Advertising in the 21st century.Communication and Consumer Behavior Essay

Advertising in the 21st century.Communication and Consumer Behavior - Essay Example Regardless of the fact that the key function of the advertising process is to persuade the target audience in the benefits of purchasing goods or services, the communication function of advertising is essentially wider. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to analyze the communication and customer behavior function of the advertising process from the perspective of arranging sustainable communication with the target audience, including feedback. Considering the fact that advertising can also change the overall industry approaches towards the communication process, the paper will be focused on the aspects of widening these approaches, and outlining the basic strategies of adjusting and regulating the communication with the target audience, basing on the latest communication technologies. Communicative Function of the Advertising Process First, it should be stated that in accordance with the research by Carbaugh (2008), the advertising that is based on the communication process is featur ed with five distinctive aspects: It differs from the standard communication process, as the basic function of advertising does not involve feedback, and it may be initiated without the mutual agreement of the parties. The general principle of the effective advertising is explained by the perception aspect. This means that perceptional patterns, as well as cultural codes of the target audience define whether the communication process can be initiated. For instance, a company that produces meat products will never be able to hit the vegetarian segment of the audience. The communication process approaches can be changed depending on the consumer’s involvement. The further step of the communication process is associated with the purchases. Hence, the motives that stimulate purchases, are originated by the communication process, as well as perception aspects of the target audience. Additionally, the communication process of advertising influences the customer behavior. The custom ers change their involvement into the communication process depending on the perception patterns of the advertising strategy. In accordance with the basics of the advertising theory, the communication process simplifies the customers’ movement through the customer behavior stages. (Lee and Ferguson, 2002) Therefore, this process is often regarded as a set of standardized matters, while the influence of advertisement is quite individual. The stages are given on the scheme below: While some customers pass all the stages quickly, the others may stop at any of them without passing to the final one (Person, 2010). This means that the communicative function of the advertisement process is to create and carry a message for the audience, and this message should stimulate the audience move to the final stage (â€Å"Purchase†). The leverage function of the communication is often regarded as a supplementary aspect of the allover advertisement process (Tanaka, 2010).It creates the necessary background for accelerating the customers’ understanding of the product benefits. Nevertheless, the communication itself can not be the sufficient aspect of the effective advertising; therefore, the strategy is often backed up by various images: either verbal or visual (however, they are often combined). Hence, in accordance with the basics of the advertising theory, advertising and marketing are grounded on the matters of thoughts control. (Jian-Hua and Zhi-Yun, 2010) Mass media advertisement and