Abstract

There is a great correlation that exists between advertising and the decision made by young men and women. Based on different studies, it has come out clearly that young consumers heavily rely on advertising before making their ultimate decision. As a matter of fact, most of them do not even know about the existence of particular products until they come across an advertisement of the same. Hypothetically, there is a convincing power that exists in adverts, especially when the target audience involves young consumers.

Arguably, companies that supply products meant for the youth and young consumers in general make almost 99% use of advertisements with an aim of fueling sales. Different platforms are employed in the process of advertising the said products. The bottom line remains that advertisements are heavily valued when it comes to dealing with products for young consumers.

To validate the assumption above, this study was developed. The primary aim is to confirm that there is indeed a great connection that exists between product sellers and the decisions made by young consumers as a result of advertisement. Relevant literature will be scrutinized to justify prime aspects of the study. The case study that will be used is United Kingdom. All details discussed in the study will be based on the case study.

 

 

Introduction

Product advertising is an act of promoting product through communication with an intention of convincing an audience (readers, listeners or viewers) to take some action, to purchase, service or information etc. The world is flooded with mass media such as internet, television, videos, magazines, billboards, music and films. Of all promotions, method advertising is known for its durability impression on viewer’s mind, since its exposure is just wide. Promotion is just an element of advertisement group, which is one of the 4p’s in the marketing strategy that is place, product, promotion and price. As one of the promotional method, advertising is one of the major tools in developing awareness of product in the mind of a prospective customer in order for them to make ultimate purchase decision. Public relation, sales promotion and advertising are tools of mass-communication available to marketers. Any means of advertising definitely influences audiences, however, television is a powerful promoting  medium of  products because to its ability of mass reach; it does not only influence person’s behavior, attitude, exposure, life style and even the culture of the nation in the long run (Buil, 2013, pp. 115-122).

The development of advertisement started long time a go into the ancient times. Society used pictorial signs and symbols to attract prospective users. Over many years, these tools were used for promotion of good and services. Long time ago, symbols and pictorial signs were handmade and were formed at limited scale of promotions. In the modern world, advertisements have become the center stage of communication between the producers and consumers.

Liu (2015) suggested that advertisement is an act establishing attentiveness of the services or manufactured goods in the mind of the prospective buyer and increase information about it. O’guinn (2014) viewed advertising as one of the most powerful tool that a firm can use to enhance awareness and directly persuade buyers and public. He further noted that advertisement was done via sponsored media under payment. According to him the main intention of advertisement is to make, prospective consumer respond to its products highlighting that seeks to channel desires and provide information by delivering details for desiring a specific firm’s suggestion.

While describing on promotion scope and nature concisely captured for features of advertising which are;

• An identified sponsor
• Sponsors payment to the media delivering the message
• A visual or verbal message
• Delivery through one or many media

As a summary of the above explanation, they concluded that advertising contains four aspect that are used in offering  the public anon-personal, identified sponsor, and paid-for concerning a firm or product.

Those views of Allen (2015) correspond with the unpretentious but comprehensive descriptions of Liu (2014) and Allen (2015) For example, while Davies described,   “Advertising is any paid form of non-personal media presentation promoting ideas/concepts, good s or services by an identified sponsor.” Allen expressed almost similar views describing advertisement as “the personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products (goods and services) or ideas by identified sponsors through various media”.

As from the above explanation, it can be determined that the intention of promotional is to deliver knowledge that will help the buyer to make wise purchasing resolution and create awareness regarding the advertised product. The importance of advertising as a method of product promotion, hence, hinges on its capability to convince buyer to buy and continue rebuying and finally advance brand loyalty. As a result many firms spends large a lot of money on brand management and advertising (Liu, 2015, pp. 2514-2535).

Manufacturers usually give their services or products a name that is referred as brand to differentiate their product from those of their competitors. In addition, it facilitates their appreciation and where buyers have developed satisfactory attitude towards the goods, might speed the person consumer via the buying choice process. Individuals will filter out un-known or unfavorable products and the constant buying of the copyrighted good will strengthen the rand-loyal character. Without products, buyers cannot differentiate different products and advertising them would not be possible.

