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EFFECTS OF TELE-ADVERTS ON THE NATURE AND PATTERN OF CONSUMERS PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONING

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Consumer Behaviour in a general sense can be considered to be everything, as every aspect of our lives revolves around the consumption of goods and services. The field of consumer behaviour covers a wide stretch of bases as it focuses on the entire consumption process, involving issues that influence a consumer before, after and during a purchase. Almost all behaviours that people participate in are in one way or another linked to consumption. Whether it be travelling, shopping, or watching television, individuals are directly or indirectly engaging in consumer behaviour. It can be defined as the processes involved when individuals select, purchase and use products or services to fulfil their needs and desires. In order to compress the broad subject into a more specified field, a division of consumer behavior was selected in accordance with an area of interest which is consumer psychology. Consumer psychology deals with the way individuals or groups are involved with consumer activities and the effect it has on them personally. It is quite difficult to comprehend consumer psychology without having an understanding of the ways individual’s process information and make decisions. Extensive research of consumer psychology highlighted the underlying aspects of individuals that make up consumer engagement. This study combines psychological theories and marketing strategies to bring together the main ideas of consumer psychology. The fundamental elements accentuated in the theoretical framework are: Internal influences, which consists of perception, attention and interpretation. These topics cover an imperative role in explaining the dimensions of the perceptual process and the effect of marketing stimulus. Motivation, Personality and Emotions is the second topic that presents a psychological perspective on the motivation process, an insight into differences in consumer personality and the effect of emotions. The final subject provides a thorough outlook on attitudes by examining their formation, functional theories and change strategies involved with the Affective, Behavioural and Cognitive (ABC) model. The aim of my thesis is to outline the core elements of consumer psychology in order to better understand this interdisciplinary subject and attempt to provide an insight into the ways marketers can influence consumer decisions. Advertising is almost everywhere in our daily life. Its forms and roles are both contested and admired. Some see advertising both as the mirror and the maker of culture. Even when advertisements contribute new sounds and the symbols that shape feature, its words and images reflect the present and the past. Others say advertising is purely an economic activity with one purpose i.e., to sell. Many advertisers and agencies believe that advertising creates “magic in the market place” (Russell & Lane, 1996). It is evident from definitions of advertisement that with the change in times there have been changes in the way advertising is perceived. However, in spite of all these changes advertising has always been a very strong institution, which has continued to influence our lives since the beginning of time (Wright, Warner & Winter 1971; Wells, Burnett & Moriarty 1995; Jugneheimer & White, 1980). So advertising is a way of gaining sales effectiveness and of keeping selling expenses low. Advertiser wants to be certain that he, his store, and his product are identified in the advertisement and he is gaining benefit from it, even when he cannot be there to deliver the massage in person. And also because the advertisement must be carried by newspapers or magazines or television or radio or billboards, or by some other mass medium. The advertiser must pay the owner of those media for the space or time he used for the advertisement. (Jugneheimer & White, 1980) Advertisement has changed its form from town criers of medieval time to the internet and electronic advertisement of 20th century (David, 2001). The technique based on “hierarchy of effects” suggests that there are casual relationship between changes in person’s attitude about a product and person’s attitude to buy that product . The models of advertising suggest that to be effective, any piece of persuasive communication must carry its audience through a series of stages, each stage being dependent on the success on previous stage (Wilmshurst, 1985; Lavidge & Steiner, 1961; Leckenby, 1976; Colley, 1961). The theoretical formulations of the advertising, process into four groupings. These four theoretical divisions are the pressure-response theories, the active learning theories; the low-involvement theories; and the dissonance reduction theories (Tellis, 2004; Fine, 1992; Krugman, 1965; as cited in Nazir, 2001 ). Advertising is complex because many different advertisers try to reach many different types of audiences and many types of consumers. That’s why there are many types of advertising too, so that all types of consumers can be addressed. There is not just one kind of advertising; in fact, advertising is a large and varied industry and all types of advertising demand the creative, original messages that are strategically sound and well carry out (Wells et al., 1995). Researchers are agreed on these six fundamental principles on which advertising campaign run: to scure attention; to arose interest; to develop and sustain that interest; to create desire; to incite action and to create good will (Shahid, 1999). After choosing an appropriate strategy and deciding upon the advertising objectives, media selection is the next important consideration. Media is the vehicle that is used for the delivery of the message. Some important tools of advertisement are newspapers, magazines, radio, television, direct mail and mail order, out door display and transportation (Wells, Burnett & Moriarty, 2000). As it become clear from above literature that all the efforts to make an advertisement so effective and persuasive in nature works on a sole motto to met the consumer psyche in a positive manner. Every human community develops a system by which it provides and distributes goods and services. In today’s advanced societies as the development goes on this system becomes very complex because of wide range of available goods. To understand this system fully what is required is the study of a person’s entire lifetime experiences since the consumption of economic goods because it prevails almost every activity in which humans are involved. From this point of view, consumer behavior appears to be subsets of human behavior for the factors, which affect individuals in their daily lives, also influence their purchase activities. Internal influences, such as social class, society, family, reference group, opinion leaders and culture also affects us in our roles as consumer (Loudon & Bitta, 1994; Foxall & Goldsmith, 1994; Ralphs, 1993). Wilkie (1994) defined consumer behavior as “the mental, emotional, and physical activities that people engage in when selecting, purchasing, using, and disposing of products and services so as to satisfy needs and desires”.