong to the appearance of the societal characteristics with the parts of vision. Advertisements show those principles, which are based on the cultural, social and religious objects. To describe the truth to the people, advertisements exercise in presenting things like people, ideologies, events and other concepts. Representation in advertisement engages “the procedure and creations of design”. (www.genderads.com as cited in Akhter, 2008).

Method refers to the process where creators merged the sociological and psychological characteristics of human. They portray world of dream to catch the attention of the customer and manufactured good is the result of formation. Representation involves not only how “characteristics of every person are portrayed within the content but also how they are created in the procedure of creation and response by people whose characteristics are also dissimilar to such demographic factors”(http:www.genderads.com as cited in Akhter, 2008). Advertisements try to play with the weakness and feelings of the people and portray a fake image to make sure people that they can be what they think. The majority of the viewers consider that what they watch and observe in the advertisement is true and they can certainly home what they desire.

Female Representation

Female representation in advertisements originally began with advertisements on goods like adult entertainment and alcohol products. The style then widens like a fire in the market and is continually broadly exercised while being inflated. It now becomes a fundamental part to have a gorgeous female model in every advertisement, which occasionally appears unneeded. They appear to advertise everything from bikes to shaving gel.

Several women right protesters speak that the women are creature assigned as just an object by these advertisements. Although the cruel reality is that advertisements portraying women is more persuading to audience of all ages and advertisers have adopted this. The advertisement begins with a pretty woman posturing in different ways chased by the good or the service presented by the advertiser. The prettiness of the model already attracts the consumer, so advertisers do not try to make efforts more to inspire them.

Although here are negative aspect in depicting female models in several advertisements but a customer is intelligent and he does not take much time to understand the female model scope in ad. It is completely irrelevant to represent a women model or an actress in advertisement endorsing men products. A few excellent examples of this are portraying a female model in Axe Deodorant ad and similarly of a partially nude woman in a car advertisement. Another disadvantage is that an extra attention given to model successfully shifted the attention from the product and hence the product got ignored at the end.

Advertisements are persuasive and inspiring instrument, which can give a huge affect on the minds of the audience and plays a main part in shaping the buying attitude and culture of the people. Wide and expensive representation of female in this way simply limitized their picture to a product of excitement. Stress is laid only on the bodily attractiveness of the woman like facial appearance, and body curves. Afterwards the advertisement has been shot, exercising graphical equipment, and several type of flaw of the body is shown with an approach that gives idea that only selective people are meant to make use of the product.

The advertisers have an ethical responsibility in the society. These advertisements have a negative impact on the society and directs to difficulties faced for the common woman. The main sick result is the passion of the female to obtain those nearly perfected bodies. They are so forced to get thin bodies that they adopt the harmful methods to attain the set objectives. They make disorders in their physical conditions get artificial techniques which can at times result in severe harms. As well as those who never create it to that end faces embarrassment and teased by everybody in surroundings. Its outcome is in psychological diseases. Representation of females in commercials is not bad but to represent them in a negative way and conveying the false message in the society is harmful.

Advertisement

Advertising is usually for the promotion of companies, products, services, and thoughts, generally done by a well-known sponsor. “Advertising is the nonpersonal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media.”(Bovee, 1992, p. 7 as cited in www.wsu.edu) Marketers perceive advertising as an element of a general plan. It engages the method where in a message is planned so as to advertise a good, an idea or even a service. The conception of advertising has assumed an active form with the exercise of the different mediums of the communication. Starting from the newspaper, magazines, posters, signboards, billboards to the commercial on the TV, advertising has arrived extensive technique. The effort is terrifying as it leads a practice planned to attract, change, transform and persuade public opinion.

The common character of advertising engages a number of “interconnected relationships those between person and object, use and symbol, symbolism and power, and communication and satisfaction as it reflects the light of cultural expectations” (Sex rules: A journal of research, Dec 1997 by Mee-Eun Kang as cited in Akhter, 2008). As a socializing instrument the image representation given by the advertisement can have a great influence on our approaches, behaviors, principles, and believes as it very much signified our distinctiveness through its importance.

Advertising get a particular place within the economic institute of a modern society. Advertising treats with values, thoughts, beliefs, and give them cultural shape. Advertising offers importance to words and representations. Raymond Williams describe advertisement the ‘magic’ which can change products into attractive signifiers. The rising culture of advertisements has foot stepped into what we understand, what we concerned about, and our thoughts of correct and false, the means we look after our kids and lots of other actions in both our community and personal life. “It is a social practice, and it does not operate in a vacuum” (Sex rules: A journal of research, Dec 1997 by Mee-Eun Kang as cited in Akhter, 2008).

A revolution of imagery in advertisements started about 150 years before with the development of photography, for the first time, visual image of things in space could be repeated on a mass level, image communication was born. It just got 20 years for this novel way of sign to turn out to be a most important player in the communications of social principles in society. The imagery communicated by advertisements has turned into such influential and sophisticated manner that they currently manage our understanding and knowledge in a significant way. According to the Raymond Williams said in his essay “Advertising: The Magic System” the progress of advertisements got place in the era of industrial revolution and progress happened due to the development of commerce and trade. But still advertisements were not declared as a good medium in this era. “Advertisement is resorted to for the purpose of introducing infer articles in to the market.” (Raymond Williams, 1980).In the previous hundred years advertisements gradually got its place and turned into one of the most flourishing businesses in the world.