A company cannot make its product known until they invest in product promotional, since consumer market has been dominating through promotional. As the major aim of the advertisers is to reach majority of potential consumers and influence their buying behavior, attitudes and awareness. Companies invest a lot of money in product promotions. Companies need to comprehend what makes prospective consumers behave the way they would like. Consequently, advertisement might have potential to influence product choice among consumers.

In the modern world, it is not possible to promote products by producers to deliver product information and advertising message to consumers without use of advertising. Most definitely, this is because of accessibility of many channels for the prospective consumers of this modern days and globalization. In the current world, due to globalized economy, this has made it possible for producers to have a bulk of advertising tools and hence possible to reach majority of prospective consumers. Now and then consumerism analyzes the way of equating purchasing material possessions and consumption in excess of consumers need with personal happiness (Liu, 2015, pp. 2514-2535).

This research is founded on attitudinal behavior and the influence of advertising on the purchasing decision of young consumers in the United Kingdom in altered buying conduct. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of advertising on the purchasing decision of young consumers.

 

Literature Review

Introduction

This chapter relates to advertising communication theories, studies and models that develop the foundation of this research. In the past, various advertising models and theories have being created, to describe buyers purchasing decisions (Buil, 2013, pp. 115-122). These models and theories try to explain the behavior sequence when buyers are contemplating about buying. Advertising models contains theoretical concepts that relates to the firm of products and sales and the way they are marketed. Advertising must outline clear message that is pictorial, spoken, printed or graphical that is targeted at audiences or consumers with the purpose of convincing them to buy a service, product or stick to the message it projects (Winjaya, 2015, pp. 234-245).

Advertising firms functions with these ideas and models whenever they develop a concept. The main task in advertising any new product is to develop awareness about the existence of a product. The second duty is to offer enough figures to assist in studying about the product for any potential buyer to reach an acquainted resolution. Lastly, the trader needs to be convincing sufficiently, to arouse the customer’s inspiration and desire to content his/her wants or needs by buying and rebuying the manufactured goods (Winjaya, 2015, pp. 234-245).. These three personal processes of customer behavior: motivation, perception and learning are very significant to the advertisers. Some examples of models are; Conceptual framework, in this model advertisers attempts to describe models on the way advertising operates. Sometime they attempt to select meaningful communication goals (Gotlied, 2015). These types of model illustrate various sections of communication, systematic from preliminary awareness to the final stage of making a decision by any prospective consumer. Another example of a model is Hierarchy of effect of model, in review of this model in terms of marketing and advertising reveals that there is more than one hierarchy of effects. According to this model, there is great importance in placing your advertisement in the appropriate media. Since is helps in achieving message exposure. Addition, consumers gets a chance of processing the message suitably using this theory (Verlegh, 2015).

Over the past decade, numerous literatures have analyzed the appropriateness of advertising. The most common used measure of product promotion effectiveness include product responsiveness, click or clicks via rate, ad recall, attitude in regards to ad and the product, buying concern and ad recognition (Buil, 2013, pp. 123-130). Among these measures, clicks on ad, ability to recall ad and attitudes toward the ad are the emphasis of the current learning. The efficacy of these three processes was evaluated on their capacity to forecast purchase resolution (Gotlied, 2015, pp. 134-145).

Public relation, sales advertising and advertising are tools of mass-communication accessible to salespersons.  Mass communication conveys the same meaning for every person in the audience. In current days, definitions of advertising flourish (Winjaya, 2015, pp. 234-245). As it can be defined as a market process, social and economic process, communication procedure a public relation procedure, or persuasion and information progression that views advertising from its practical perspectives (Buil, 2013, pp. 89-98). Henceforth, it is defined as a funded and non-personal form of communiqué via different media by firms that are not for profit making, individuals and business firms, who are in similar way recognized in the promotional information and expects to persuade or notify participants of specific group. It is of the view that promotion is used to launch a basic consciousness regarding certain service or product in the mind of prospective consumers and to develop information about it.

