How Advertising Influences the Attitudes and Reported Behaviour of Middle-Class British ...

417 Pages·2013·15.9 MB·English

How Advertising Influences the Attitudes
and Reported Behaviour of Middle-Class
British Adolescents
Thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
at the University of Leicester
By
Marina Payton, BSc, MBA
Centre for Mass Communication Research
University of Leicester
August 2003
UMI Number: U183410
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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................................................IV
ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................................................V
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................1
CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK. ADVERTISING: DEFINITION, CRITICISM,
DEFENCES AND ANALYSIS.............................................................................................................................5
Definition of Advertising..............................................................................................................................................................7
Criticism of Advertising................................................................................................................................................................9
Defences of Advertising..............................................................................................................................................................20
Analysis of advertising...............................................................................................................................................................26
Functions of advertising............................................................................................................................................................27
Semiology...............................................................................................................................................................................................33
CHAPTER 3 THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION AS RELATED TO YOUNG PEOPLE...............42
Theories of communication.......................................................................................................................................................43
Youth culture and media.............................................................................................................................................................52
CHAPTER 4 ADVERTISING AND ADOLESCENT CONSUMERS.........................................................56
Role of advertising and advertising images in influencing adolescents’ responses to
ADVERTISING............................................................................................................................................................................................57
Adolescents’ beliefs about the tactics that advertisers use to persuade them and their
OVERALL ATTITUDE TOWARD ADVERTISING AND ITS IMAGES............................................................................................65
Adolescents and Fashion............................................................................................................................................................69
CHAPTER 5 METHODOLOGIES....................................................................................................................73
Questionnaire development......................................................................................................................................................73
Focus groups..........................................................................................................................................................................................82
General Limitations.......................................................................................................................................................................97
CHAPTER 6 SEMIOTIC STUDY OF ADVERTISEMENTS.....................................................................98
Limitations.............................................................................................................................................................................................99
Hilfiger Athletics..........................................................................................................................................................................106
Ellesse Watch....................................................................................................................................................................................109
Tommy Hilfiger.................................................................................................................................................................................113
French Connection UK Hygiene..........................................................................................................................................116
Daniel Christian..............................................................................................................................................................................119
WONDERBRA..........................................................................................................................................................................................122
Maybelline Mascara....................................................................................................................................................................125
Juice Up ...................................................................................................................................................................................................129
French Connection UK Fashion............................................................................................................................................132
CHAPTER 7 FINDINGS OF MY STUDY.....................................................................................................135
Questionnaire analysis..............................................................................................................................................................135
Participants’ analysis of questionnaire advertisements.................................................................................161
ii
Q.18.1 Sunny Delight...................................................................................................................................................................163
Q.18.2 Hilfiger Athletics..........................................................................................................................................................175
Q.18.3 Ellesse Watch...................................................................................................................................................................188
Q.18.4 Tommy Hilfiger................................................................................................................................................................201
Conclusion for Questionnaire findings........................................................................................................................213
Limitations..........................................................................................................................................................................................214
Focus Group Findings...................................................................................................................................................................215
Conclusion for Focus groups findings...........................................................................................................................266
Conclusion for the Findings of this study...................................................................................................................270
CHAPTER 8 DISCUSSION: CONSIDERATION OF THE FINDINGS IN LIGHT OF EXISTING
RESEARCH STUDIES.....................................................................................................................................272
APPENDICES.....................................................................................................................................................284
A. Letters to request assistance of Beauchamp College...........................................................................284
B. Pilot Study..............................................................................................................................................................................288
C. Main Questionnaire..........................................................................................................................................................309
D. Focus Groups.........................................................................................................................................................................326
E. Photographic Representations of adverts......................................................................................................362
F. H arriott, S. (2000), Media Packs: Insight to Sugar and Its Place In The Magazine Market,
PERSONAL LETTER FROM SUGAR’S EDITORIAL ASSISTANT TO PAYTON, M.................................................................369
REFERENCES 370
Acknowledgements
This thesis would not be possible without invaluable contributions from many people for
which I would like to express my sincere gratitude.
Firstly, I would like to forward my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Olga Linne.
Without her tireless help and encouragement, her expert guidance and painstaking attention
to detail, this work simply would not have been possible. I am very grateful to her for her
kind hospitality, for welcoming me into her home and for spending many hours of her own
time discussing my work with me.
