FUNCTIONS OF ADVERTISING

What is advertising?

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.

Let’s take this definition apart and analyze its components. advertising is directed to groups of people and is therefore non personal in nature. The group might be teenagers who enjoy rock music or men and women who watch soap operas or sporting events. But is is not personal or face-to-face communication.

Advertising is not restricted to the promotion of tangible products such as soap and soft drinks. advertising is also used extensively to help services such as hair styling and motorcycle repairs. And increasingly advertising is used to sell economic, political, religious, and social ideas.

Most advertising reaches us through the mass media – that is, billboards, newspapers, magazines, radio and television. But much advertising also reaches us through direct mail. Some advertising even reaches us through players hung on our doorknobs or placed under our windshield wipers at the shopping center.

The most basic function of advertising:

1. To identify products and differentiate them from others.
2. To communicate information about the product, its features, and its location of sale.
3. To induce consumers to try new products and suggest reuse.
4. Stimulating the distribution of a product.
5. To increase product usage.
6. To build brand preference and loyalty.

Generally these functions could be grouped and categorized as marketing, communication, and education functions, as well as economic and social function.
Book Preference : Bovee / Arens, Richard D. Inc, 1982,"Contemporary Advertising"