ADVERTISING

Advertising



Advertising

ANALYSIS OF QUESTION TWO ADVERTISING AND MATERIALISM

Materialism is conceptualized in the buyer behavior literature as either a consumer trait (Belk 2004, 2003) or a consumer value (Richins and Dawson 2002). It is used to describe advertising as well. Belk and Pollay (2003) define materialistic advertising as one that emphasizes luxury, prestige, and pleasure seeking, while Sirgy and Lee (2008) refer to the content of television (i.e. both program content and advertising) as being materialistic. This paper discusses if advertising encourage materialism in society and individuals or not.

It is important to study the representation of materialistic values in advertising because these values often become institutionalized in a particular culture and ultimately affect society as a whole. Advertising as a carrier of cultural values, plays a major role in the mass media, thus giving it far more universal influence than other institutions. Because materialism has been cited as one of the most prevalent Western values leading to over-consumption (Zinkhan 1994), unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life (Belk 2004, 2003; Dawson and Bamossy 2004; Richins 1987; Richins and Dawson 2002) and lower ethical consumer standards (Muncy and Eastman 2008), the impact of materialistic advertising cues is of importance to advertisers, public policy makers, and those embracing the social responsibility component of marketing.

Materialism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is: a preoccupation with or stress upon material rather than intellectual or spiritual things. As days go by, more and more of our children are becoming materialistic. Influenced by television, movies, and advertisements, children want what they see. They feel that what they want is what they need and unfortunately, parents aren't doing much to stop this. Young adults don't seem to know the value of a dollar. Their continuous wanting is making them more self absorbed and selfish, not caring about issues in the world around them.

Even when parents try and put a stop to their children's obsession, children respond by screaming and telling their parents that they hate them because they aren't giving them what they want. Parents don't like the fact of being hated by their children, so they quickly go and do as their child says, even if that means buying them all the video games that they want, even if it is inappropriate for their age. "[Parents] want to say no, but they don't want to have their child be upset with them." (http://www.progress.org/rchive/ethics01.htm). It is more likely to find parents these days that are workaholics. They don't spend too much time with their children, so the hour that they might have on the weekend with them, they give in to their child's desires. Parents feel bad for not being connected with their children and so it feels wrong to say 'No' when their children ask for new toys that they don't need.

Once a child sees that his or her parent is giving in to their demand so easily, they know that they can take advantage. Debbie Mandel wrote an article on this topic and stated: "Children are blatantly letting ...