Marketing Aptitude: Advertising

Advertising is a mass selling technique. It is an art of making one’s products known to the world in such a way that a desire of buying that product is created in the hearts of people. It is useful in providing information about the company’s product, its quality, features, price, usage, promotional offers, etc., to the prospective customers.

In the modern marketing environment, to promote or to increase the sale volume, the business enterprise has to adopt various advertising and publicity measures to sustain itself in the market. It is essential for creating and maintaining demand for company’s products.  Thus, advertising is an activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements through hoardings, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, internet, etc. The term “Advertisement” has been defined by following prominent scholars:

• American Marketing Association: – “Advertising implies any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services, by an identified sponsor.”
• V Zacher: – “Advertising is a means of communicating information pertaining to products, services or ideas by other than direct personal contact and on an openly paid basis with intent to sell or otherwise obtain favorable consideration.”
• William J. Stanton: – “Advertising consists of all the activities involves in presenting to a group, a non-personal, oral or visual, openly sponsored message regarding disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by an identified sponsor.”
• Philip Kotler: – “Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services through mass media such as newspapers, magazines, television or radio by an identified sponsor.”
• Wood: – “Advertising is causing to know to remember, to do.”
• Wheeler: – “Advertising is any form of paid non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services for the purpose of inducting people to buy.”
• Sir Winston Churchill: – “Advertising nourishes the consuming power of man. It creates a desire for better standard of living. It spurs industrial exerting and greater production.”
• Richard Buskirk: – “Advertising is a paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.”
• Peter F. Decker: – “Advertising is not only plays a vital role in promoting our economic growth but it is colourful and diverting aspect of life. Many advertising people do a straight forward job. They fill an important and constructive role in our society.”
• Bovee, 1992, p. 7: – “Advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media.”

Functions of Advertising

The following are the functions of advertising: –

• Promotion of sales: -It promotes the sale of goods and services by creating awareness among consumers about the company’s product, its quality, features, price, usage, promotional offers, etc. A good advertising campaign maximizes the profit of the company and also create good image among the customers.
• Introduction of new products: – It helps in introducing and popularizing the new products and services in the market through hoardings, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, internet, etc.

 Distinguishes product from competitors’ products: -There are so many products of same category in the market and they compete with each other, advertising performs the function of distinguishing advertiser’s product from competitors.

• Support to Production System: -In the modern marketing situation, a business enterprise may be able to sell on a large-scale through advertising. Thus, advertising not only helps in large-scale production but also reduces the cost of production per unit by making possible the economical use of various factors of production.
• Improves Standard of Living: -Advertising improves the standard of living of the people by educating them about the uses, variety and quality of goods available in the market.
• Reduces overall sale cost: -Advertising increases the primary demand in the market. When a product is in demand, the overall cost of production will decrease and at the same time, the cost of sales like distribution cost, promotional cost will also gets decreased. As a result, consumer may be able to buy a product at reasonable rate.
• Expand product distribution: -When the market demand of a particular product increases, the number of retailer and distributor involved in sale of that product also increases, hence product distribution get expanded.
• Build Goodwill: -Advertising builds invaluable good will for the sellers’ house and its products. A business enterprise can improve its image by well-planned advertising programs, by highlighting the benefits of buying their products, etc. Advertising also helps in building up brand preferences and brand loyalties.
• Support to Media: -Advertising sustains press. Advertising provides an important source of revenue to the publishers of newspapers and magazines and the producers of T.V. programmes.

Importance (or Benefits) of Advertisement

In the modern marketing era, due to excessive specialization, mass production and cut-throat competition, advertising has become an important activity of business. It informs guides and educates the consumers and protects their interests. It enables them to purchase intelligently and raise their standard of living. It introduces new products or services to the people, changes their tastes and fashions, improves their knowledge and creates more employment opportunities in the society.  This speeds up the sales of commodities, increases the efficiency of labor in distribution, and diminishes the costs of selling. The main benefits of advertising may be narrated as follows:

