Essay: METHODS OF BUSINESS RESEARCH

GAP ANALYSIS
During children’s programs, food advertisements are shown with visuals containing violent behavior, disrespect of values and showing that children can steal as it is a fun thing to do. Such behavior which is promoted on television through advertisements and commercials are enforcing the same behavior among young and middle age kids. (Brewster, 2009)
Actually the Individuals may adopt or copy any act shown in the commercials unintentionally without knowing the results of such action and they apply those acts in their life. That act which was presented with special effects and visual graphics in a commercial seems attractive might be unethical or un-appreciation in the similar situation but in the real life. In short, the act seems appreciable in the commercial that a kid is insulting a teacher and women walking at night to show the beauty of her shinny hair but if the viewer is asked about the same act in the same situation, he/she will clearly state their un-appreciation towards that same act. However the un-ignorable messages are ignored when such type of situations are showed through the commercials.
The point of view is to evaluate the visuals in commercials that are unethical and are ignored by the target audience and by the advertisers.
MOTIVE/ PURPOSE OF RESEARCH:
The motive of the research is to open and share the critical observation to evaluate visuals in commercial and finding immoral or unethical visual which are reluctantly ignored by the target audience and by the advertisers.
Another most important purpose of this research is to help the brand managers. Now a days, anything and everything is news for media and media can easily drain a good amount of money from companies just for not publishing or highlighting negative aspect of their product to the masses. Managers and brand managers can use this research before taking any advertisement concept for final development. They should check and test the social moral and ethical perspective of the commercial or advertisement.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
Q1 Is un-ethical and immoral visuals are contained by commercials?
Q2 While watching commercials do people think that they are observant?
Q3 While watching commercials do people give more importance to personal benefits?
Q4 While watching commercials do People give less or high importance to moral, ethical and social values in daily life.
Q5 Do the special effects and Visual graphics in commercials drive the viewers’ attention away from the unethical events being shown in the commercials?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Dhar stated that mass communication and advertising is attached with social responsibility and questioned that whether mass communication and advertising fulfils the responsibility or not, as people of different age groups relate and visualize to them-selves as what they perceive after viewing the commercials or what they have been communicated through the mass media. The surveys concluded that majority viewers felt that in now a days advertising hold significant position in the society and advertisements should be critically checked and censored to avoid any social, cultural and or moral disadvantages. It is also quite transparent that advertising is the most powerful tool of mass media, no doubt can be put up against this point that any information or message delivered through advertisements creates impact on the viewer’s, we can take public service or social service advertisements as context. (Dhar D. , 2008)
Foley said that ‘since many years advertising and communication has been debated over ethical along with the moral values due to difference public believes, advertisement does affect people perception about themselves and the world around them and people take crucial actions and behave according to what they have perceived. (Foley, 1999)
Clow&Baack pointed out that there are mainly two components of advertising that effects the audience, 1 Is by touching the feelings to create a link between the product and consumer which is also called emotional route, and the second is when the Ad focus on the attributes and benefits of the product to approach the audience and encourage them to purchase the product or service. When the audience is involved with any of the two components while watching the commercial or advertisement then they reluctantly ignore many other things and visuals that are communicated or shown in the same advertisement which are not the area of interest of the viewers but hold serious values in terms of social, moral and ethical responsibility for the society. (Kenneth E. Clow, 2007)
Zwier stated that in recent years marketing strategies are more focused on children and young people. Food making companies are more interested in young buyers and set them as the target audience, as young people and children consume more food like chocolates, biscuits, snacks and juices as compared to the grown and older people. The marketers set their marketing techniques by different channels to create attraction among young generation, and the buyers buying behavior will create positive effects on sell in future. (Zwier)
Brewster stated that established groups adopting new hypothesis and then tests them to verify that during children’s programs, food advertisements are shown with visuals containing violent behavior, disrespect of values and showing that children can steal as it is a fun thing to do. Such behavior which is promoted on television through advertisements and commercials are enforcing the same behavior among young and middle age kids. (Brewster, 2009)
It is proved that through research when certain information about some aspect of stimulus is received by people, they develop more self believes beyond the received information. Audience develops more and different believes about viewing the advertisement or a commercial which are not mentioned in the advertisement or related to the product, this is due to inferential formation of believes. (McCann, 1982)
(Lynch, 1982 June) proved that ‘provided or self-generated concepts are important and commercials. Cues thought visuals may suggest or intend viewers attribute of awareness to change and increase respectively. People association between objects can be enhance or damaged by making the association of the other object saliently. Such as an advertisement of a car which is focusing on room space but it was also seen that the passengers in the car were sitting with proper safety through seatbelts so in this case safety is a salient feature and it is also associated with transportation.’
Ethics means a set of moral principles which govern a person’s behavior or how the activity is conducted. And advertising means a mode of communication between a seller and a buyer. Thus ethics in advertising means a set of well-defined principles which govern the ways of communication taking place between the seller and the buyer. Ethics is the most important feature of the advertising industry. Though there are many benefits of advertising but then there are some points which don’t match the ethical norms of advertising. An ethical ad is the one which doesn’t lie, doesn’t make fake or false claims and is in the limit of decency. Nowadays, ads are more exaggerated and a lot of puffing is used. It seems like the advertisers lack knowledge of ethical norms and principles. They just don’t understand and are unable to decide what is correct and what is wrong. (Asif-Un-Nahar, Ethics in Television Commercials (TVCs): Are We Being Informed , 2015).
