EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING AND IT’S EFFECT ON CONSUMER BUYING

BEHAVIOR

ABSTRACT

The present study has been made with the view to analyze the impact of advertisement on
consumer buying behavior. This study looks at the relationship between advertisement and
buying behavior of the consumers. The objectives of this study were to understand the power of
persuasion in advertisement to buy a product and identify the most preferred advertisement
media. The study clearly tells the importance of advertisement to the businesses as well as it’s
influence on the consumers. Random sampling method was used by the researchers for
distributing questionnaires. The total samples collected were 150 covering in and around Udupi,
Mangalore, Bangalore and Mumbai city.

Keywords: consumer buying behavior, power of persuasion, advertisement

INTRODUCTION

Consumer is a person who buys and uses products. Therefore, consumers keep the production
cycle moving as well as play an important role in the economic system of any nation, as a result,
any nation will face crisis if consumers don’t have the effective demand for goods produced.
Consumers demand different commodities based on their taste and preference for them.
Consciousness of good influences consumers purchase of that good. Other factors that influence
one‘s taste and preference for a good are psychological and environmental. Taste and preference
for a good change overtime. Thus, advertisements play a role in influencing taste and preference
of consumers’ choice.

Advertising is all about mass publicity of products. Advertising involves creating awareness of
product’s uses and their benefits to consumers. By doing this, it makes a product to be available
to those who want it and this satisfies the needs of the advertiser; increasing sales. Advertising is
a business activity that employs creative techniques to design persuasive communication in mass
media that promote ideas, goods, and services in a manner consistent with the achievement of the
advertiser‘s objective, the delivery of consumer satisfaction and the development of social and
economic welfare.

It can be found that advertising satisfies three objectives; to increase sales of the firms, to
guarantee consumers a great deal of service and finally to ensure the social and economic
welfare of society. Advertising can be done through various media such as; radio and television,
billboards, magazines and newspapers and websites.

Other factors that influence one‘s taste and preference for a good are psychological and
environmental factors. Taste and preference for a good can change overtime. Thus,
advertisements play a role in influencing taste and preference of consumers’ choice. Consumers
are known to be rational with regard to their purchases, wanting to maximize their satisfaction
when it comes to consumer goods.

The term consumer behavior is defined as the behavior that consumer displays in searching, for
purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of product and services that they expect will satisfy
their needs. Consumer behavior focuses on how individuals make decisions to spend available
resources (time, money, effort) on consumption related items.

Consumer behavior includes what they buy, why they buy it, when they buy it, where they buy
it, how often they buy it, how often they use it, how to evaluate it after the purchase, and how
they dispose of it. In other words, consumer behavior is behavior of individuals in regards to
acquiring, using, and disposing of products, services, ideas or experiences.

Advertising has huge stimulating influence on purchasing behavior of the consumers. Mostly,
advertising is more effective on products that have intrinsic qualities. Qualities are not known at
the time of purchase and it takes one to discover the qualities upon using the product. And when
there is a substantial chance of differentiating a product, it best suits to advertise on that product.

A consumer will therefore not purchase a commodity whose price is above the additional
satisfaction that he derives from the good. How much of a good demanded depends on the
satisfaction the consumer gains from spending extra money on the good. Rational consumers will
spend on a good till their gains equal the cost they pay for the product.
When there is a strong emotional purchasing motive such as to produce health or enhance social
position, it pays to advertise on such a product. These conditions make the demand for the
product more inelastic. The more emotions consumer attach to a product, the more they tend to
be insensitive to it’s price. This is of importance to firm’s product as they can earn high profits
and maximize their sales if they price it appropriately.

In the absence of advertising, consumers may not be aware of the product and it’s potential to
satisfy their needs and desires. Advertisings mix consists of eight modes of advertising which
are; personal selling, direct marketing, advertising, sales promotion and exhibitions, public
relations and publicity, events and experience, interactive marketing, and word of mouth.

One form of advertising is personal selling. The relevance of personal selling to this study lies on
the role of face-to-face interactions in marketing of tourism products. This involves face-to-face
interactions with prospective buyers for the purpose of selling a product or service. These days,
personal selling is considered to be the most effective tool as it involves personal interaction,
hence feedback is received immediately.

However, personal selling suffers from a few drawbacks i.e. it is the most expensive tool of
promotion. Secondly, it requires too much dependence on sales force. If the organization is using
a pull strategy to sell the product, a sales force will be required to make sure that retail outlets are
looked after well, that they have enough stock, and are trained well so that they can push the
product onto the consumer.

