Advertising

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Advertising

• Economic and Consumer Psychology
• Topic 7
• Advertising effectiveness and influential factors
• Advertising and gender stereotypes

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Part 1. Which factors influence advertising
effectiveness?

• Features of adverts (some examples)
• placement, prime-time, repetition (e.g., Lodish
  et al., 1995)
• structure classical and vignette ad dramas
  (e.g., Stern, 1994)
• guilt appeal (e.g., Coulter Pinto, 1995)
• Information-processing approaches to persuasion
• central and peripheral processing
• personal involvement
• Psychological characteristics of audience
• congruence between ad contents and individuals
  personality or attitudes
• congruence between ad contents and aspects of
  self-concept

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Who prefers image and who prefers quality?
(Snyder DeBono, 1985)

• Appeals to product quality vs. appeals to images
• Social psychological construct of self-monitoring
• Three studies in which ads were experimentally
  varied
• e.g., Bottle of CC whisky resting on a set of
  house blueprints
• youre not just moving in, youre moving up or
• when it comes to great taste, everybody draws
  the same conclusion
• Study 1. Evaluative reactions (image-oriented
  index 0-12)
• whisky cigarettes coffee
• High SM 6.84 5.00 7.40
• Low SM 4.88 3.68 6.08
• Study 2. Consumer behaviour willingness to pay
  ( price, image first)
• High SM 9.75/8.24 0.89/0.89 3.43/3.28
• Low SM 7.50/8.64 0.74/0.94 2.97/3.50
• Study 3. Willingness to consume product
  (standardised index 1 to 1)
• Image Quality
• High SM .7626 -.7008
• Low SM -.9106 .9201

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Psychological factors of perceivers

• Related to self-concept
• Self-monitoring
• Style of self-presentation
• Congruency with self-concept
• Cultural differences in self-concept
• Individuals personal history and meaning-making

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Advertising effectiveness

• Conceptualisation and measurement
• (Possible) hierarchy of effectiveness measures
• Memory
• Positive evaluation of advert
• Positive evaluation of advertised good/brand
• Buying intention
• If brand cost as much as your current brand, how
  likely it is that you would buy this brand?
• How much money would you be willing to spend on
  this product?
• How likely is that you will buy this product?
  Next week? Next month?
• Actual purchase

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Part 2. Adverts and stereotyping

• Overwhelming proportion of literature on gender,
  rather than race or other social categories
• Do adverts reflect gender stereotypes?
• Do adverts help to perpetuate gender stereotypes?
• Contents of traditional gender stereotypes
• primary carer for children and household,
  domestic work, soft, warm, subservient to needs
  of others, dependent, sexy, beautiful
• breadwinner, work outside domestic sphere,
  professional, career, powerful, assertive,
  authoritative, in control, independent, competent

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Goffmans gender advertising

• Different emphasis and methodology
• Focus on analysis of postures and composition of
  adverts and implied meanings
• Examples
• superior and subordinate postures (e.g., relative
  size)
• openness and sexual invitation
• distant gaze and self-touching
• childlike expression

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Content analyses of TV advertising

• Livingstone Green, 1986, UK, McArthur Resko,
  1975, US
• more quantitative approach
• category system for coding
• careful coding af advertisements with inter-rater
  reliability
• voice-overs as authoritative sources on product
  are predominantly male
• women mainly portrayed in domestic roles or
  sexual roles, subservient to or dependent on
  others

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Empirical evidence relevant to perpetuation
argument

• Congruence in change over time
• Change in womens and mens actual roles
• Change in advertising
• From content analyses to audience impact
• Effects of advertising on adults
• Effects of advertising on children

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Congruence in change over time

• 1950s to 1980s greater participation of women in
  workforce, more managerial and professional
  careers
• comparative study of TV commercials (e.g., Allan
  Coltrane, 1996)
• Replication of Goffmans gender advertisements
  (Kang, 1997)
• 28 year gap, similar methodology and categories
  of analysis
• some changes, but comparatively small
• more unclad bodies
• More recent changes?
• Men in advertising
• Gender role critique in adverts?

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Influence of TV ads on children

• TV exposure and gender-role endorsement
• Children who watched 25 hours of TV per week
  accepted gender stereotypes as more accurate
  images of reality than children who watched lt10
  hours (Freuh McGhee,1975)
• Gender-related content of adverts and career
  aspirations
• Ads showing women role models in non-traditional
  vs. traditional occupations had systematic impact
  on girls reported career aspirations

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Influence of TV ads on womens self-confidence
and behaviour(Jennings, Geis Brown, 1980)

• Portrayal of women restricts their interests to
  sexual and domestic concerns ? implies lack of
  competence and confidence in public domains of
  career and achievement
• Current TV ads depress womens self-confidence
  and independence of judgement, whereas
  counter-stereotypical ads should raise them
• Exposure to two sets of ads, followed by public
  speaking and Asch-type conformity situation
• Independence of judgement Self-confidence
• Trad ads 1.98 2.73
• Reversed ads 2.49 3.38