The Impacts Of Advertisements On Customer Buying Behavior: A Study On Dove Skincare Products

Significance of the topic

Advertisement has been utilised for several years to influence consumers’ buying behaviour. A successful marketing campaign cultivates desires within the customers and helps them make buying decisions. The customers can collect all relevant information about a specific product. Advertisement is a communication strategy mainly designed to convince customers to purchase any products, and persuasive communication includes generating interest, getting attention, and encouraging actions. Advertisement helps develop perception and awareness among consumers of different cosmetic products (Chen, Lu and Wang 2017). These two variables influence customers’ buying behaviours. Consumer behaviour refers to consumers’ actions when looking for, purchasing, using, reviewing, and disposing of things and services that they believe will meet their requirements. 

Significance of the topic

A successful marketing campaign cultivates desires within the customers and helps them make buying decisions. The customers can collect all relevant information about a specific product. Advertisement is a communication strategy mainly designed to convince customers to purchase any products, and persuasive communication includes generating interest, getting attention, and encouraging actions.

Advertisement helps a business organisation create awareness about their products among the customers, and customers’ perceptions vary from one person to another. The perceptions of quality, consumer opinion, and awareness of a product help drive customers’ buying decisions. The conclusions or results drawn from this research paper are mainly based on responses or feedback from the potential customers of Dove company.  

Purpose of the research

The primary purpose of this research paper is to shed light on customers’ buying behaviours and better understand the impacts of advertisements on consumers’ buying decisions. The primary purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impacts of advertising on customers’ purchasing decisions. A literature review is also constructed in the following paper to understand different authors’ perspectives on the main research topic. A random sampling strategy and interpretivism research paradigm will be followed for conducting this research paper. 

Research Aim

The main aims present research study are:

• To assess the factors that influence the customer buying behaviour of Dove skincare products.

Research Objectives

The objectives to attain the aim of the research study are:

• To identify ways consumer decision making buying Dove skincare products.
• To establish how different advertisements influence consumers’ behaviour
• To establish a correlation between Dove advertising and consumer behaviour. 

Research question

What different forms of advertisements influence the customer buying behaviour of Dove skincare products? 

Impacts of an advertisement on customer buying behaviours

According to Weismueller et al. (2020), some brands have succeeded because of their inception. Many business organisations adopted creative digital marketing strategies to survive in a competitive market and attract more customers. Digital marketing is an effective strategy to target a new customer segment. On the other hand, Joshi and Rahman (2019) state that the advertisements directly impact customers and create awareness among the customers, thus motivating them to purchase the product.

Purpose of the research

People nowadays have access to an infinite quantity of commercials. However, they are looking for something new, engaging, and able to capture their attention. Boring advertisements will not last long in the eyes of customers. As a result, entertainment has been identified as an essential advertising approach for enhancing advertising effectiveness and persuading consumers to purchase (Madden & Weinberger, 1982). Strategically placed and well-written advertisements have the power of changing customer behaviour if the organisation advertises continuously and delivers what the ads promise. However, decreased customer enthusiasm for a new product, slipping sale number, customer hesitancy, and other negative impacts on the bottom line (Shahid, Hussain and Zafar 2017).

Disadvantages of advertisement

Advertisement plays an important role in reminding, persuading, and informing existing and potential consumers about purchasing decisions (Vasconcelos et al. 2021). It plays a significant role in shaping aspirations and dreams and helps consumers take a conscious brand and product decisions. Advertisement helps customers know about any product or service before making any purchase decisions. Jin et al. (2020) state that advertisements negatively impact the customers’ buying decisions. It can lead to unrealistic expectations misinforming, and others that can negatively influence customers’ thought processes. According to Crain and Nadler (2019), sometimes the organisations make their products look perfect and unique in the advertisement, but that product’s quality is not so good in real life. Wrong information presented by the organization in advertisements may mislead the customers, and as a result, customer dissatisfaction to increase. So, it can hamper the brand image of an organisation, but the benefits of advertisements outweigh all of its limitations or drawbacks.  