Another form of advertising is direct advertising. Direct advertising is advertising which

communicates directly with customers and prospects. The merits of direct marketing is that it
reaches a larger number of people, the message can be repeated, it’s cost is not high, and with the
development of art and graphics, statements can be transformed into forceful messages.

Advertising can be categorized into above the line advertising and below the line advertising.
There is above the line advertising where advertising is placed in TV, radio, newspapers and
other advertising channels and in which the advertiser pays an advertising agency to place the ad.
Below the line advertising is based on advertising via direct mail, sponsorship, merchandising,
public relations, trade show and personal selling.
A variety of short-term incentives also encourage trial or purchase of a product. The aim of sales
promotion is to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product
availability. The tactics used for this include; coupons, point of sales, packaging promotion, web
coupons, sweepstakes, contests, product samples, rebates, tie-ins, self-liquidating premiums,
trade shows and trade-ins.

Company sponsored activities and programs designed to create daily or special brand related
interactions. Sponsorship is about providing money to an event, in turn the product or company
is acknowledged for doing so. Sponsorship helps the company improve it’s image and public
relations within the market and usually the company attempts to sponsor events that mirrors the
image they are trying to aim for.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

 To study the impact of advertisement on consumer buying behavior

 To understand the power of persuasion in advertisement to buy a product
 To identify the most preferred advertisement media by the people

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Sampling

The random sampling method was used by researcher for distributing questionnaire. The total
samples collected were 150 covering all around Udupi, Mangalore, Bangalore and Mumbai.
Researchers used primary data as a tool for this study. Primary data has been collected through
structured questionnaire. Secondary data was collected from internet, journals, articles and
books. For scaling purpose likert’s 5 point scale was used for certain questions. For analysis and
interpretations, researcher used simple statistical tools and some of the simple and relevant data
is presented in a tabular form. Chi-square test was used for testing the hypothesis.

HYPOTHESIS
H0: There is no significant impact of advertisement on consumer buying behavior
H1: There is significant impact of advertisement on consumer buying behavior

LITERATURE REVIEW

Consumer is very important to a marketer. Consumer decides what to purchase, for whom to
purchase, why to purchase, from where to purchase, and how much to purchase. In order to
become a successful marketer, he must know the liking or disliking of the customers. The study
of the consumer preference not only focuses on how and why consumers make buying decision,
but also focuses on how and why consumers make choice of the goods they buy and their
evaluation of these goods after use.

Barban (1987) defined advertising as a paid, non-personal communication through various media
by business firms, non-profit organizations and individuals who are in some way identified in the
advertising message and who hope to inform and persuade members of a particular audience.
Consumer buying behavior has been defined as those mental, emotional and physical activities
that people engage in when selecting, purchasing, using and disposing of products and services
in order to satisfy their need and desires.

FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

5 Common Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior:

Consumer behavior can be broadly classified as the decisions and actions that influence the
purchasing behavior of a consumer. What drives consumers to choose a particular product with
respect to others is a question which is often analyzed and studied by marketers. Most of the
selection process involved in purchasing is based on emotions and reasoning.
The study of consumer behavior not only helps to understand the past but even predict the future.
The below underlined factors pertaining to the tendencies, attitude and priorities of people must
be given due importance to have a fairly good understanding of the purchasing patterns of
consumers.

1. Marketing Campaigns
Advertisement plays a greater role in influencing the purchasing decisions made by consumers.
They are even known to bring about a great shift in market shares of competitive industries by
influencing the purchasing decisions of consumers. The marketing campaigns that are done on a
regular basis can influence the consumer purchasing decision to such an extent that they may opt
for one brand over another or indulge in indulgent or frivolous shopping. Marketing campaigns if
undertaken at regular intervals even help to remind consumers to shop for not so exciting
products such as health products or insurance policies.

2. Economic Conditions

Consumer spending decisions are known to be greatly influenced by the economic situation
prevailing in the market. This holds true especially for purchases made of vehicles, houses and
other household appliances. A positive economic environment is known to make consumers
more confident and willing to indulge in purchases irrespective of their personal financial
liabilities.

3. Personal Preferences

At the personal level, consumer behavior is influenced by various shades of likes, dislikes,
priorities, morals and values. In certain dynamic industries such as fashion, food and personal
care, the personal view and opinion of the consumer pertaining to style and fun can become the
dominant influencing factor. Though advertisement can help in influencing these factors to some
extent, the personal consumer likes and dislikes exert greater influence on the end purchase made
by a consumer.

4. Group Influence

Group influence is also seen to affect the decisions made by a consumer. The primary influential
group consisting of family members, classmates, immediate relatives and the secondary
influential group consisting of neighbors and acquaintances are seen to have a great influence on
the purchasing decisions of a consumer. Say for instance, the mass liking for fast food over home
cooked food or the craze for the SUV’s against small utility vehicles are glaring examples of the
same.

