INTRODUCTION
Advertisements have been used for many years to influence the buying behaviors of the consumers. Advertisements are helpful in creating the awareness and perception among the customers of beauty products which both of these variables are lethal combination to influence the buying behaviors of the consumers. This particular research was conducted on female students who use different brands of beauty products to check the influence of advertisement on their buying behavior while creating the awareness and building the perceptions. What's more, those advertisements affected how consumers thought about themselves. Advertisement for beauty products enhancing products seem to make consumers feel that their current attractiveness levels are different from what they would ideally be.
Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals, or services. It includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade a target market to purchase or to consume that particular brand. These brands are usually paid for or identified through sponsors and viewed via various media.
Advertising can also serve to communicate an idea to a mass amount of people in an attempt to convince them to take a certain action. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mass media can be defined as any media meant to reach a mass amount of people. Several types of mass media are television, internet, radio, news programs, and published pictures and articles.
Advertisements have become one of the crucial factors that determines the style and functioning of one’s life in different contexts. For some years some subtle changes in the practice of advertising have been reshaping the society people live in. The force of advertising reaches out and touches everyone living and working in the modern world today. Advertising is claimed by its practitioners to be largely responsible for the good things in life and is criticized by its opponents as the cause of unpleasant things (Lee & Johnson, 1999).
The impact of advertising on the society is a fiercely debated topic, and has been ever since the conception of advertising in its most basic form. There are negative and positive social impacts upon society from advertising in its various forms.
Advertising has positive as well as negative, social and economic impacts on our society. Considering advertising as a public welfare is a positive social impact whereas exposing women as a sex tool comes at the negative side. As far as economic factors are concerned, funding for the media and stimulating an active and competitive economy, are the major examples.
1.1 RESEARCH BACKGROUND
This research studies the effect of advertising on female students in Management and Science University (MSU) on beauty products purchasing behaviour. Some researchers have hypothesised that consumer's personality profiles affect decision making in their assessments of credibility in advertising content. As a result, consumers are more responsive to advertising claims tailored to a specific personality profile in product ads than to advertising claims not tailored to a specific personality profile. Therefore, the research explores consumers' response tendencies to advertising claims when the source of such claims is identified as tailored to a specific personality profile or not tailored to a specific personality profile.
Research also examines the relative impact of tailoring the advertisement to a specific personality profile on consumers' assessments of credibility in advertising content. This can be accomplished by examining whether consumers' beliefs', competency, or perceived goodwill are affected by credibility information when advertisements are tailored to a specific personality profile versus advertisements not tailored to a specific personality profile.
Accordingly, advertising claims whose credibility has been challenged by governmental or by consumer groups are more likely to affect consumers' action than are unchallenged advertising claims. The findings have implications for understanding the role of personality profiles in shaping visual imagery and message content of advertising claims.
However there is an absence of consensus in both theories and frameworks that address much of the often conflicting reasons of advertising's interaction in consumer decision – making. Accordingly, there have been weak empirical relationships found between prediction of product use or choice with personality behaviour. (Lastovicka, JL., Erich A., & Joachimsthaler, 1988)
Some researchers have, however, demonstrated and analysed brand personality to the extent that effective designs can aid in their influence (Aaker, 1997; Greengrove, 2002; Neal and Wurst, 2001). Attempts at segmenting markets on the basis of personality similarities and differences have not achieved researchers' desired results. The main reason for disappointing results is that research efforts have primarily focused on profiling exercises rather than putting their endeavours into theories based on consumer personalities (Plummer, 2000).
Accordingly, there has been ample research on source effects that concentrated on the impact of the competence, believability, and trustworthiness of the spokesperson in the fields of psychology, advertising, and communication literature (Bush, Moncrief, and
Ziethaml 1987). There is, however, little research on relative impact of personality profiles on consumers' assessments of credibility in advertising content.
There have been numerous studies, however, on the individual effect of advertising on the persistence of profits (e.g., Mueller 1990), implying that excess returns erode more slowly for firms that advertise heavily.
For example, Chauvin and Hirschey (1993) provide evidence that advertising expense has a positive influence on the market value of the firm. They suggest that spending on advertising can be viewed as a form of investment in intangible assets with positive effects on future cash flows. When Erickson and Jacobson (1992) control for the indigeneity between discretionary expenditures and profitability, however, they find that advertising generates substantially lower accounting and stock market returns than indicated in previous research. In a recent study, Chu and Keh (2006) investigate the effects of advertising, promotion, and R&D expenses on brand value creation. They find that these lagged expenses yield diminishing returns to brand value.
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
There is a general perception that cosmetics are generally purchased by female students who are studying in various colleges, believing that these products may improve their appearance and personality which are essential for their career. It is also perceived that these set of female students have the capacity to spend sufficient amount for cosmetics, as their affordability is more than that of the unemployed female students. But these perceptions are found to be false in the modern era, as cosmetics have nowadays become an essential object and are used by majority of female students, irrespective of their occupation, education and age.
