Q 1: Give the meaning of advertising and what role does advertising play in understanding of the buying process?

Ans: Advertising is a promotional tool where a seller uses media to communicate about its products, services or organization.

Okay, now let us see what advertising is all about.

* Advertising is multidimensional

* It is a form of mass communication that enables the client to communicate with its wide audiences.

* A powerful marketing tool like personal selling, sales promotion etc.

* A component of the economic system with around 30% of growth rate.

* A means of financing the mass media,

* A social institution which educates the society about products, brands, companies and other services.

* An instrument of business management which communicates with the internal and the external customers.

* A field of employment and a profession which provides very creative, challenging and glamorous career?

In India this industry is experiencing growth of 30% to 35% annually.

The total advertising expenditure in India is about $5 Billion.

It is a 1200 crore industry; with billings are Rs. 8000 plus billing.

Sellers like Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance .Bata, Lux etc.

Media are Television, newspaper, magazines, internet, hoardings etc.

Communicates to inform, remind and reinforce the product.

“Salesmanship in print”

“Advertising as a substitute for the human salesman”

“Advertising is the business of creative thinking for commercial advantage”

The above are few definitions by the professionals what advertising is all about.

Q 2: How does advertising persuade the buyer? Comment.

Ans: Firstly advertising informs about organizations, about products and services, about the environment, the society, the trends in society and many more aspects of life. This deals with the cognitive context of the target audience in which they grasp the information and channelize it according to their own comprehension and predilection.

Secondly advertising provides the incentives to viewers for them to engage in action. This deals with the emotional dimension of the target audience, which concentrates on touching and persuading the consumers rather than informing and apprising them.

The third function of advertising is to provide constant reminders and reinforcements to generate the desired behavior the advertiser wants from them. This is a particularly effective function in the long run as reminders and reinforcements register in the consumers' minds, becoming the base on which they shape their future decisions and hence persuades the buyer.

It uses appeals like rational and emotional appeals to attract and persuade the consumer to buy the product.

Q 3: What is attitude and how does it become a central theme in advertising?

Ans: We as individuals learn attitudes through experience and interaction with other people.

Attitudes and attitude change are influenced by consumer’s personality and lifestyle.

Attitudes

An attitude describes a person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or an idea.

Attitudes put people into a frame of mind for liking or

disliking things and moving toward or away from them.

For example, many people who have developed the attitude that eating healthy food is important perceive vegetables as a healthy alternative to meat and chicken.

Understanding Consumer Attitudes towards Advertising

Precisely because there is more to this than meets the eye, and its impact can significantly affect how individual

Advertisers’ messages are perceived by consumers, it is important for an advertiser to have a good grasp of general consumer attitudes towards advertising. Beyond this, to the

extent that someone in the business of advertising wishes truly to understand the business of advertising, it is critical to understand the market’s perception of its ‘product’. There are a number of reasons for this, and some should be evident from the paradoxes in consumer beliefs about advertising.

As an example, consistent basic beliefs about advertising, three of the four segments Pollay and Mittal identified reflected degrees of wariness. But one segment (amounting to about a third of the population) did hold positive global attitudes. This sort of segmentation raises interesting questions.

Do these segments vary in size over time?

Does their make-up differ over time?

Do some of the wary segments react differently to external factors such as regulation, ‘false’ advertising publicity,

product recalls, and corporate problems, or perhaps even the vast variety of new media?

Is the depth of scepticism related more to some categories or types of advertising than others?

These are important issues that could be dealt with tactically in a brand’s advertising, given the right information.

Q 4: Explain in detail the concept of corporates using Celebrity as an endorser?

Ans: Celebrity Advertising

Although the audience is getting smarter and smarter and the modern day consumer getting immune to the exaggerated claims made in a majority of advertisements, there exist a section of advertisers that still bank upon celebrities and their popularity for advertising their products.

the topic “Impact of celebrity endorsement on overall brand”, is a significant one. The trend of celebrities endorsing brands has been steadily increasing over the past years.

• Marketers acknowledge the power of celebrities in influencing consumer-purchasing decisions.
• Celebrity endorsement can bestow special attributes upon a product that it may have lacked otherwise.