Different theories of customer behaviour

According to Yzer (2017), marketers spend a lot of time and money on advertisements to shape the customers’ behaviours, thoughts, perceptions, and decisions. Over several years, people have created many theories to realise customer behaviours better. For example, Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein invented the theory of reasoned action that mainly highlights the relationship between pre-existing attitudes and behaviours customers bring to purchasing decisions. According to this theory, the behaviours of the persons can be defined by their intentions to perform the behaviours. In 1943, Abraham Maslow developed a motivation-need theory that emphasises five basic needs to influence a person’s behaviours. These five needs are self-actualisation, social needs, esteem, safety, and physiological needs. This theory helps the marketers explain the messages and contents of the advertisements clearly, which can help influence the customers’ buying behaviours. For example, a company’s health-conscious products can help bring benefits to the users, such as minimising skin breakout, ensuring nourished skin and hair, and others. So, these benefits help to fulfil the safety needs of the customers. In this way, the advertisement can motivate the customers to purchase the products of a specific brand (Onputtha and Chienwattanasook 2019).

Research Aim

On the other hand, the Engel Kollat Blackwell model or EKB describes four stages that influence how customers make buying decisions: input, decision stages, variables in the decision-making process, and processing information. In the first phase or input phase, customers acknowledge the information about a product through online and traditional advertisements, billboards, and others. After collecting all information, they combine their expectations and experiences to make the best decisions. Then, rational insights lead them to the next phase of decision-making, where they make purchasing decisions. This decision process includes five main stages: recognising needs, evaluating alternatives, information searching, purchasing, and post-buying results. This theory can help marketers realise how to market a product to trigger desires in the customers (Zhang et al. 2020). 

Reach Stage

Act

Convert

Engage    

Research philosophy

It is necessary to make a clear philosophical standpoint from the beginning of a research study. Epistemology research philosophy will be applied in this paper to deal with the knowledge gathered from several resources. In this research paper, knowledge will help interpret several data or information. Epistemology research philosophy is critical because it helps extract all necessary information that the researchers can use to complete their research studies (Hothersall 2019). On the other hand, this research philosophy also helps assess the reliability of the knowledge developed in this research paper. It helps realise how knowledge plays a significant role in society in a specific context. 

Research paradigm

A research paradigm can be determined by collecting standard agreements and beliefs shared among the researchers. It also helps realise how all problems or issues can be addressed and understood. Different types of research paradigms are there, but among them, the interpretivism research paradigm will be applied in this paper. The Interpretivism research paradigm also believes that reality is complex and multi-layered (Alharahsheh and Pius 2020). This research paradigm also has several impacts on data interpretations. This paper applied this research paradigm to realise how people interact and interpret within a social environment. The Interpretivism research paradigm is mainly based on the naturalistic data collection approach, such as observations and interviews. Secondary data or information is popular with this research paradigm, and the results or outcomes generally emerge at the end of the research process.  

Research approach 

Different research approaches are there – The inductive approach is associated with the qualitative research method, while the deductive approach is associated with the qualitative research approach. The inductive research approach allows flexibility and supports generation of the new theories. The inductive research approach can be defined as a systematic process to analyse all qualitative data or information in which evaluation objectives guide data analysis. One of the main strengths of the inductive approach is that it helps identify the main problems that need to be solved. This research paper will apply an inductive research approach will be used in this research paper as this research approach starts with observations and will help carry out the investigation. It is regarded as a critical feature that aids in developing relevant aspects for solving research problems while conducting research. Furthermore, it aids in evaluating the study and the collection of data that may use to achieve the desired goals and objectives (Jackson, 2010). 

Research Objectives

Research methodology

There are two types of research approaches: quantitative research methodology and qualitative research approach. Among these two research approaches, the qualitative research approach will be used in this research paper. To identify the influence of advertising on customers’ behaviour, the researcher will interview Dove customers. The qualitative research approach involves gathering and evaluating non-numerical data or information to realize others’ experiences, opinions, and concepts. The qualitative research approach will be applied to collect in-depth insights into a problem and generate new concepts or ideas for the research study. The qualitative research approach mainly focuses on gathering data through conversational and open-ended communication. (Mohajan 2018). Apart from this, the qualitative research approach depends on data or information collected by the researchers from semi-structured interviews.  Structured interview will be conducted in this research because this method ensures that each of the interviews is presented with same questions in same order. Apart from this, one of the main benefits of structured interview is higher validity and reliability. The interviewers will be present to explain all questions for avoiding misinterpretation.  