In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse is the primary to contain paid advertising in its pages. N.W. Ayer & son was the first full- service agency to do responsibility for advertising content. It opened in 1869, and was situated in Philadelphia. In the early 1920s, the first radio station was developed by radio equipment producers and seller who opened programs organize to sell more radios to customers. The practice was passed over to television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the early 1950s, the DuMont television network started the modern style of selling advertisement time to many sponsors.

The 1960s saw advertising changed into a new approach in which imagination was permitted to shine, created unanticipated messages that made advertisements more attractive to consumers’ eyes. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the opening of cable television and particularly MTV. Opening up the idea of the music video, MTV guided in a new form of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message. Marketing through the internet opened new dimension for advertisers and contributed to the “dot-com” boom of the 1990s. At the start of the 21st century, a number of websites as well as the research engine Google made a change in online advertising.

The influence of advertising has its skill to control people. It has capacity to change the audience into captivated and unconscious consumers. Typical ideas were planned through legend, literature; skill and history are currently born and maintained in advertising (Ravi @ Rsingh.net as cited in Akhter, 2008). Looking at the work of the typical models we shape ourselves. Yet the most boring advertisements shape us by the influence of the representations, and image of the people which propose us that how we could form ourselves. The variation in advertisements picture and in the real life is that we do not practice the same delight proposed by the images advertisements when we use the product. However, it is the images that compel us to buy the product, whether “it is of Michael Jordan soaring through the air thanks to his cosmetics” (Ravi @ Rsingh.net as cited in Akhter, 2008). We are purchasing the images of advertisements, not the product. This lie is replaced with our thin truth that we are purchasing quality products, but in reality we are just purchasing the false images.

There is massive range of imagery or representation of female in advertising beginning from a simple housewife to eye catching and attractive model. The buyers are always surrounded by an idea of female gorgeousness, which is not achievable because it is an artificial. Images themselves are shaped falsely, by airbrushing, by studio lighting, and by computer improvement. Even the models create their bodies through various kinds of cosmetic surgeries which give them ideal look. Yet, in spite of being so unrepresentative of real women, this false appearance is created all over in the advertisements. That’s why the women remain worried about their appearance and keep on dieting for the whole year.

Advertising in Pakistan

In 1947, the advertising industry was in a big chaos in Pakistan. Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and Delhi were hub of advertising in the sub-continent, but after the partition these cities became part of India. British and American advertising agencies had hold over the business before independence. Malani and Co. was one of these advertising agencies working in Pakistan but the proprietor of this agency was also a Hindu. Pakistan’s own first advertising agency was Wilintas International Karachi. With the passage of time, a number of international advertising agencies started their business in different cities of Pakistan. These agencies developed the trade of their international clients in Pakistan. The international advertising agencies take over the local agencies because the local advertising agencies were suffering from lack of capital and well expert staff was not accessible to them.

The situation of facilitating departments of advertising was also very miserable at the time of independence. At that time industries were not well established and production was almost nil. As a result, there were no advertisers. Advertising depends on media but the media was also not very much developed.TV center was not there. Radio was there but only two radio stations were working. A small number of newspapers and magazines were being published but their circulation was very limited. The rates of advertising were too little. 400 cinema halls in both parts of Pakistan were there and these cinema halls were used as the media of advertising at that time. After 1950, numerous new advertising agencies were developed. In 1955, international advertising agencies have closed down their business from there because of governmental policies. With the close of international advertising agencies it became beneficial for local advertising agencies. These agencies have developed with the passage of time and now these are known throughout the world. There is also an association of all the advertising agencies of the country which is called Pakistan Advertising Association (PAA).

[...]

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Details

Titel
Female Representation in Advertisement & its Affect
Untertitel
A study of Purchasing Behavior of the Customer, at Shopping Malls of Gujrat, Pakistan
Hochschule
Gujarat University  (Mass Communication & Media Centre )
Veranstaltung
BS (Honors)
Note
None
Autoren
Jahr
2011
Seiten
74
Katalognummer
V204683
ISBN (eBook)
9783656317494
ISBN (Buch)
9783656319269
Dateigröße
6158 KB
Sprache
Englisch
Anmerkungen
It is completely immaterial to represent a women model or an actress in advertisement endorsing men products. A few excellent examples of this are portraying a female model in axe deodorant ad and similarly of a partially nude women’s in the advertisement of a car. Another disadvantage is due to extra attention on the model, the concentration shifted and to the product is not enough. The major center of attention of the advertisement is lost.
Schlagworte
female, representation, advertisement, affect, purchasing, behavior, customer, shopping, malls, gujrat, pakistan
Arbeit zitieren
Dr. Kashif Shahid (Autor:in)Usama Iftikhar (Autor:in), 2011, Female Representation in Advertisement & its Affect, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/204683

Kommentare

  • Gast am 15.4.2015

    would you like to say what method you have used in this thesis?? .... badly need to know

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