My grateful thanks are due to the staff and students of Beauchamp College and to Mrs.
Maureen Cruickshank and Mrs. Marsha Jones in particular. I am indebted to them for
providing me with access to their students, who participated in my research, and assisting
me in every stage of my field research.
I would like expressing my thanks to Dr. Simon Cross and Mr. Anders Hansen for their
invaluable help. Mr. Hansen has contributed a great deal to my knowledge and
understanding of SPSS and NUD.IST software and Dr. Cross has enlarged my knowledge
of advertising and advertising industry.
I am of course very much indebted to my parents, Valentina and Sergey Shkrob, who
sponsored this work. I wish to express my most grateful thanks to them.
The final acknowledgement is to my husband. I am grateful for his immeasurable patience,
invaluable help and encouragement throughout my work. To Ashley this thesis is
dedicated.
iv
Abstract
How Advertising Influences the Attitudes
and Reported Behaviour of Middle-Class
British Adolescents.
By
Marina Payton, 2003
The interaction of adolescents with advertising is a subject area, which has received limited
attention within mass communication circles - previous research having been largely
directed towards young children. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate two important
hypotheses relating to this subject area, namely that advertising and advertising images can
influence middle-class adolescents’ attitudes and reported behaviour; and another that
middle-class adolescents are able to understand the persuasive effects and tactics,
employed by advertisers, and on the whole are capable of making sound judgements about
advertising.
A review of available literature relating to this subject was performed, which provided a
theoretical framework to support the investigation of the hypotheses. Two methods were
chosen to test the hypotheses, namely questionnaires and focus group interviews. The
questionnaire investigated such areas as frequency of exposure to advertising, purchasing
habits and ability to decode and interpret advertisements. Focus group interviews allowed
participants to discuss advertisements presented to them and advertising in general.
The results of my study provided only limited support for the first hypothesis, concerning
attitudes and reported behaviour and it was recognised that advertising was only one
amongst a number of influencing factors such as peers, family and media. Although, in the
questionnaire three-quarters of respondents did report making an advert-related purchase,
later investigation did reveal that there may have been some limitations in the methodology
surrounding the questions asked. Results obtained from the focus groups, did show that
participants were eager to discuss advertisements they have seen and cited jokes and
slogans used in them, thus making reference to their interest, but not providing sufficient
evidence of having been influenced. Nevertheless, both the questionnaire and focus groups
findings provided evidence that participants possessed extensive knowledge of the tactics
and techniques, used by advertisers, and were also aware of some of the motives behind
the use of these techniques, providing support for the second hypothesis.
v
Chapter 1 Introduction
This thesis examines the relation between media messages and the formation of adolescent
attitudes. As part of the thesis, two fundamental hypotheses are introduced, relating to the
influence of advertising and its understanding by adolescents. In this introduction, an
insight will be given into the theoretical framework driving this research, its aims, and its
structure and organisation.
In the theoretical rationale for this project, consideration is given to how young people try
to come to terms with, and understand, the post-modern media-saturated society, in which
advertising plays a very important part. Advertisers have, in recent years, recognised that
young people represent a particularly lucrative segment of the market and, therefore, their
behaviour as consumers is receiving ever-increasing attention.
Therefore, this thesis focuses on the academic debate of whether children are capable
viewers and critical and analytical decoders of advertising or simply victims of it.
Generally, scholars, who have written on the subject of advertising and children, have
concerned themselves chiefly with advertising’s persuasive element, and its potentially
harmful effect on children (e.g., Unnikrishnan, 1996; Jhally, 1987; Liebert, 1982; Fox,
1996). These researchers, writing in favour of the opinion that children are uncritical
victims of advertising, often raise the following issues: (1) advertising takes advantage of
children’s natural naivety and credulity; (2) advertising develops unnecessary wants and
needs, and hence, consumerist attitudes in children; (3) advertising develops unwelcome
social attitudes (such as gender and race prejudice and stereotyping); (4) advertising has a
negative effect on children’s health and safety (e.g., sugary foods advertising). Their main
charge against advertising, however, is that children can not protect themselves from
advertising, because they can not distinguish advertising from general programming, do
not understand its selling intent and know nothing about its persuasive tactics.