• Steady demand: -It helps in increasing and maintaining steady demand for a particular product or service in the market. It also saves the product from seasonal and other fluctuations by discovering new usage of the product or service.
• Increases sales: -Mass-production needs mass-selling, it can be possible through advertising. Thus, advertising is a way to increase the sale of products and services by attracting more consumers to buy.
• Helps in launching new products: – Through advertising, a manufacturer introduces new products or services to the people, changes their tastes, fashions, etc. It also educates the consumers about the use of products or the new uses of products.
• Creation of goodwill: – Advertising helps to increasing the goodwill of the firm and reputation of the products by making the name of the manufacturer and his products famous and known in every market. Thus, it makes it easier for the producer to capture large share in the market and to introduce new products. In all, it creates good image of the firm in the market.
• Contact: -It helps in establishing a direct contact among manufacturers and consumers through toll-free number, e-mails, sms, etc.
• Market expansion: – Advertising enables the manufacturer to expand the market for his products. It not only helpful in retaining old market but also helpful in entering or capturing new markets.
• Lower cost and increases profitability: -Advertising not only increases sale on large scale but also helps in large-scale production and reduces the cost of production per unit, which increases the profit of the manufacturer.
• Encourages research: -Increased sales and higher profits motivate the manufacturer to encourage research in his organization for new products or to further improve the quality of the existing products or reduce their costs. Benefits of Advertisement to Middlemen (Wholesalers and Retailers), the middlemen dealing with the advertised products are benefited with the advertising in the following manner:-
• Creates easy sales: -It is easier for wholesalers and retailers to sell products because consumers are aware of the product and its quality through advertisement.
• Increase in turn-over: -Advertisement helps in easy and quick sales. This increases the rate of turn-over of the stock. It also reduces maintenance cost and obsolescence cost.
• Supplements sale: -It supplements the selling activities.
• Attracts more customers: -Advertisement gives detailed information about the product and availability of product in the market. Thus, it increases consumers in the market.
• Publicity: -In advertisement, product publicity and wholesale or retail shop publicity are done simultaneously. This saves time and effort of the middlemen for selling the product or service of the particular company.
• Economy: -It ensures more economical selling because selling expenses are reduced.

Benefits of Advertisement to Consumers

Advertising educates the consumers about the new products and their diverse uses. The following are the benefits of advertisement to consumers: –

• Advertising is beneficial in creating awareness among the consumers about the company’s product, its quality, features, price, usage, promotional offers, stresses quality and prices of the product.
• Advertising is helpful in eliminating the middlemen by establishing direct contacts between producers and consumers, which results in cheaper goods.
• Advertisement reduces shopping time of consumers, as it helps them to know when and where the products are available and at what price.
• Advertisement gives information about the various brands available in the market and their special features. It makes easy for consumers to buy the best one.
• Through advertising, consumers get to know the use of existing products and the use of new products. This improves the standard of living among consumers.

Benefits of Advertisement to Salesmen

Salesmanship is incomplete without advertising. Advertising serves as the forerunner of a salesman in the distribution of goods. Salesmen are benefited by the advertisement in following ways:

• Easy introduction: -For salesman introducing the product becomes quite easy and convenient because manufacturer has already advertised the products and its features in the public.
• Reduces sales efforts: -Advertising prepares necessary ground for a salesman to begin his work effectively and reduces his sales efforts.
• Better contact: -Through effective advertising, the bonding between the customer and the salesman becomes strong because he already knows the quality and price of the product.
• Effectiveness: -The salesman can weigh the effectiveness of advertising when he makes direct contact with the consumers.

Benefits of Advertisement to the Community or Society

In the words of the late President Roosevelt of the U.S.A., “Advertising brings to the greatest number of people actual knowledge concerning useful things: it is essentially a form of education and the progress of civilization depends on education.” The following are the benefits of advertisement to society: –

• Increases employment opportunities: -Advertising leads to a large-scale production, thus creates more employment opportunities to the public in various jobs directly or indirectly.
• Promotes higher standard of living: -It begins a process of creating more desires and their satisfaction resulted in a higher standard of living. For example, advertising has made more popular the uses of inventions such as the automobiles, radios and various household appliances.
• Beneficial for cheap production of press: -The cheap production of newspapers is possible only through the publication of advertisements in them. With this, newspapers are indirectly becomes affordable for public, as cost of production reduces through advertisement.
• Professional employment: -It assures employment opportunities for the professional men and artist.
• Indicator of present & future: -Advertisement provides a glimpse of a country’s way of life. It depicts the way of living and the behavior of the people and is also an indicator of some of the future trends in this regard.