But everything is not hunky-dory; celebrities are after all mere mortals made of flesh and blood like us. If a celebrity can aggrandize the merits of a brand, he or she can also exacerbate the image of a brand.

In India too Hindustan Lever Limited has roped in Bollywood stars to endorse their beauty soap Lux since the 1950s.

Today in India, The popular brand ambassadors are Mr. Amitanh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Amir Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, M.S. Dhoni and others.

Celebrity endorsements have several benefits, like building credibility and getting attention of the public, which can translate into higher sales. Basically, celebrity endorsements are being preferred for almost every kind of product categories, like toiletries, telecom, readymade garments, razor blades, hotels, soft drinks and hard drinks among others. The most of the big companies have developed a new strategy to enrol celebrities and make them brand ambassadors of their products to increase the product sale.

Q 5: What is message in advertising and what are the two features of a message that influence attitude change of a consumer?

Ans: The visual and/or auditory information prepared by an advertiser to inform and/or persuade an audience regarding a product, organization, or idea.

Research suggests that the clarity of the advertising message is often more important than the amount spent. The advertising message must be carefully targeted to impact the target customer audience. A successful advertising message should have the following characteristics:

(a) Meaningful - customers should find the message relevant

(b) Distinctive - capture the customer's attention

(c) Believable - a difficult task, since research suggests

most consumers doubt the truth of advertising in general.

But the two features of a message that influence attitude change of a consumer are:

1) comparative messages

2) One versus two sided messages

Q 6: What do you mean by the term “Copy” in advertising and what are the main steps in copy development?

Ans: Text of a print, radio, or television advertising message that aims at catching and holding the interest of the prospective buyer, and at persuading him or her to make a purchase all within a few short seconds.

Most advertising copy is based on advertising/consumer research and is composed by professional copywriters hired by advertising agencies. Also called advertisement copy, ad copy, or just copy.

The Body Copy

1. The rest of the ideas -- Heart of the message
2. Reinforces the headline
3. Aims to persuade reader to accept the brand
4. Difficult to get audience to read

Types of copy approach

1. Straight-line Copy

• Straighforward, informative
• Mainly for industrial & high-involvement products

2. Narrative Description

• Account of experience with problem & solution
• Monologue or Dialogue

3. Implied Suggestion

• Lets reader draw conclusion

Q 7: Write short notes on:

a) AIDA model

Ans: As we have understood that the sender identifies the receiver(s) and develops a message, the basic of the sender is that the customer or the target audience should buy the product or the service. For this we must understand whether a particular message so created has been effective in reaching out to them. So what makes an advertisement effective? Below are the key points on the effectiveness of a message.

1. Attract Attention

2. Secure Interest

3. Build Desire for the product

4. Obtain Action

The above has been formulated as the AIDA Model.

Attention could be the form of the layout of a print advertisement or the way an advertisement is made in the form of moving pictures, the colors used, the models used and the copy written, the movements used and the contrasting element used.

We are bombarded by so many advertisements that there are a few we see and while a few we don’t. The advertisement, which arouses interest in us and provokes us to think or feel about a product, is what an advertiser looks at. It basically means to catch the eye of the public.

Desire would mean the buying motive. When you feel that you want to posses the particular product or be associated with it.

Action would normally mean the acquisition of the product.

Within the AIDA framework, Attention would refer to the cognitive stage, both Interest and Desire would relate to the affective stage and Action would be a behavioral activity.

b) Message appeal

Ans: Message Appeal

the distinctions Aristotle made in the Rhetoric between logos, pathos, and ethos provide a very useful way of classifying the options available for message appeals.9 Roughly speaking, logos appeals use logical arguments, pathos appeals address our passions, and ethos appeals deal with the credibility or attractiveness of the person delivering the message.

Logos and pathos appeals correspond closely to our brand attitude strategy ideas based upon involvement and motivation. Following Aristotle, logos appeals ask the recipient of a message to draw an inference or conclusion based upon arguments presented in the message. With low-involvement decisions when the underlying motivation is

negative, where a problem is to be solved or avoided, this is exactly the appeal that is necessary. When the motive is negative and the decision is high involvement, the logos requirement—accepting as true what is presented or implied—applies. When we get to in essence, this means using a logos appeal. On the other hand, a pathos appeal, as characterized by Aristotle, means a persuasive message that involves creating an appropriate feeling in the person receiving the message.

