Advertising Gender Roles

INTRODUCTION

“Advertising is a means of communication with the users of a product or service. Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or influence people who receive them” as defined by the Advertising Association of the UK. [www.economictimes.indiatimes.com] [Consterdine,2005] The word advertising is a Latin word which means “to turn attention of people to a specific thing.” It is a paid publicity. According to Oxford Dictionary the word “to advertise” means “to make generally or publicly known”, describe publicly with a view to increasing sales.[www.wikieducator.org] Advertising is “any paid form of non personal presentation of ideas,goods or services by an identifiable sponser” [ Tom Cannon,2013]

It both stimulates consumption patterns, activities of consumers,life-styles. Consumers are motivated with advertisements in different media but magazine advertisements play an important role.Minds of consumers can be altered ,opinions can be moulded by advertisements in magazines.Advertisements are the way that gender roles are see in the society. For example when a car advertisement is seen for,most of times person driving a car is a man, whereas when an advertisement about house cleaning product is shown, normally a woman is portrayed. Thus, advertisements in magazines are related to the society and gender roles in the society.Thus in other words, a magazine advertisement is directly or indirectly related to the society because it is done for motivating the individuals which constitutes the society. According to survey, The average American is exposed to 247 magazine advertisements each day. Many Americans are affected by advertisements in magazines , and often are motivated to buy products they don 't need.These Americans are seen as every advertiser 's target.Advertising helps to persuade the masses. Because newspapers and television shows are very expensive to generate, so holding space for advertisements in magazines are less expensive. Magazines advertisements serve the educational, informational and entertainment interests of readers in both the consumer and business markets.] Magazines tend to be passed around amongst

The factors influencing these attitudes are complex in nature.Borden says ”Product differentiation provides the opportunity for influencing customers to prefer one brand to another. Magazine advertising provides means for pointing out to customers the significance of differentiating qualities”.[ Andrew Ehrenberg,April 2002]

Informative Role:The basic task of magazine advertisements is transmission of information.A potential buyer who is unaware of the products and services need to have an information for newly launched products and services.Thus magazine Advertisements play an informative role by providing relevant information about products to the consumers.The ability of companies to reach vast number of people quickly is possible through magazine advertisements.[ Tom Cannon,2013]

Persuasive Role: Magazine advertisements are geared to persuade and motivate the consumers of target market.Through magazine advertisements it is possible to create a favourable image in eyes of consumers. Thus the product appeal is based on those images which are created in advertisements.[ Tom