5. Purchasing Power

Purchasing power of a consumer plays an important role in influencing the consumer behavior.
The consumers generally analyze their purchasing capacity before making a decision to buy any
products or services. The product may be excellent, but if it fails to meet the buyers purchasing
ability, it will have a high impact on it’s sales. Segmenting consumers based on their buying
capacity would help in determining eligible consumers to achieve better results. Understanding,
analyzing and keeping track of consumer behavior is very critical for a marketing department to
retain their position successfully in the market place.

SOURCE: FIELD SURVEY DATA

The total respondents for the survey are 150. Among them 105 respondents belong to 18-28
years of age group, 33 respondents belong to the age group of 29-39 years and the remaining 12
respondents belonged to the age group of 40 years and above. The above table also indicates that
the highest percentage (70%) of respondents belonged to 18-28 years of age group which
responded to various advertisement mediums.

SOURCE: FIELD SURVEY DATA

In reference to the above figure, 75% respondents most preferred advertisement media is
television, 18% respondents prefer social media platform of advertisement, 6% respondents
preferred advertisement medium is print media, and the remaining 1% prefer email. There are no
respondents who prefer radio as an advertisement media.

SOURCE: FIELD SURVEY DATA

According to the above table, 95.3% respondents think that advertisement influences their
shopping trend and 4.7% respondents think that advertisement doesn’t influence their shopping
trend.

SOURCE: FIELD SURVEY DATA

The above figure indicates that 41.60% respondents think that advertisements input stays in their
minds for a few hours, 33.60% think that advertisement input stays in the minds of the
respondents for a day, 16.10% respondents think that advertisement input lasts for a week, 6%
respondents think that advertisements input will remain in their minds for more than a month,
and the last 2.70% respondents think that advertisement inputs will last in their minds for a
month.

SOURCE: FIELD SURVEY DATA

This table indicates that 72.5% of respondents are influenced to purchase the products by the
interesting advertisements, 40.9% are influenced by their curiosity about the product, 39.6% are
influenced by the low price of the products, 18.7% are influenced by suggestions about the
products by other people, 1.3% respondents are influenced to purchase the products because of
their intention to imitate the actor in the advertisement.

SOURCE: FIELD SURVEY DATA

The table clearly indicates that 20.7% respondents mostly remember the punch line of the
advertisement, 17.3% respondents remember the slogan of the advertisements, 13.3%
respondents most remembered aspect of advertisement is the celebrities in the advertisement,
12% out of total respondents mostly remember the colors used in the advertisements, and the
remaining 7.6% respondents remember the theme of the advertisement.

SOURCE: FIELD SURVEY DATA

The above table depicts that 47.3% (71) respondents agree that advertisements convinces them to
purchase a new product, 24.7% (37) respondents strongly agree that advertisements convinces
them to purchase the product, 22% (33) respondents are neutral about the above statement, 6%
(9) respondents disagree with the above statement, no respondents strongly disagree to the
above statement.

TESTING OF HYPOTHESIS

H0: There is no significant impact of advertisement on consumer buying behavior.

H1: There is significant impact of advertisement on consumer buying behavior.

Since, chi-square value (17.4) is more than table value (9.49), H0 is rejected.
The chi-square analysis thus reveals that there is significant impact of advertisement on
consumer buying behavior. Therefore, null hypothesis ‘there is no significant impact of
advertisement on consumer buying behavior’ is rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted.

CONCLUSION

Advertisement acts as a motivator in purchasing of products or services of a particular business.

Advertisements are one of the most important tools used by businesses to promote/to deliver the
information about their products or services. Advertisements must not be misleading since it
might have negative impact on the consumers. Effective advertisements also help businesses to
increase their sales numbers. The purpose of this research was to study the impact of
advertisements on consumer buying behavior. Based on the analysis made by us, it can be
concluded that advertisement has significant impact on consumer buying behavior. This research
paper can be helpful to know the most preferred advertisement media, influence of
advertisements on shopping trends, most remembered aspects of advertisements and much more.

REFERENCES

 Prabakaran (2012). Impact of Advertisement on Consumer Buying Behavior.

Journal of Marketing and Communication Vol-8, 2.
 Sunderaraj R. (2018). Impact of Advertisement on Buying Behavior of Consumer in
Sivakasi. ICTACT journal on management studies, Vol-4, 3.

WEB RESOURCES

 https://www.marketing91.com/5-steps-consumer-buying-behavior/