by Advertising has become an essential marketing activity in the modern era of large-scale production and severe competition in the market.
Advertising permeates the Internet, network television, daily newspapers and roadside billboards. Products, services and ideas are sold through advertising, enabling businesses to attract customers for their wares. Internet advertising is rapidly displacing print advertising, due its convenience of use, cost effectiveness, and ease of distribution.
It performs the following functions:
- Identifying Brands and Products
Products, services and ideas are sold through businesses that are differentiated by their brand identities. Brand identity is communicated to the public via advertising. Consumers build emotional relationships with certain brands with which they become increasingly familiar through the years, thanks to advertising.
- Providing Information to Consumers
Advertising supplies the necessary information to consumers so that they know what is available and where to buy it. It broadcasts information on products, services and ideas sold on the open market through a variety of media portals. It reveals the special features being sold, what color and size the product is and which stores carry it.
- Persuading Consumers to Purchase
Powerful, visual advertising presentations compel consumers to purchase goods, services and ideas as a way to achieve emotional fulfillment. Persuasion is the core mission of advertising. Advertising tells you how the product, service or idea you are considering will improve your life. According to Jeremiah O’Sullivan R, author of “The Social and Cultural Effects of Advertising,” advertising feeds on the concepts of ideology, myth, art, sexual attraction and religion.
Advertising infuses images and ideas into products and services, just as the meanings of products and services are infused into images and ideas, notes O’Sullivan.
- Previewing New Trends
Previews about the virtues of new products, services and ideas motivate consumers to obtain them because they don’t want to be left out. Advertising lets consumers in on up-and-coming trends and new markets. They offer coupons, rebates and trial offers on new products, services or ideas to recruit new customers and induce existing customers to try things. Advertisers preview new or improved products, services and ideas to consumers in order to appeal to their sense of wanting to be in the know about leading edge trends.
Previewing new trends is a technique employed by advertisers that capitalizes on consumers’ desires to “keep up with the Jones” by owning the latest and greatest product, service or idea.
- Generating Product Demand
The demand generated by advertising, public relations, and sales promotion “pulls” the goods or services through channels of distribution, notes “Reference for Business.” One of the powerful functions of advertising is to generate consumer demand for specific products, services and ideas through ad campaigns that target the audiences that are most likely to buy them.” Products, services and concepts are sold in volume, according to the consumer demand for them.
- Building a Customer Base
Consistent quality advertising increases consumer loyalty for a product, service or idea. Advertising seeks to maintain the current customer base by reinforcing purchasing behavior with additional information about the benefits of brands. The goal of advertising is to build and reinforce relationships with customers, prospects, retailers and important stakeholders.
- Displaying Competitive Pricing
Advertising displays consumer goods with competitive prices relative to the current market, thus educating consumers about what things should cost. Advertising lets you know what the competition is doing, when the next sale is, and how you can receive the latest coupon or rebate and seeks to assure you that you are receiving the best value for your money.
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