Development in technology has not given us modern services and products but it has changed the initial implication of the various words. Majority of traditional mass media have decreased with increasing mass media marketing efficacy. Currently advertisers are looking for modern and apparently less disorganized media. The modern age of digital media has given prospective consumer several choices to either opt out or opt in of advertising and marketing messages. Clients can now control what they like and when they want it. Interactive marketing causes all these factors (Mikolajczak, 2013, pp. 65-73).

As one of the promotional method, advertising offers a main tool in enhancing manufactured goods and services awareness circumstance the mind of a prospective client to make final decision regarding purchasing. As advertiser’s main intention is to influence potential buyers and affect their buying behavior, attitude and awareness. –carried out research regarding advertisement on Bournvita, Seth (2016) discovered that product promotion has a huge influence on buyer’s resemblance for Bournvita products. Similar studies have already been carried out for the Bournvita quality (Seth, 2016).

Gotilb (2013) carried out an advertisement concerning online compact discs buying behavior of clients through emotional promotion (Buil, 2013). According to him advertisement can be define as a form of paid and non-personal where concepts, information, product or services and ideas are promoted via media, it can be in form of verbal, text or visual by a recognized sponsor to convince or influence consumer’s behavior. He further stated that television promotion is a form of advertising where ideas, services, goods, organization etc. are promoted through television medium. Through product promotion, promoters can access a wide range of consumers (Gotlied, 2015). In the past, for many years, many constructs and models have been analyzed in the advertising and marketing literature, each having an intention of attempting to comprehend the process used by customers for product evaluation or make brand when they are exposed to product promotions (Lee, 2014). These works have inspected relationships between perceptive replies directed towards the advertisement, brand, purchase behavior and intentions and finally, brand attitudes. In literature review, it is stated that, concerning attitude towards advertisement impacts brand supports and attitudes the brand-advertisement boldness relationship across various product types and media. Advertisement and mass media still avails information concerning consumption as well as the value of material products. O’Guinn and Allen (2013) clarified that once a person develops a buying character, then he/she struggles to control his/her buying behavior even after its detrimental effects are identified (Ruch, 2015, pp. 34-49).

Emotional Response

Advertisement as a form of product promotion is one of the most suitable tool of integrated marketing communication to enthusiastically, persuade customers to buy goods and services (Fu, 2012).  Consequently, advertisement has robust connection with entertainment and the propagation of media has imprecisely the unique lines concerning entertainment and advertisement. Marketing is to develop favorite, selection of services and manufactured goods and awareness (Mikolajczak, 2013). The most persuading theory in advertising and marketing study is attitude-towards-the-ad. Nevertheless, the approach that is developed towards the ad assists in persuading the customer’s attitude toward the product until their buying intent is reached (Lee, 2014). The character of consumer’s behavior is based on the idea and concept that customers simply chooses to buy a services or product at the spot. Since the main intention of efficiency advertisement is to create positive attitude toward the brand and ad, to intensify the number of purchase, then a constructive emotion ad and response may be the suitable indicator of efficacy advertising. That is the main reason why the basic intention of advertising is to create awareness and persuade individuals to purchase things (Fu, 2012, p. 194)

Advertising flourish the opinions that products are more significance and appropriate qualities like achievement, happiness, beauty and prominence can be attained only by material possessions (Ruch, 2015). According to the old attitude theory customers character is forecasted from customers attitude when consumer purchase the brand that they like most. The right definition of attitude is “acquired behavioral disposition” Lee and Chem, (2014).   Conversely, Mikolajczak (2013) proposed that behavior results from emotional reaction, affected by three factors; Dominance: This factor describes person’s feelings; individuals are free to act or in control in a specific situation. Pleasure: this is a state where person fell happy joyful or good in a specific circumstance. Arousal: this is a situation where feelings vary among individual in different situations i.e. feeling of active, sleepy, bored or excitement (Fu, 2012).

These factors are experienced by consumers when they watch an advertisement regarding the products and develop an interest for that brand and eventually willing to buy it. ‘Actual purchasing behavior’ is a terminology that means that customer in their real sense buys the services or product (Gotlied, 2015). It attempts to regulate the features that affect buyer-purchasing behavior, particularly the psychological, economic and economic aspects. This study assists to describe the direction that consumer character is expected to take and to give desired tendencies in product growth, characteristics of the different communication strategy etc. (Liu, 2015).

Another element of suitable advertisement that develops emotional response is the ability of the consumer to recall the product ad. Therefore, the relative significance of recall brand will depend on the degree to which customer makes good related choices those results to the product awareness. This product consciousness assist in making sure that the recall ad has the competitive benefit over those products that cannot simply be recalled. Thus, it is evident that a customer with a positive approach toward ads is more likely to remember the ads as opposed to whose attitude is negative (Ruch, 2015). By advertising products, the knowledge assist in manipulating product silence in the same way, which the freshness and quantity of the memories concerning the product supposed to be in purchasing condition that develops emotive reaction towards ads. Conversely, people uses prompt in various purchasing circumstances for recalling the product.  (Nwankwo, 2013). The most effective mode of advertisement is emotional advertisement since consumers eventually provides response to that brand. Generally, an optimistic relationship between text intensity, visual and verbal of media and finally emotional response has been established (Winjaya, 2015)

Environmental Response

In regards to altitude of environmental are hypothesized in terms of approach model as being poised of opinions. Usually, an environmental issue seems to be a particular belief that is mostly set in perceptive configuration and therefore taken as a view as opposed to attitude (Mikolajczak, 2013). Environmental variables may have an influence on purchasing behavior of customers. As promotional related studies projected that environments offers various experiences for clients that are applied for product promotion and assist in selling of good and services. Particularly, marketing study has tried to analyze the impact of various environmental situations such as background music at the time of purchase and atmosphere in retailing store (Lee, 2014).

Social standards have resulted to a cultural climate that favors the movement of desires and expression of impulse in our society (Gotlied, 2015). Sensory incentives can decrease self-control mechanisms that can decrease or limit capacity of customers to counterattack the temptation to participate in moment desires. Other factors that can make consumers make impulse buying are; possessions, rewards, post-purchase decision, self-exploration and materialism moment desire (Winjaya, 2015). Hence, producers and business provides consumer with particular types of media experiences that are used for selling related services and products or developing a context that promotes or setting the platform (Nwankwo, 2013).

However, those buyers who plan to purchase goods but may not be decided about the brand and features that they want can be termed as impulse purchasers (Lee, 2014).  Lifestyle shopping can be defined as the behavior demonstrated by buyers concerning series of individual opinions and responses about purchase of the goods. In this circumstance, buyers use the retail store for getting facts, finding alternatives, comparing goods and then making a decision to buy the product or services (Hodge, 2015).

Impulse behavior is controlled by the purchaser’s intention to purchase impulsively the services and product. The environmental psychology model offers suitable idea of emotional response as opposed to traditional marketing studies. Information rates and sense modalities create the environmental psychology ideal (Buil, 2013). Logic modalities are prospect, touch and sound, which influences user knowledge. The statistics rate can influence buyers for attaining facts from product advertisement.  Therefore, this theory is appropriate to text, image, lyrics and music video that are firmly related with every other and are displayed in commercial (Winjaya, 2015).  “The environmental psychology model” suggests a situation for example; a retailing store, which yields an emotional condition in a person that, can be categorized into dominance, arousal or pleasure in purchasing situation. This research describes media, which offers information that is in form of combination of touch sources, sounds and sight. In addition, it covers different areas of the verbal media message and visual through which individual takes information. The visual and verbal influences individual’s awareness of the environmental stimuli (Mikolajczak, 2013)

Emotional and Environmental response

 

The idea of celebrity Endorsement

In simple term celebrity is “any person who enjoys public identification and who applies his/her recognition on behalf of buyer product by appearing with it in an advertisement” (Seth, (2016). This definition clearly involves celebrity who appears to have skills or long-term relationship with the producer, except typical buyer endorsement featuring individuals who are not celebrities. According to Liu and Shanker (2015), endorsement is how brand communicates in which a celebrity certifies the brand’s position and claim and poses as brand’s spokesperson by extending his/her status, popularity, expertise in the society or personality in the field to the brand. Since celebrities seems to be achieving increasing popularity in the society, Promotional managers attempts to exploit the process of significance of transfer from a sponsor to brand or product involved. Associative learning theory describes that, celebrity promotion impacts brand image over a transmission of meaning from the celebrity to the brand. Communication events create a pattern of connectivity the image of the brand and that of a celebrity (Fu, 2012). The transfer of the image happens when an advertisement can launch likelihood between the two entities. Managers follow such connectivity with the objective of gaining a favorable product image outcome. Brand image incorporates all views of a brand, kept as product associations in buyer memory (Buil, 2013). Its significant largely reflects its capacity to provoke exceptional opinions of the product in competitive settings. Additionally, it also creates a meaningful product value driver and affects the development of product equity. Seth (2016) differentiates among benefits, attributes and attitudes as types of associations of the brand.   Verlegh and Fransen (2015) regard brand impression, beliefs and attitude as components of product image. Both perceptions suggest that enhanced attitudes toward the product favorably affects product image (Lee, 2014).

Virtual communities and internet have changed consumers, corporation and societies with broad spread access to information, increased communication capacity and better social networking. Consequently, social networks are described to be websites that connects many users internationally with similar interests, hobbies and views. Facebook, Blogs, MySpace, YouTube are illustrations of social media that are common among all level of customers (Lee, 2014).

Users are using different online setups to communicate such as podcasts, wikis, social network, blogs and bulletin boards to share concept about a given service brand or product and contact other customers, who are realized as more objective sources of information (Mikolajczak, 2013).

The unique attributes of huge popularity of social media have changed promotion practices for example, promotions and advertising. Social media has also affected the behavior of buyer from acquiring information to post-purchase performance for instance behavior regarding a product or a firm or dissatisfaction statement (Liu, 2015). In the past period can be observed a huge effect of the firms on online networks, Social media websites offers prospect for companies to interact and engage with prospective buyers, develop all significance relationship with prospective consumers and inspire an increased sense of understanding with buyers. Firms require differentiating by the image of brand or company through which to converse positioning of the product and unique benefit (Seth, 2016). Majority of sellers believe that the firms should promote aggressively social network and only one benefit in the market concerned in the online environment allows them to be seen as more attractive to buyers (Ruch, 2015).

Due to high effectiveness of social media compared to other traditional form of communication, channels encouraged industry leaders to illustrate that firms must take part in MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and others so that they can thrive in online environments. Therefore, more controlling others’ methods or follow others’ directions. The presence of corporate in social networks and inclusion in circles or allowing likes by users, result posting of fickle number of both negative and positive messages (Winjaya, 2015).  A research carried out in 2009 illustrated that many of large of the top 100 firms according to Internet retailer had a profile on Twitter (69%), Facebook (59%) or both ( 59%). Another research by Deloitte Touch’ in the United State revealed that 65% of consumers in the United States read consumer made online reviews and 96% of them found those reviews relevant enough; 90% of these  buyers thought that these reviews has influenced their purchasing purposes (Buil, 2013).

Communication of users and company / brand assists to develop a less favorable or favorable image of other users who study the same information posted and affect them in the purchase behavior. Users, depending on the message conveyed to them, allege interactivity with objective product in social networks differently.  The perceived threat of buying and how much money are willing to buy the product still determines the purchaser to think more about the utility and quality of the product (Hodge, 2015).