Dr. Jaspal Singh and Namrata Sandhu concluded after their research and said that TV Commercials undermine social and religious values, which leads to the deterioration of the moral fiber of the society. They not only show disrespect towards integrity of cultures but also promote undesirable value schemes like materialism, consumerism, independent decision making etc. (Dr. Jaspal Singh & Namrata Sandhu).
On the basis of the reviewed literature, it has been found that advertisements are generally criticized for negative psychological effects on the viewers. (Richins, 1991) (Fay, 1994) (Nuta, 2009)
Television viewing may be a sedentary activity, but it is not for that reason that it is associated with obesity in children. The relationship between television viewing and obesity among children is limited to commercials television viewing and probably operates through the effect of advertising obesogenic foods on television; this is because of the attraction that will force the children to go for the product against their parents. How parents talk to their children about advertising can be an important mediator of advertising’s influence on children’s choices (Bell, February 2010).
Advertisers therefore portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep-seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity. I would now like to turn to a close analysis of four television commercials to illustrate some of these differing portrayals. Variations in how men and women are portrayed are especially apparent when comparing weekend and daytime commercials, since ads during these day parts almost completely focus on a target audience of men or women respectively. (Robert, 1992). This clearly shows the primary association relation with the Television Commercials.
As it is quite clear that advertising is one of the most influential tools of mass communication, there is no doubt regarding the fact that any information delivered through this mode create an impact. In this context role of public service or social service advertising needs to be mentioned. It is also referred as development advertising. Public service or social awareness advertising mainly focuses on social issues like national integration, pollution, family planning, care and concern for aged and disabled, awareness campaigns against smoking, drugs, alcohol, etc. The primary purpose of this type of advertising is to educate the masses through hard hitting didactic messages. This particular genre of advertising does not sell products rather effective messages and ideas. (Sethia, Chapter 32)
These case studies show that advertisements do have a large impact on the audiences. It clarifies that advertisements really are one of the most powerful and strongest medium of mass communication and when authentic and unbiased messages are delivered through this medium, the products get an instant positive response in the market. It all depends on the advertisers, who introduce the products or services with complete authenticity and without forgetting their responsibility towards the community. Advertisements do have a social responsibility and it wouldn’t be wrong to state that people can be successfully made aware of the all the concerned and relevant social issues through this significant tool of mass communication. (Dhar D. , 2008)
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
‘ I will be using the both primary and the secondary data.
‘ I will be using the Abductive and inductive research strategy.
‘ Questionnaire based survey will be used to collect the data from the population.
VARIABLES, HYPOTHESIS
VARIABLE:
DEPENDENT VARIABLES INDEPENDENT VARIABLES
Viewer’s Responses Attraction Selling Message
Ethical Values Primary Association
Moral values Salient Association
HYPOTHESIS
H0 People Reluctantly ignore un-ignorable visuals in commercials and in many cases advertisers also have no idea that the commercial contains unethical or immortals visuals.
H1 People Reluctantly don’t ignore un-ignorable visuals in commercials and in many cases advertisers also have no idea that the commercial contains unethical or immortals visuals.
MODEL:
SOURCES OF DATA:
The source of data for my project will be the common men including teenagers, young people, adults and old aged people and the people of both the genders. These all will be chosen for observation as they are the target market audience and viewers of the TV commercials.
TIME:
The period which will be taken for survey and analysis will be considered as the time.
LIMITATION:
As per assumption the topic I have chosen is unique and I am unable to find relevant information/secondary data on the internet through website and research papers up till yet.
DELIMITATION:
Although I have taken chunks of information from the indirect liked articles and books. The references are as followed.
Bibliography
Asif-Un-Nahar. (2015). Ethics in Television Commercials (TVCs): Are We Being Informed. European Journal of Business and Management, 258.
Asif-Un-Nahar. (2015). Ethics in Television Commercials (TVCs): Are We Being Informed . European Journal of Business and Management , 258.
Bell, Z. a. (February 2010). Associations of Television Content Type and Obesity in Children. American Journal of Public Health, 338.
Brewster, R. &. (2009). Depiction of Food as Having Drug-like Properties in Televised Food . Journal of Pediatric , 154-157.
Dhar. (June 2011).
Dhar, D. (2008). ADVERTISING AND ITS SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. Global Media Journal, 6.
Dr. Jaspal Singh & Namrata Sandhu, P. S. (n.d.). Impact of Television Commercials on the Social and Moral Behavior of Indian . Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA, 186.
Fay, M. a. (1994). Female body-shape in print advertisements and the increase in anorexia nervosa. European Journal of Marketing, 5-18.
Foley. (1999).
Kenneth E. Clow, D. B. (2007). Integrated advertising, promotion, and marketing communications. Pearson Prentice Hall.
McCann. (1982).
Nuta. (2009). Does advertising promote excessive consumerism? Online: articles.famouswhy.com.
Richins. (1991). Social comparison and the idealized images of advertising. Journal of Consumer Research, 71-83.
Robert. (1992). Men’s Men and Women’s Women: How TV Commercials Portray Gender to Different Audiences. Western Social Science Association, 4.
Sadique Hussain, M. A. (2015). Effect of Advertising on Children Behavior in Southern Punjab. Journal of Marketing and Consumer Research.
Sethia, S. C. (Chapter 32). Foundations of Advertising Theory and Practice.
Zwier. (n.d.). Medicalisation of food advertising. 2009.