Case Analysis Example: Effects of Advertisements on Gender

Introduction

According to Craig, adverts are crafted image bundles that are designed frequently and associated with a certain product with pleasure feelings that stem from the fantasies as well as anxieties (1997). Many companies do pay the mass media especially the television houses to advertise their products. Brierley points out that adverts do manage as well as control the customers markers at lowest cost possible (1995). Therefore advertisers are more than willing to manipulate their targeted customers’ fantasies as well as exploiting the gender identities while selling their products.

Literature Review

In advertising industries gender encompass a lot of issues such as temperament, abilities, behaviors, and skills based on how the culture defines males and females as part of the society’s gender constructs. Therefore the advertisers and the marketers have a different way of performing their activities when they are targeting the males as compared to when their targets are females. This is because the responses of the targeted consumers are highly based on their genders.

According to Edmonds, M. (2013), many companies do spend million of dollars annually to persuade many customers to buy their products. It is not easy to under estimate the advertising impact on the buyer or the customers targeted for various products. Through advertising many of the companies try to win the hearts as well as hard earned coins of the targeted customers. Companies have different products targeted to various audiences. There are products that are targeted specifically to the youths. Other products are targeted to women, others to men and the old are not left out as they too have their share.

Methods

This report is aimed at analyzing both men and women in the advertising industry in the television. The report will involve an analysis of different products advertised in a television program and there preference to both men and women as the targeted audience by different companies manufacturing and selling different products. The research question for this report is whether gender targeted ads are effective. Gender based advertisements do play a vital part while determining how both males and females perceive different products in the market. Both males and females have different perceptions and preferences. The work of the advertising industry is trying to persuade the men and the females to have a different perception and preferences of different products in the market. Through advertisements, many people are able to change their perceptions and preferences and begin to like products that were not their favorites before. The media more specifically the television advertising programs has been able to change the perceptions that many men and women have concerning some of the products in the market. The media has been able to avoid many stereotypes that both men and women have fully internalized. For instance, many men believe that man should own property while women should concentrate on home making issues. Thus men will be targeted to buy properties such as cars and building more as compared to women. Companies that manufacture utensils will target women more than men because women use utensils frequently than men. Such stereotypes have been broken by the media through ads and many men as well as women have been able to change their mentality and perceptions towards these products. Through ads both men and women have now become targeted consumers regardless of their gender and this is what has led to the question whether gender targeted ads are effective.

Results

The independent variables in this report are males and females while the dependent variable is the advertising industry. The males and females are categorized in three groups including the young, the middle aged and the old. The coding scheme used in this report is that 1 represents the young, 2 represents the middle aged while 3 represents the aged. Many ads are targeted to the middle and old aged males and females because these are the ages when people have gained financial stability and can afford to buy some products. The young people may still be dependent on their parents thus not able to purchase some of the products especially those involving huge financial investments. Although the young ones might not be a key target in some ads, they are targeted for products that are specifically designed for the young ones and that is why the percentage of young related ads will be more than that of middle and old aged males and females when the products are targeted to the young people. This implies that the advertising industry in collaboration with the various manufacturing and selling industries have defined their customer targets depending on the products they are manufacturing. The issue of gender comes in because some of the manufactured products are targeted to a specific gender. The companies may be manufacturing and selling bicycles for example. Young males like riding bicycles more than young females and therefore the young males will be the main targets in this kind of an advert. Therefore the percentage of young males in this case will be higher than that of the young females.

The expectations of this study based on the research question whether gender targeted ads are effective is that advertising has a great impact on the targeted populations. This is because ads are too influential and it is through ads that companies reach out to their customers and persuade them to buy their products. Advertising is gender based according to Edmonds, M. (2013) although some of the ads are unisex. As noted in the frequency table below the ads targeting the young and old aged males is 30 percent while that of middle aged males is 40 percent. This indicates that many companies have a higher preference of the middle aged males as compared to the young and the old. Female related ads on the other hand are quite different from that of the male opponents…