To summarise the writings of those researchers, who expressed contradicting views, it was
generally conceded amongst them that children could understand and interpret advertising
messages and act as wise, rational consumers. Such researchers as Buckingham (1993a),
Young (1990), and Hodge and Tripp (1986) argue that young people are not as vulnerable
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and naive in relation to advertising, as they were habitually described. In fact, Buckingham
and Young claim that even young children have some capability to analyse and decode
advertising messages and, therefore, they reason that regarding children as a captive,
exploitable audience (e.g., Fox, 1996) means undervaluing their abilities to process texts
effectively.
Following the same argument, O’Donohoe (1995) finds that young adults are also
particularly sophisticated consumers of advertising. This finding is borne out by my study,
as shown in Chapter 7, from which it is evident that the respondents in this study
demonstrated significant knowledge and understanding whilst interpreting advertisements,
and at the same time, presented themselves as sceptical towards advertising.
With few exceptions (e.g., Young, 1990; O’Donohoe, 1997), the writers, reviewed above,
seem to hold an either-or position. They either believed that advertising had an
unconditional influence on young people and thus, treated them as victims or attributed
sophisticated knowledge of advertising’s techniques and intentions to them, and argued
that they can not be as easily influenced by advertising as believed by their opponents.
Whilst there certainly appears to be evidence for both such arguments, this study will
attempt to demonstrate that adolescents can possess a sound knowledge of advertising
techniques and effects, can be very able and articulate decoders of advertising messages,
but still be influenced by advertising. Indeed, O’Donohoe (1997) demonstrated, in her
study, that young people often approach advertising “with a great deal of ambivalence,
seeing it as something to be enjoyed and endured in almost equal measures, and expressing
both a sense of immunity from and vulnerability to its persuasive powers”.
This research, therefore, seeks to move beyond other writings on this subject by
hypothesising that, (1) advertising and advertising images can influence middle-class
adolescents’ attitudes and reported behaviour; (2) that middle-class adolescents are able to
understand persuasive effects and tactics, employed by advertisers, and on the whole are
capable of making sound judgements about advertising.
Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, most researchers, discussed above, limited their
studies to television advertising. My study, however, goes further, selecting and analysing
advertisements from both magazines and television. Today, because more adolescents read
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magazines, advertisers believe that advertising through magazines is a potent way of
advertising to young consumers. Therefore, I felt that it was important not to limit my
study to television advertising, but to analyse the influence of magazine advertising as
well.
Furthermore, according to Moschis (1978a: 81), the majority of advertising and young
people studies are “either exploratory or descriptive, based upon little theory and do not
report individual differences”, and according to Boush et al. (1994), the issue of how older
adolescents might respond to advertising, has received little attention. Therefore, in
addition to examining the role that advertising and advertising images play in influencing
adolescents’ attitude formation, my research also endeavours to examine whether they are
able to understand persuasive tactics, employed by advertisers and, on the whole, are
capable of decoding advertising messages and making sound judgements about them. In
order to do this effectively, I feel that it is important to understand the subject of
advertising in general and therefore, probe into literature written on this topic.
Consequently, Chapter 2 of this study attempts to analyse scholastic writings on the
definition, criticism and analysis of advertising. The arguments against and for advertising,
gradually progress into an analysis of it, and proceed to introduce its symbolic system. The
concepts of symbolic messages and images are presented, which are based mainly on
writings of Barthes (1977b), and show that there is no concrete system for thinking about
advertising. This symbolism will be dealt with more fully in Chapter 6 “Semiotic study of
advertisements”.
Chapter 3 provides the conceptual framework for the study of the relation between media
messages and the formation, reflection and reinforcement of adolescents:’ attitudes. The
theories of communication are examined, paying specific attention to this research, and
writings on youth culture and media are reviewed. I feel that, before I attempt an analysis
of the relationships, which exist between adolescents and media, and understand it more
fully, I have to scrutinise relevant media and youth culture theories. These theories deal
with cognitive, social and media related development of children and will attempt to
provide some insight into the hypothesis of this study. In the section “Theories of
communication”, I will introduce some concepts of Jean Piaget’s theory of stages, which
explains how children and adolescents acquire cognitive structures at different ages. The
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