The Effects of Advertising

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The Effects of Advertising

Every time we open a newspaper or we turn on the TV, we see sellers of almost identical products spending huge amounts of money in order to convince us to buy their brands. Every year, each typical American watches 1550 hours of TV, listens 1160 hours on radio, and spends 290 hours reading newspapers and magazines. So every day, each American watches 100 TV advertisements, 100 to 300 ads through other mass media, and in one single year receives 216 pieces of direct mail advertising, and almost 50 phone calls from telemarketers (Pratkanis and Aronson 2). All these, because sellers of everything, from computers to detergents, believe that advertising is essential to the product. Ed Ney, ex-chairman of the Young and Rubicam American agency, refers to the mid seventies when many firms still had as a debatable issue if they should advertise or not. Those days have passed. As Ney says, that has happened, because it has been proved that advertising is beneficial to the firms (Clark 16). The critics state that advertising is really beneficial to the consumers: They believe that advertising ?creates? consumers that are better informed about the characteristics of the commodities, and that it does not alter the way in which the companies evaluate their products. Also, they believe that advertising creates price sensitivity for the consumers that buy the best products for their value. Finally, they think that with advertisement, entries for new brands are much easier because of the communication with the potential consumers that commercials offer (Haefner and Rotzoll 87).
Advertising, collective term for public announcements designed to promote the sale of specific commodities or services. Advertising is a form of mass selling, employed when the use of direct, person-to-person selling is impractical, impossible, or simply inefficient. It is to be distinguished from other activities intended to persuade the public, such as propaganda, publicity, and public relations. Advertising techniques range in complexity from the publishing of simple, straightforward notices in the classified-advertising columns of newspapers to the concerted use of newspapers, magazines, television, radio, direct mail, and other communications media in the course of a single advertising campaign. From its unsophisticated beginnings in ancient times, advertising has burgeoned into a worldwide industry. In the U.S. alone in the late 1980s, approximately $120 billion was spent in a single year on advertising to influence the purchase of commodities and services.
American advertising leads the world not only in volume of business but in the complexity of its organization and of its procedures. For these reasons, this article deals primarily with advertising in the U.S. Modern advertising is an integral segment of urban industrial civilization, mirroring contemporary life in its best and worst aspects. Having proven its force in the movement of economic goods and services, advertising since the early 1960s has been directed in increasing quantity toward matters of social concern. The continuing cancer and antidrug abuse campaigns are only two examples of the use of the advertising industry as a means to promote public welfare.
Advertising falls into two main categories: consumer advertising, directed to the ultimate purchaser, and trade advertising, in which the appeal is made to dealers through trade journals and other media. Both consumer and trade advertising employ many specialized types of commercial persuasion. A relatively minor, but important, form of advertising is institutional advertising, which is designed solely to build prestige and public respect for particular business concerns as important American institutions. Each year millions of dollars are spent on institutional advertising, which usually mentions products or services for sale only incidentally.
Another minor, but increasingly popular, form of advertising is cooperative advertising, in which the manufacturer shares the expense of local radio or newspaper advertising with the retailer who signs the advertisement. National advertisers occasionally share the same space in magazine advertising. For example, makers of pancake flour, of syrup, and of sausages sometimes jointly advertise this combination as an ideal cold-weather breakfast.
Advertising may be local, national, or international in scope. The rates charged for the three different levels of advertising vary sharply, particularly in newspapers; varying rates are set also by newspapers for amusement, legal, political, financial, religious, and charitable advertisements.
Advertising, collective term for public announcements designed to promote the sale of specific commodities or services. Advertising is a form of mass selling, employed when the use of direct, person-to-person selling is impractical, impossible, or simply inefficient. It is to be distinguished from other activities intended to persuade the public, such as propaganda, publicity, and public relations. Advertising techniques range in complexity from the publishing of simple, straightforward notices in the classified-advertising columns of newspapers to the concerted use of newspapers, magazines, television, radio, direct mail, and other communications media in the course of a single advertising campaign. From its unsophisticated beginnings in ancient times, advertising has burgeoned into a worldwide industry. In the U.S. alone in the late 1980s, approximately $120 billion was spent in a single year on advertising to influence the purchase of commodities and services.
My opinion on that issue is that advertising is not beneficial, but harmful to the consumers. First of all, it does not really inform the consumers, but persuades them. Persuasion is actually the step of advertising that induces purchase. This is managed by techniques that appeal to feelings, like love or hate (Rotzoll and Haefner 100). For example some advertisements say that the firms take care of the consumers by creating safest products. This venture is usually used in car advertisements. As Eric Clark puts it very well ?advertising exists to inform ' but even more so to persuade? (Clark 15). Also, as opposed to the promotion through personal contact, advertising does not involve pressure to the audience. For that reason, the last does not ?fight? the message. So, it is easier for the advertiser to hand over the message (Dommermuth 44). Moreover, as McConnell and Brue put it, ?material wants have a high reproduction rate. The rapid introduction of new products ?whets our appetites?, and extensive advertising persuades us that we need items we might not otherwise buy? (McConnell and Brue 22).
Furthermore, advertisers do not tell all the truth. Because advertising is not journalism but salesmanship, is not obligated to tell the whole story (advantages and disadvantages of the products). For example, in car advertising, some advertisers often say that their cars are ...

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Keywords: the effects of advertising on the pricing of used cars, the effects of advertising on a firm’s profits and efficiency, the effects of advertising on youth, the effects of advertising on consumers, the effects of advertising on purchasing, the effects of advertising on society, the effects of advertising on the human brain, the effects of advertising on consumer buying behavior

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