Media 5

Media 5

1. Explanations for the persuasiveness of television advertising

   • Hard -sell and Soft - sell advertising
     • Hard - Sell
       • Presenting factual information about a product
     • Soft - Sell
       • Using more subtle and creative persuasive techniques
     • Snyder and Debono (1985)
       • Hard and soft sell approach have led to different effects on different types of people. People who scored high on self monitoring tests prefer soft sell advertising, and low score people prefer hard sell advertising
   • Product Endorsement
     • Celebrities
     • Para -social Relationships
       • Individual is attracted to another individual (usually celebrity), but the target individual is usually unaware
     • Giles (2003)
       • Celebrities (familiar faces) are seen as a reliable source of information
   • Experts
     • Celebrities may not be enough to validate a product
     • O'mahony and Meenaghan (1997)
       • In general, celebrity endorsements were not regarded as overly convincing or believeable
   • Children and advertising
     • Children's understanding of the purpose of persuasive products is age dependent
     • Martin (1997)
       • A strong correlation between age and understanding of persuasive intent
   • Pester Power
     • Advertising to young children increases the degree to which they 'pester' their parents for the products they have seen on TV
     • Pine and Nash (2001)
       • Findings 1 - Significantly fewer gift requests among Swedish children than American children (more persuasive adverts)
         • Findings 2 - Strong positive correlation between the amount of commercial TV watched and the number of letters to santa
   • Congruence
     • Motive persists throughout the whole programme that commercials are sponsoring are more likely to be recalled
     • Bushman (2007)
       • TV adverts may be better remembered if there is congruence between the programme content and the content of the ad

2. Evaluation

   • Weaknesses
     • Gender Bias in advertising
       • Men are typically shown in stereotypical roles of authority and dominance. Non - traditional roles are seen as incompetent. Also reinforces traditional roles in women
     • Different cultures may respond to the media in different ways based on cultural traditions
       • Pine and Nash
     • Methodological issues with measuring the persuasiveness of adverts
       • To determine persuasiveness researchers measure how much a viewer likes a product after viewing. However for and advert to be persuasive is should lead to a actual purchase of the product being advertised. what is being measured is not the actual behaviour but a related attitiude