Previous study has showed that even a slight amount of adverse information from one of the post can have a huge influence on buyer attitude. Gotlieb (2015) specified that people have a basic need for an emotive bond with huge-involvement of goods that they purchase. Brand growth and relationship development are substitutable and complementary strategies toward this connection.  The relationship between consumer and the brand is very significance for the firm of strengthening it results to loyalty (Hodge, 2015, p. 345)

Buyers use social media every day for different reasons. Many of them need to maintain relationship with friends/colleagues or relatives (Ruch, 2015). Upholding interactive connectivity between users of social network has advantage derived from maintaining and establishing contact with other individual in a manner of giving intimacy, friendship and support. These enable online users to link with peers by accepting their friend request and hence adding them to networks of friends that simplifies communication specifically among peer groups. Groups that operate online exert a noticeable effect on the buyer buying intent, behavior and indirectly on the purchase choice (Mikolajczak, 2013). For instance, social media websites offer a public medium that provides individual buyers their own opinion, also access information about the product that facilitate their buying decisions (Fu, 2012). Shopping has usually been a social networking and social experience allows customers to interact with people many of whom are probable strangers when they speak about online. Cultural aspect has an impact on buyers’ usage of social media and great influence over the online buying intents. In the current world e-commerce can be done via social media and it assist to reach more prospective consumers (Liu, 2015). Due to social media, the benefit in linking businesses directly to end-buyers, in a timely manner and at a reduced cost, has revealed that there is huge effect on buyer behavior and perceptions, and has been brought in the center of focus in various businesses in the last several years (Nwankwo, 2013, pp. 234-346).

The Effects of Advertising on Demand of Goods

The effect instigated by advertising on demand of goods and services can be summed up using the graph below. The graph takes a case of smooch bags.

It comes out clear that before advertising, the demand of smooch bags was good. However, after advertising, everything took a new twist. The demand of the same product went up remarkably from D1 to D2. On the other end, the price of the same product went up by almost a similar magnitude from P1 to P2. Quantity sold after advertising the smooch bags also went up. This is a simplified communication of how advertising tend to affect the decision of young buyers in UK.

Outline of the topic

Advertising is a form of product promotion whose purpose is to convince readers, listeners and readers to act upon the products, services or information or to buy etc. The primary intention of this paper is to investigate the influence of advertisement on younger generation in United Kingdom. Consequently, it will seek to study the connection between the independent variables that are emotional response and environmental response with behavioral and attitudinal aspect of young generation purchasing behavior. Considering the current trend of product promotion, that it is mostly done through media it will be wise if companies would tailor their advertisement more appealing to the younger generation since most of online users are youths (Winjaya, 2015, pp. 234-245).

A significance portion of United Kingdom population is made up of young people. Currently it will be very important for firms to invest in technology in order to reach a wide range of youths not only in UK but worldwide as well. Secondly, by investing in advertisements that targets youths it will enable companies to identify products that are youth oriented. This is because they will be in a position to know products that appeal to youths. In the modern world where technology is, so advanced television is no longer the best tool that appeals to youths despite the fact that it creates long lasting impacts on viewer’s mind. Tool such as YOUTUBE, FACEBOOK, TWITTER and Blogs works well for youths as opposed to traditional forms of advertisings, hence it significant to research on the best tool that appeals to youths. By investing in youth it will not only enable businesses to grow but also the UK economy will grow as well. The latest researches have shown that in a single year youths spends millions of dollars purchasing various goods and services (Winjaya, 2015, pp. 234-245).

Companies should explore on advertisements that are capable of influencing youth’s life style, behavior, attitude and even the UK culture in the long run. Additionally, in the current days and time it will be so hard for firms to achieve their dreams or make their brand known if they will not invest in advertisement activity that targets youths. The main aim of advertiser should to win prospective youth buyers and influence their attitudes, buying behavio