What is advertising? What are the main characteristics of advertising? Explain its functions and scope of advertising.
Answer: Introduction:
Consumer is the central point in every business. Now a days, attracting and satisfying customers is more difficult than producing the goods. For many products, many brands are available in the market. Every company wants to improve the market shares. Now, buyers dominate the market. Advertising is an important means to influence the potential customer. It is an important tool of marketing. Advertisement influences the customer attitudes and purchase behaviour. Advertisement increase brand-familarity develop image and help the organization in increasing its market shares.
Meaning :- It is derived from the Latin word “ adverto”
OR we can say turn the customer towards the products.
Definition:- According to American marketing association “ Any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of Goods, Services or Ideas by an identified sponsor.”
Acc. To Philip Kotler, “Advertising is non-personal form of communication conducted through paid media under clear sponsorship.”
Features of Advertisement:
1) Paid form :- Advertisement is never free of cost. The company has to make the payment to the media used for advertisement. The payment can be large can be small depending upon media-circulation, type/ nature of media & media popularity. Payment to media is also depend upon the time when ad is shown e.g if ad is shown in prime time or along with popular serial then its cost will be more. If ad is given on newspaper or magazine, then payment is made on the basis of space taken & in case of
TV the payment is taken on the basis of time taken by ad.
2) Non personal :- In advertisement there is no face to face communication. Here message is transmitted through mass media like TV, newspaper, magazines, radio, internet etc. because of non personal feature immediate feedback from audience is not possible and message cannot be adjusted or changed according to the reaction of target audience.
3) Identified Sponsor :- The sponsor of advertisement is the advertiser. Identified sponsor means that the producer or the seller who advertise the product, Should be known through the advertised message. In some cases both the brand name are specified in advertisement, while in other cases only brand name is mentioned in the advertisement. If in any communication, nether brand nor company can be identified. Then such communication is not an advertisement even if it uses mass media.
4) Any form : – Advertising can be used to create image, Presence for a company or brand. For this any form of presentation can be used, it can be in the form of a sign, symbol, message, t.v, pamphlet, banners, sky balloons etc.
5) Goods, Services, Ideas:: – Advertisement is to inform, persuade and remind the prospective buyers /users about products or services but sometimes ideas may be advertised. For example, Idea of blood donation, eye donation, etc are also advertised.
6) Can be used by any organis
Advertising can be used by any type of organization. It is done by commercial and charitable organizations. Political and non political organizations, groups and individual. So any type of organisation can take services of advertising.
7) Speedy Communication:
Advertising is the fastest mode of communicating with the target audience. This method is fastest then personal selling as here information can be passed to laces of consumers at one point of time. For example, if a company has to give some urgent message to the
public, Then by releasing the ad in next days newspaper, company can communicate the massage to laces of people in one day only.
8) Mass Communicating:
– Mass communication mean communication with a large group of persons at the same time. Media like television, newspaper, magazines, and websites pass on information. To the thousands and lakhs of persons at the same time.
9Advertising is an art:
Because the creative function of advertising very much depends upon the creativity of an individual who design the ad. The creation is includes the message design, appeal design, layout, use of pictures etc. it is art of advertising, on which the success or failure of advertising campaign depends so advertising is an art.
10) Advertising is no t ex act science:
– Sales is effected by a no of factors such as competition, price level, product features, consumer taste, stages of business cycle. Principles of advertising is not as exact as the principle of physical science. Hence advertising is not exact science.
11) An Important Element of Promotion Mix:
– Advertising is an important element of promotion mix, along with personal selling, sales promotion and publicity. Advertising is the mode of mass communication while personal selling is face-to-Face communication.
12) Motivate and inspires:
Advertising carry message which motivates and inspires customers to purchase a particular product. The ad message is persuasive and informative enough to motivate
potential customers.
13) Controlled:
– The message , time, place of advertisement is controlled by the sponsor to make
advertisement effective. The selection of media is carefully done to achieve the desired results in economic ways.
Scope of Advertisement
1) Increase in Ad functions
Earlier ads were designed to satisfy informative needs of buyers in the form of public announcements but now advertising includes building brand image, Brand Loyalty,
and persuading the buyer to purchase the product. Now advertising performs informative,
communicating, and persuading function.
2) Ad for Attracting and supporting Middlemen and Salesmen:
Earlier the need for advertisement for middlemen and salesmen was not realized as there were very few manufacturers and middlemen could be easily attracted. But now to attract efficient middlemen and salesmen and support them, advertising is must.
3) Increase in Non commercial Ads:
– Now a days, various non commercial ads are issued by government departments, Social organizations for general public. For example ad on awareness of various social issues, social problems viz. Fatal diseases, Female foecticide, dowry, girl education, Adult- Education etc.
4)Growth in media:
– Earlier very less media sources were available to advertisers for communicating with target audience, but now a days there is phenomenal growth in media means like news papers, T.V., etc.
5) Increase in industrialization:
– With the growth in the industries, Mechanization, transportation, mean of communication, business firms go in for production at a large scale. The mass production done by these big companies can-not be marked without advertisement. So now advertisement has become more important activity.
6) Increase in lev el of competition:
The level of competition has increased manifold. For any product many brands are available. A company cannot be popular in the market without advertising. Earlier
the level of competition used to be less. So earlier there was less need of advertisement. But now because of increase in level of competition, there is greater need of advertising. It has increased the scope of advertising.
7) Increase in Readership and Viewer ship:
-With the growth in literacy, readership of newspapers and magazines has increased and now newspapers and magazines are full of advertisements. Similarly with the growth in electronics, a computer has increased. This has led to the growth of audio visual
advertising and increased the scope of advertising.
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