The reason behind this new trend is that there is an uplift found in the economic conditions of the people. But earlier, majority of the population were below the poverty line, and the female students who used cosmetic products then were not respected by the society.
Culturally, female students in MSU are enjoying a higher status than those in some other states. They are enjoying freedom in education, occupation and career selection. In particular, MSU students enjoy all these facilities to the full as their literacy rate is higher than the other districts. This makes them more conscious of their health and body care. Since their financial position is also far better than the other districts, they are found to be spending sufficient amount for recreation, education and on luxury items.
This study investigate the effect of advertising on female students beauty products purchasing behavior. First, cosmetics advertising can be classified into conventional advertising, advertorials, and beauty news based on press releases, and beauty articles written by editors. In addition, consumer purchasing behavior has been examined in terms of use of information, purchasing intention, and purchasing experience. Beauty products shopping orientations were classified into six factors (the pursuit of impulsive purchasing and trends, well-known brands, convenience, low prices, efficacy and brand loyalty).
1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
1. To examine the awareness of the female student in MSU about advertised products.
2. To study the significant difference if any in the purchasing motive, preferences and loyalty with reference to locality.
3. To find out the buying behavior and consumption patterns of cosmetic products among female students in MSU.
4. To analyze the level of satisfaction of the female students in MSU towards cosmetic products.
5. To identify the adverse effects of cosmetics and the problems faced by the female students in MSU.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION
1. What are the factors that affect the buying decisions of female students in MSU?
2. What kind of attitudes do female students in MSU have towards beauty products that are made of natural ingredients?
3. How natural ingredients in beauty products affect female students in MSU buying decisions?
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
This study will be a significant venture in promoting advertising awareness among the future citizens through teachers of tomorrow. This study will be beneficial to the consumers and business industries particularly in product/service promotion. By understanding the needs of the consumers and the benefits of effective advertisement, these business industries will be assured of a competitive advantage. Moreover, this study may equip students to be aware of the ill effects of advertisements and act as responsible citizens.
So, the impact of advertising on our society is in a jumble form, depending on the functions and implementations of numerous campaigns. Our society and the marketing of products depend very badly upon advertising. The companies have become much dependent of advertising that even its negative impacts can never outweigh the many positive social and economic effects. The most important element of advertising is not information but suggestion more or less making use of associations, emotions (appeal to emotion) and drives dormant in the subconscious of people, such as happiness, health, fitness, appearance, self-esteem, reputation, belonging, social status, identity, adventure, distraction, reward of fears, such as illness, weaknesses, loneliness, need, uncertainty, security or of prejudices, learned opinions and comforts.
Assorted techniques are enforced for persuading consumers that they want the product which is being advertised. These techniques usually give attention to the benefits that would be brought to the consumers rather than focusing on the actual products. There are various blames that advertising is causing a negative social impact on the lives.
The purpose is to figure out the attributes that affect the female students’ consumption for beauty products. Through this study, it was identified that the five factors, quality product, product price, brand name, product packaging and advertising have greater impact on customer buying decision.
Consumers go through the processing making their buying decisions, since there are alternative products which compete in the areas close proximity, relatively cheaper price, quality, etc. Brand, Quality and price are one among the strong competing factors in the decision making process. When it comes to beauty products, it is even more intense that all the five factors play a major role in consumer buying decision.
The study implies the need for exposure and education to students so as to make them socially awakened and personally responsible citizens who are independent decision makers also. This research is beneficial, firstly, for the advertising agencies, as it will become easier for them to formulate the exact integrated marketing strategies for their customers so as to target the respective audience of the organization. It will also help the organizations to optimally distribute their marketing expenditure over different mediums of advertising, catering to their target group.
1.6 LIMITATION OF STUDY
The definition of limitation of study is to reveals that the effect of advertisement is comparatively better than expected among the female students. Many of them are active listeners for gathering information regarding the new products, trend in the market and make a comparison with the products of other firms. The consumer culture is more prevalent in rural students than in urban students.
Majority of female students are interested in beauty products while the male students are more concerned with automobiles and electronic equipment. While advertisements often include information that cross cut all personality profiles, some consumers ignore some of this information and rely primarily on advertising claims and on personal experience in forming judgments about advertised products. On the other hand, some consumers defer decisions until the advertising claims have some credibility behind them before making product purchase decisions.
There are distinct processing differences between dominant, influencing, steadiness and conscientiousness individuals. These differences should affect how consumers perceive and evaluate information provided by advertising message and imagery. The basic hypothesis is that advertisements containing ad content that is consistent with subjects' perceiving or type behavior preferences will be viewed as believable compared to advertisements that contain ad content that is inconsistent with their perceiving-type preferences.