This is exactly what we are looking for when the brand attitude strategy deals with positive motivations. We will be referring to such strategies as transformational, because

the message appeal is meant to transform the target audience by creating an authentic emotional experience.

The third message appeal suggested by Aristotle is ethos. By ethos he meant a persuasive message that relied more upon the source of the message than the message itself. An example in advertising would be when a popular spokesperson is used in the expectation that the target audience will be ‘persuaded’ to use the brand because of their endorsement (real or implied). Rosenthal made the point that ethos appeals attempt to persuade by forcing the

attention of the receiver of a message on the source, while logos and pathos appeals focus on message content. We consider a correct understanding of ethos to be very important when using spokespeople in advertising. This is also related to brand attitude strategy.

.c) Impact of the media on advertising

Advertising has become as much a part of our lives as breathing. When we turn on the TV, open your mailbox, drive down the street, pick up your phone, or surf the Internet you come face to face with some facet of advertising.

In view of the fact that advertisers reach a broad spectrum of people, by using resources such as television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, the Internet, etc. it is easy to see how they can have such an impact on society. For Instance, "In 1984, to increase consumer awareness and consumption, Kellogg's started using health claims as part of their advertising campaigns" Other markets soon followed suit with products ranging from bread to toothpaste.

Controversial advertising brings about media coverage, which leads to even greater consumer awareness. This exposure gives parents vital information, which can help them in protecting their children against such harmful products. Regardless of whether advertising is negative or positive the information and awareness it creates is beneficial to consumer welfare to some extent.

d) Brand equity

Ans: Brand equity refers to the value goodwill and image of the brand that is carefully nurtured and marketed over a period of time so consumers feel real value and trust towards that brand.

The added value that a brand brings to a product or service beyond the functional benefits provided. Major asset categories are: brand name awareness, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand associations.

Brand Awareness

Awareness refers to the strength of a brand’s presence in the consumer mind.

It is the popularity or the recognition of the brand among potential customers. Like in Indian market Lifebuoy, Colgate, Hero Honda etc have very high level of brand awareness.

.Brand Loyalty

It is belief and faith shown by the consumers towards a particular brand, expressed trough their repeat purchases irrespective of presence of competitive brands. like customer always ask for Zodiac shirt, or Levi’s Jeans

Perceived Quality

It is the quality expected by the consumer in a brand or product. The seller tries to create favorable perceived quality and then matching the perceived quality. like before second world war Japanese products were considered poor and cheap but after that they improved the quality of products. So now we consider their product of good quality.

e) Sales promotion campaigns.

Sales promotion is one of the four aspects of promotional mix. (The other three parts of the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, and publicity/public relations.) Media and non-media marketing communication are employed for a pre-determined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability. Examples include:

• contests
• point of purchase displays
• rebates
• free travel, such as free flights

Sales promotions can be directed at either the customer, sales staff, or distribution channel members (such as retailers). Sales promotions targeted at the consumer are called consumer sales promotions. Sales promotions targeted at retailers and wholesale are called trade sales promotions. Some sale promotions, particularly ones with unusual methods, are considered gimmick by many.

Consumer sales promotion techniques

• Price deal: A temporary reduction in the price, such as happy hour
• Loyal Reward Program: Consumers collect points, miles, or credits for purchases and redeem them for rewards. Two famous examples are Pepsi Stuff and Advantage.
• Cents-off deal: Offers a brand at a lower price. Price reduction may be a percentage marked on the package.
• Price-pack deal: The packaging offers a consumer a certain percentage more of the product for the same price (for example, 25 percent extra).
• Coupons:
• Loss leader: the price of a popular product is temporarily reduced in order to stimulate other profitable sales
• On-shelf couponing: Coupons are present at the shelf where the product is available.
• Checkout dispensers: On checkout the customer is given a coupon based on products purchased.
• On-line couponing: Coupons are available on line. Consumers print them out and take them to the store.
• Mobile couponing: Coupons are available on a mobile phone. Consumers show the offer on a mobile phone to a salesperson for redemption.
• Online interactive promotion game: Consumers play an interactive game associated with the promoted product..
• Rebates.
• Contests/sweepstakes/games: