Smicer's Blog

The concept of advertising is a fairly new and recently developed field. The modern society is characterized by consumerism and advertising has been criticized to contribute to the consumerism culture. People are solicited and pushed to buy commodities through various marketing avenues and advertising has become central to the business cycle. Since there has been strong criticism against advertising and advertising becoming central to business investment, this work will discuss the impacts of advertising on consumer behavior with focus on Apple Inc.

To understanding how the advertising process impacts consumers there is need to analyze various theoretical concepts. Both qualitative research with the combination of the case study of Apple Inc. are central to the methodology of the study. The consumers of Apple Inc. products are the focus group conducted in regard for the topic. The findings of the study are offered in the empirical findings. Under the chapter, the cross-analysis of different Apple Inc. products chosen for the purpose of answering the research question: the iPhone products and computer Macintosh product line. The differences and similarities between the products are well outlined with regard for theoretical studies. Furthermore, the perception of the consumers to advertising is examined. It is safe to say that advertising is viewed negatively while at the same time it has real impact on the consumer behavior. While the consumers have a certain degree of criticism for the products, the large following and interest in the product speak for the impact that advertising of the products has on the consumers.

Conclusively, it is possible to influence consumers and impact their behavior through advertising as a marketing tool while at the same time addressing ethical concerns held against such marketing activities. The intent of Apple Inc. as a business behind the advertising creates the difference as to whether the company is manipulative or influential to the consumers. Advertising is a key element in Apple’s ability to create a loyal customer base and drive up buzz through word of mouth that in return creates mass appeal for the company’s products.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Apple Inc. has revolutionized the technology industry and cemented its place in the market. The active development of better product has kept the company afloat and a potential market leader through better product development and diversification of services. Apple has always been a master of PR and advertising, thanks to a campaign strategy they’ve used since Steve Jobs’ days. Their iconic 1984 Macintosh commercial directed by Ridley Scott introduced three decades of powerful ads (Smith, 2017). Advertising has been key to the company’s ability to influence huge following and driving up buzz on the new products. Apple advertising techniques which tend to focus on promoting the new and better product has played an essential role in influencing further spread of the company communication by people exposed to the ads. Smith (2017) further adds that, “Apple’s advertising engagement generates word-of-mouth, which builds brand perceptions, and those enhanced brand perceptions build desire for the product.” The company emphasizes creating ads which will create buzz more than ads which directly speak to the brand and attempt to influence the brand perception. It is logical to suggest that the scale reached by the company by the ads which would attempt to influence the perception of the brand could work to the extent that the advert reaches. On the contrary, creating a buzz extends the message and influence beyond the scope reached by the ad directly from the company.

Doren mutes that Apple Inc. devotes the company’s advertising resources to product placement with popular shows and celebrities as opposed to sponsored adverts for their products (Doren, 2020). Product placement is a form of advertising where the branded product is featured in other works such as films or television programs with the intent to promote the commodity. Also known as embedded marketing, such promotion contributes to the overall outcome of the perception of the company products. First, the audience targeted through embedded marketing is bigger than the size of the market targeted in average sponsored ads. Embedded marketing is a nontraditional form of advertising that targets specific markets according to the film or television program where the product is featured. The ability to communicate to the audience in a subtle manner circumvents the notion of commercial skipping and advert blindness. The criticism that advertising has received makes the traditional forms of advertising susceptible to ad blindness and ad skipping. Apple Inc. through placing the company products in movies or films avoids such criticism and impacts the audience in a less explicit advertising campaign. The effectiveness of product placement is in both the potential to communicate to the target audience without skipping the adverts and associating the company products with films or movies which the audience are already attracted to. In so doing, the audience is attracted to the product by virtue that of their favorite show endorsing the commodity.

It is well known that advertising as a process can only be effective when the company actions and budget allocation result in economic value for the company and consumer actions are influenced the advertising strategy. What a company does in advertising can either break or make its customer base and influence the perspective of the consumers towards the company product. As such being the case, the advertising strategy employed by Apple Inc. must be executed in the same line with the previous adverts or in better form to stay in the position the company took in the past few decades. It is possible to carry out a critical analysis of the advertising process and its impacts on the consumers by looking at Apple Inc.’s progress with respect to the company having been successful in building a solid consumer base and almost cultic following, and by understanding the strategies of other companies that have failed in building a consumer following similar to Apple’s.

Analyzing Apple Inc. in terms of the company’s advertising strategy will show important aspects of such strategy and inform the crucial steps that the company must take to remain the tech mogul it has become. Such is the reason between critical reconnoitering the advantages and disadvantages of Apple Inc.’s advertising strategy and its impacts to its global network of consumers.

Research Question

In view of the facts in the previous section, the research searches the impacts of Apple Inc.’s advertising strategy to consumers. More so, the question of how consumers have been influenced or manipulated by the advertising strategy of the company is the overarching perception guiding the study. The research question seeks: “To explicitly question the literature on international impacts of advertising by Apple Inc. to consumers across different economies to identify the lessons for both the company to inform future strategy and other technology companies.”

The research question highlighted directs attention to several elements: the position of advertising in creating consumption, the development of advertising by Apple Inc. and how well Apple Inc.’s advertising strategy compares to the advertising strategy by competitive brands. The project methodology is tied to the above mentioned elements. It is crucial to indicate that the three elements are in themselves a result of considering Apple Inc.’s advertising strategy, as detailed in the background section of this project above. Therefore, the study is signified by the mentioned aspects in relation to Apple’s advertising strategy.

Rationale for the Study

The study is needed for several reasons, but mainly because it showcases Apple Inc. from the less explored marketing perspective. While advertising is a common practice around the world, Apple has generated immense benefits from its genius advertising. Criticism against advertising creates obstacles for any company seeking to influence consumers through advertising and analyzing how Apple Inc. has handled the same is important to the research. It is key for the company to circumvent the loopholes created by the challenging and ever changing market and creating a solid customer base through advertising efforts. The success of Apple Inc. and its products can be explained through its advertising strategy and how such has influenced consumers. The study sheds light on the Dos and DON’Ts of advertising as a strategy of influencing customers towards building a loyal consumer network under the charge of Apple Inc.

Advertising and Consumer Behavior

Advertising, as outlined above, has been central to the success of the company and the building of a loyal global customer base. Advertising will continue to influence the company policy in future and a critical analysis of the direction of the company suggests advertising as not only necessary, but vital to the financial success of the company. In the same regard, the examination of the literature on the role of advertising and the specific advertising strategy by various other competitors will focus on the influence of such strategies to the company’s consumer bases as indicated in the scope of the study below.

On finalizing the study, the researcher looks to have explicitly examined the changing technology consumer market. Such is in the hope that the dissertation will provide a scholarly paradigm for the support or criticism of the advertising strategies employed by Apple Inc. Ultimately, the research is supposed to compile comprehensive data and statistics, resources and findings from other scholars which speak to the advertising strategies employed by the company and how the process has influenced consumers. This research should serve as a lens through which to view these strategies. The research is not merely about the scholarly cogitations but at the same time seeks to provide a fused history of Apple Inc.’s advertising strategies history as the company deals with further advancement in the technology industry and attempts to match existing competition and a more diverse technology consumer market structure.

Dissertation Scope

The study attempts to be as comprehensive as possible in covering the topic of advertising with specific focus given to the advertising strategies executed by Apple Inc. The genuine scope of the study goes beyond Apple Inc. as the strategies employed by competitor organizations are also examined. Modestly put, all the arguments, scholarly findings, data and claims that form part of the research will be examined in the context of advertising strategies as an attempt to influence consumer behavior and the success or failure thereof the same strategies. Therefore, Apple Inc.’s reality will be overlaid on the industry wide scope and not contrariwise.

To begin with, the definitions of advertising will be discussed and the principle will be painstakingly reviewed from the economic, consumer impact and strategy-based viewpoint. It is in the hope of the researcher to be exhaustive in evaluating the advertising process from the consumer based, financial, economic, historical and other angles in relation to Apple Inc.’s on going advertising concepts. Such effort will build a base to finding the challenges that Apple Inc. faces in its advertising strategies and the attempt to influence consumers. Also, important take away lessons from Apple Inc.’s case and recommendations for further restructuring of advertising efforts are the goal of such efforts.

Dissertation Objectives

The study seeks to appraise, assess and provide a critique for the literature surrounding advertising as a process that attempts to influence consumer behavior in the technology industry. With such in consideration, the researcher aims to achieve the following:

To provide reliable literature on the issue of advertising and its impact to consumer behavior with significant percentage of the literature in discussion focusing on Apple Inc.’s advertising strategy and recent developments in the company advertising efforts.
To define advertising in the context of technology industry, taking into concern the relationship between the definitions to the advertising activities by Apple Inc.
To outline the different advertising efforts employed by Apple Inc. and the influence of such efforts by the company on consumers and the industry as a whole.
To assess the accomplishments and catastrophes of various companies in their advertising efforts in the technology industry, and relate the same to the Apple Inc. situation.
To deliver commendations and propositions for efficacious advertisement with regards to the four objectives highlighted above.

The companies other than Apple Inc. to be studied in the research include: Samsung, Huawei, and Blackberry as the potential competitors in the smartphone industry.

Summary

This study sheds a strong spotlight on Apple Inc. and the general advertising outlook in the technology and the smartphone industry over the recent past besides examining the future prospects of the industry. Given the grand scale of the advertising effort and strategies employed in the past, Apple Inc. is under pressure to deliver in the future as it has done in the past. Being the market leader and taking non-traditional advertisement strategies, Apple Inc. has to maintain the trend and beat competitor challenges; this is where the research finds relevance. It is crucial to recognize the importance of this work to Apple Inc., which has been a major player in shaping how advertisement is viewed in the most definitive developments in the demesne of technology and the smartphone industry as a whole. The researcher is optimistic that the methodological components of the research outlined in the consequent sections are both useful to Apple Inc. and a significant addition to the scholarly work on the subject of advertisement and the impact of such a process on consumer behavior.

Chapter 2: Literature Review Design and Methodology

Before getting on the search for literature, the researcher acknowledges that literature review is a research methodology in itself (cite). With the complexity of the research focus, the researcher opted for a scoping literature review which involves gathering a large body of evidence on the research topic and analyzing the literature while organizing the same into harmonious facts and a qualitative study. The scoping literature review was guided by the research question through gathering sources from several areas of specialty, outstandingly, the nature of advertisement, consumer behavior, advertising history and the changing landscape of advertisement.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The methods used to identify and gather literature for purposes of review should be guided by both effective inclusion and exclusion to create a uniform database of resources that delivers reliable data for valid findings and discussions. This study will be moderated by the following inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion Criteria	Exclusion Criteria
Resources must have been published within the last 10 years (From 2010 onwards).	Resources older than 10 years (Published before 2010).
Journal articles included in the research must be peer reviewed.	Journals which are not peer reviewed are excluded.
Book resources must focus on advertising and consumer behavior.	Book resources which have a narrow focus i.e. specific to certain business or nation.
Resources must have been published in the English language.	Resources published in other languages.
Resources must be full text	Resources which are not full text excluded.
	Nondescript literature and all other resources which do not meet the inclusion criteria

Table 1: Table showing inclusion/exclusion methodology

106 Journals Accessed on Various Databases

31 Journals Removed For Being Outdated

Further 20 Articles Removed for Irrelevance & Being Shallow

Fig 1. Summary Flow chart For Inclusion & exclusion Criteria

Literature Review

Definitions and Types of Advertising

Advertising is a paid form of marketing communication where the audience is encouraged to make purchase decisions about a product while delivering information about the commodity. Arsham & Dianich submit that studies in consumer behavior perceive advertising with the presumption that advertising changes the sales by shifting the taste and preference of consumers (Arsham & Dianich, 1988). Tellingly, advertising as a field has developed to become a central tool to business growth and marketing. Advertising contributes to the creation of brands and appeal to the market where people in the society prefer to use branded products to show off their status symbol (Malik et al., 2013).

The company selling the product sponsors the commodity to deliver visibility by the target market through using the various available media avenues such as television, magazines and newspapers, radio ad segments, outdoor ad tools, influencers, company websites among others (Ahment 7 Ashfaq, 2013). Such action answers the market need and preference by customers to use branded products and preferably well-known or adored brands (Malik et al., 2013).

Different businesses have had to change their advertisement strategies to meet market challenges and by-pass them to achieve the business objectives. Aaker & Day argue that adverts have most direct and discernable effect on cognitions, a lesser effect on attitudes, and influences behavior primarily through its impact on cognitions and attitudes (Aaker & Day, 1978, 281). Counter arguments in consumer behavior and social psychology propose that individuals might not be willing to effortlessly evaluate message arguments and product attributes from adverts (Haugtvedt, Petty & Cacioppo, 1992). In this regard, the use of advertisement as a marketing tool can significantly change the attitudes of people towards the brand. The authors suggest that advertisement can be used to create market for new commodities through the ad impact on cognition. Advertisement was limited in the past to the traditional media such as television or radio, outdoor tools such as billboards and posters, and magazines or newspapers.

The current times offer many advertising avenues with many business looking to use developed digital tools to market their product. Influencers offer cheaper solutions compared to traditional media. However, while the dollar amounts paid is modest compared to TV campaigns, the market size such influencers are able to reach is tiny (Smith, 2017). It is true that TV still holds a huge chunk of the advertising market. Weiderhold notes that TV is a major communications platform for marketers with a representation of 41% market share across the globe by 2011, and an increment from 38% in 2001, when Internet advertising was starting (Weiderhold, 2012). Besides social media advertisement, product placement as an advertisement tool is a worthy challenger to the traditional advertisement channels and offers less defies such advert skipping or ad blindness that could be experienced with traditional advertisement.

Central to advertisement campaigns is the need to impact consumer behavior and influence purchase decisions. Jiang & Ma agree that effectiveness of the advertisement depends on the ability to adjust to the changing market landscape and is crucial to attracting or pushing away the consumer (Jiang & Ma, 2018).Also, a secondary factor responsible for the influence on consumer behavior is people’s experience with the brand after the deciding to consume the product.

Consumer experience has the ability to strengthen or weaken the impact of the advert. While impact of adverts to consumers have been viewed from the advertiser’s view, the more critical perspective is the view of how consumers navigate the huge amount of information with some of the data presenting conflicting ideas (Faber, Lee & Nan, 2004). Advertising is important not only to the extent of directing customer attention towards the brand with the intention to motivate the final purchase decision, but also to effectively communicate and create perception about the product.

Traditional Advertising

Traditional advertising as mentioned above uses the traditional channels or media to convey the marketing communication message. Traditional media include television and radio commercials, magazines and newspapers and outdoor media such as billboards. Such avenues of advertising offer their advantages and disadvantages which include;

Advantages

The continual support of the traditional advertisement channels such as television adverts by different business speaks to the effectiveness and reliability of the media channels to convey marketing messages to the audience.
The widespread availability of television and radio in households provides businesses with opportunity to reach a huge audience from the households with access to television and radio. Waheed & Yung suggest that traditional media such as billboards capture higher attention of the target audience (Waheed & Yung, 2017).
Television combines both sight and sound which effectively communicates the marketing message to the audience through both audio and visual information.
Traditional forms of advertising such as outdoor marketing campaigns such as billboards can deliver message to specific audience through placing the bill board in the area which the business intends to target clients from hence narrowing the advertising function.
Outdoor marketing is easy and efficiency as the only requirement is proper installation in a vibrant visibility area for maximizing exposure.
Outdoor marketing and some form of traditional advertisement due to modern competitive options have become cheaper options and can potentially lower the marketing budget for organizations.

Disadvantages

Traditional advertisement offers limited messaging space. Billboards are limited in terms of the amount of information that could be placed on the billboards. Television and provide limited time for business to push their message.
The costs of launching advertising on television or radio are considerably high when compared to other modern advertisement platforms such as social media adverts.
It is impossible to measure the impact of the advertisement message from the traditional advertisement media as to the extent of the influence on consumers.
Traditional advertising such as magazines limits the business ability to change the message directed to the market as such messages are drafted early as the magazine or newspaper requires lead time.

Modern Advertising:

Modern advertising involves the use of digital media to communicate marketing messages and the most common include display adverts, social media adverts, product placement and event marketing. While modern advertising involves more than this and has modern technology used in traditional adverting as part of the ad media, the thin line between modern and traditional advertising is centered on the concept of modern advertising being more customer oriented than conventional advertising. Modern advertising also encourages the use of celebrity endorsements and influencers as part of the advertising tools to drive interest

Advantages

Modern advertising such as product placement circumvents the challenges that traditional communication channels including television and newspapers face especially ad blindness because of the subtle communication strategy in such ads.
Celebrity endorsement attract users to the product by virtue of association such that the audience will be pulled to the product because their favorite celebrity is using the same commodity. Celebrities display as sense of class, lifestyle and status hence endorsing a product will associate the product with such a lifestyle and class. People looking to have the same lifestyle or class will be motivated to purchase the product to be perceived as part of such lifestyle.
Websites offer information on the product while promoting the product from a unique selling point through information displayed on the sellers website. Unlike newspapers and magazines, information can easily be updated or changed to the desired message through simple edits.
These modern ads avenues enhance the perception of a product and can create a loyal following from the enhanced perception about the brand or product.

Disadvantages

Advertising is known to promote consumerism or unnecessary consumption.
Adverts can be deceptive to the point of selling products above their value which leads to customers paying exorbitant prices for commodities under the payment.
Adverts which require product placement or celebrity endorsement may significantly raise the prices of the product hence transferring such costs to the final buyer.

Defining Consumer Behavior & Types of Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is defined as the understanding of the activities associated the purchasing especially with the concerning the emotional, mental and behavioral responses of consumers towards goods and services. The concept further goes to question how groups or individuals select products, use and dispose such goods and services while meeting their needs.

The study of consumer behavior seeks to understand what motivates the actions of consumers while interacting with goods and services in the market place together with the causal motivation for the actions the consumers take. One study suggests that once people share situational similarities with reference groups, they are more likely to conform to that group’s norms and such explains why product placement and celebrity endorsements work in advertising (Ryoo, Hyun & Sung, 2017).

Martin and Morich acknowledge Howard’s and Sheth’s Theory of Buyer Behavior that proposed buyers make rational decisions bound within the limits of their cognitive and learning capacities while being limited by information that such consumers are exposed to (Martin & Morich, 2011). Such a perspective fails to explain the impulsive buying behavior where customers buy products without

Martin & Morich (2011) further note that recent research into consumer behavior supports contrary opinions where human behavior is thought to be a result of unconscious mental processes as opposed to cognitive motivations as proposed in Theory of Buyer Behavior. According to Lamb, the consumer decision making process is complex and involves various steps that go beyond buying and consuming the product. The author’s suggest that when buying products, consumers will follow the consumer decision-making process: (ii) need recognition, (ii) information search, (iii) evaluation of alternatives, (iv) purchase, and finally (v) post-purchase behavior (Lamb et al, 2010).

Recent research and scholarly material supports the perspective that consumers are likely to make purchasing decisions that are informed from their previous experience with the same products. Positive experience with products will lead to potential return clients while a negative experience will result in dissonance where unsatisfied customers move on to other competitive products after being disappointed by the first commodity.

Consumers display different and complex behavior when searching for products, evaluating purchasing options, when using and disposing the products and the post consumption behavior with the expectancy of having their services satisfied. Tellingly, the argument that people recognize their needs and are motivated by such needs to find ways to satisfy them is logical. The responsible of marketing departments in organizations is to match the needs of the consumers and meet them as they search to satisfy their needs.

Consumers are affected by both personal and psychological factors when making purchasing decisions. Personal factors can include the lifestyle of an individual which will orient people in the same social class, subculture or occupation to express their interests, opinions and demographics according to their lifestyle (Kotler & Keller, 2016).

Psychological factors that impact people’s buying behavior are “motivation, the perception, the learning, and the belief and attitudes” (Kotler & Keller, 2016). The authors further describe motivation as the need that is sufficiently pressing to the consumer to push the person to seek to satisfy the need. Motivating the consumer is central to the advertisement strategy. Perception is about how people interpret information and learning is the changing behavior related to experience. Kotler & Keller agree that learning is a vital aspect of consumer behavior and occurs through interaction with other people who have consumed the company’s product. As a result, the interaction “drives, stimuli, cues, responses and reinforcement” (Kottler & Keller, 2016, p.260).

Need Recognition

Information Search

Evaluation of alternatives

Purchase Intention

Attitudes of Others

Purchase Decision

Unexpected Situational Factors

Post Purchase Behavior

Fig 2: Consumer Behavior Flow Chart by Kottler & Keller (2016)

With regards to the above highlighted buying process, there are still different types of buying behavior. Mainly, consumers are either highly involved buyers or show low involvement. The significant difference between the two is that buyers highly involved in the buying process show complex buying behavior and perceive significant differences between brands while low involvement buyers have a tendency to seek variety of commodities. Highly involved buyers tend to seek reducing post consumption dissonance hence stick to few brands and lowly involved buyers form habits when buying such that a purchase decision will lead to habitual purchase (Kottler & Keller, 2016). Advertising seeks to provide evidence to the highly involved buyer to motivate the buying decision.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

Chapter 4: Data Presentation and Analysis

Chapter 5: Conclusions and Discussion

Limitations and Recommendations

Share this:

Related

Leave a comment Cancel reply