Research strategy 

Different types of research strategies are there such as descriptive, explanatory, exploratory research design and others. Among them, this research paper will incorporate exploratory structured interviews to gather Dove customers’ data. The structured interview will allow the researcher to acquire information about the customer in less time than other types of interviews. Exploratory research has more flexibility and it can adopt to several changes with the progress of the research and it may help in further research. This research strategy is generally qualitative, and it helps explain why something happens while limited information or data is available (Azungah 2018). Descriptive research strategy will not be applied in this research paper as descriptive study cannot verify or test research problems statistically. On the other hand, explanatory research strategy also has several disadvantages that include outdated information, lack of the standardized analysis, inconclusive results and others. This research strategy will increase the understanding of a specific topic. The primary purpose of the structured interview is to collect more information about the client than in other interviews.  

Sampling method

Purposive Sampling, also known as judgement sampling, is the purposeful selection of a participant based on the subject’s traits (WHAT TRAITS? WHY YOU CHOOSE THIS PEOPLE?). It is a non-random technique that does not require underlying hypotheses or a predetermined number of participants (Etikan, Musa, & Alkassim,2016). This study will use the purposive sampling method, which allows the researcher to set out to find people who can and are willing to provide information. 

Research question

Data collection method 

For conducting the interview five main steps will be followed and those are introduction, small talk, information collection, question/answer and wrapping up. Interview is actually a two-way process of exchanging several ideas and information. A set of questionnaires will be provided to the customers for collecting their responses, and based on their responses, data analysis and interpretation will be conducted. All of these questions are listed below.

1. How do advertisements convince you to purchase a product? 
2. How do online advertisements help you to acknowledge all information about a specific product?
3. How do advertisements make negative impacts on your buying decisions? 
4. Do you believe that people making advertisements have several influences or impacts on the customers’ purchasing behaviours?
5. How do advertisements help in the cost of a product?
6. Do you think that advertisements can help to improve the brand image and reputation?   
7. How have advertisements shaped your purchasing behaviours?

Ways of data collection

Structured interview questions will be asked to the customers for collecting their responses, and based on their feedback or responses, data analysis will be done. Semi-structured interview method can be defined as an effective data collection methodology that depends on asking several questions in a predetermined thematic model or framework. The semi-structured interview method is a type of qualitative research in nature. In the semi-structured interview method, the researchers will ask different open-ended questions to the participants (Zörg?, Swiecki and Ruis 2021).

Data analysis

Statistical data analysis method will be used in this research paper because it includes several tools or software that help to analyse all necessary information or data properly and accurately (Disman, Ali and Barliana 2017). SPSS or statistical package for social sciences will be used in this research paper for analysing and interpreting all primary data.  It is mainly a type of quantitative research that seeks to interpret and quantify all data and also applies some forms of the statistical analysis. Quantitative data is generally collected or gathered from surveys and interviews.  

Make sure that you include how you will interpretate the data and how you will be conducting the interview 

Research timeline

Ethical consideration of the research

Ethical consideration can be defined as a collection of different principles that help to guide research practices and designs. These principles involve informed consent, confidentiality, voluntary participation, anonymity, Etc. Upholding the rights of an individual to privacy and confidentiality is the central part of any research proposal. The researchers have to explain to the participants how their data or information will be used.

From the above research study, it can be concluded that advertisements play a significant role in influencing customers’ buying behaviours by attracting customers’ attention, improving their interest, and creating a desire for purchasing a product. Customer behaviour and advertisement have a strong relationship. Advertisements influence customer decisions in every phase. The marketers use several channels or networks to reach customers several times. Advertisements can inform the customers about a new product’s features and encourage customers to repetitive purchasing through promotions. One of the main benefits of advertising is that it can help understand the benefits or usefulness of a product to the customers. The advertisement also creates awareness about a specific product among the customers and thus helps increase the profit rate and sales number of an organization. Furthermore, advertising promotes lifestyle and social messages by illustrating the position of the ideal customers and stimulating social actions towards purchasing those products. Thus, it can be deduced from the above research paper that advertisements help to influence customers’ buying decisions. 

Literature Review

References

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Weismueller, J., Harrigan, P., Wang, S. and Soutar, G.N., 2020. Influencer endorsements: How advertising disclosure and source credibility affect consumer purchase intention on social media. Australasian marketing journal, 28(4), pp.160-170.

Joshi, Y. and Rahman, Z., 2019. Consumers’ sustainable purchase behaviour: Modeling the impact of psychologica 

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