Advertising Importance
Importance of Advertising: For Manufacturers, Middlemen, Consumer and Society
Advertising is an integral part of our economic and social life. As a powerful technique of promoting sales, it has been doing wonders in the area of distribution. The role of advertising can be analyzed from five different angles namely, manufacturers; middleman; sales force; customer and society.
- Importance of Advertising to Manufacturers:
Every manufacturer and producer, who wants to make available his goods to people at profit, do take full advantage of advertising to popularize their products and services.
The major benefits that are available to manufacturer are:
(a) Increasing Sales: Even the best product cannot be sold on its own, unless people know about the product. In today’s highly sensitive and competitive market, a firm cannot maximize its profit, unless it multiplies its sales turnover. A regular and frequent advertising helps the producer to obtain this objective.
(b) Helps in maintain existing market and explore new market: Every forward looking company eyes on future prospects without losing its current position. A company’s success is reflected by how it maintains its current position and future expansion. Advertising helps the manufacturer, in this regard, to face competition effectively.
(c) Helps to control price of product: Through advertising, it is possible to control price of the product especially in retail market. Very often greedy retailer charge higher price from the customer. The manufacturer can help them by printing the price on the packages.
Middlemen are essential link between producer and consumer.
The benefits which advertising offers to middlemen are:
(a) Quick Sale: Every retailer holds stock of different producer. Advertising, by making the range of products known to customer, helps the retailer to quickly sell its stock.
(b) Act as Salesmen: Advertising has been rightly described as salesmanship in print. Advertising perform task of travelling salesmen at least cost. That is why; most of the retail organizations do not employ large number of travelling salesman. Instead, they spend on advertising, which attracts customers to the shops, where counter salesmen cater to their need.
Ultimate aim of all marketing efforts is to satisfy the needs of the customer by providing the goods and services.
Advertising is essential for consumer due to following reasons:
(a) Quick decision making and saves time: In today’s competitive world market is full of different types of products which satisfy needs and want. Every producer claims his product to be superior one. In such situation, advertising helps the consumer in comparing features; price; utility; quality etc. of the product and select the best.
(b) Better Quality Product at Reasonable Price: Advertising promotes good quality product by printing their image in the minds of consumer. Due to this, bad product goes out of the market. Moreover, it increases competition in the market, which helps consumer in getting the product at reasonable price.
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Importance of Advertising for Society:
Advertising is not only beneficial for manufacturer; retailer and customer but also for the society.
(a) Uplift Standard of Living: Advertising has made it possible for general public to use those products which were luxuries of yesterday. Advertising increases the consumption pattern, it results in more production at least cost, which in turn increases earning of the society and thus, standard of living of the society.
(b) Generates Employment: Advertising generates gainful employment opportunities both directly and indirectly. It directly generates employment painters; artist; photographers; technician etc. Indirectly, it gives employment by supporting all those industries like paper; colour; electronic etc. which supply inputs for the advertising activities.
Importance of Advertising as a Promotional, Marketing and Business Activity
For an organization, advertising is important both as a promotional and as a marketing activity. As a business activity it holds its importance for an economy.
- As a Promotional Activity:
Advertising could have following effects:
- To generate awareness for the product.
- To impart knowledge about product to the customer.
- To cause the change in attitude.
- To induce trial behavior for the product.
- To have direct purchase action.
Advertising effects differ in different market situations. For a ‘less expensive frequently purchased product’ the use of repetitive advertising may cause trial purchase. In case the trial experience is satisfactory, it is expected to result into final purchase of a product. For routine or habitual kind of purchases like purchase of glucose biscuits, the mere exposure to an advertisement is likely to trigger a direct purchase action.
On the other hand, for the purchase of a product like automobile advertising is primarily used to generate awareness and impart knowledge about the product. Since such decision-making situation requires more of buyer’s deliberations, it is less likely that attitude change occurs due to advertising only. The use of repetitive advertising, however, provides reassurance like in the case of Surf Excel ads and helps in reinforcing the product choice.
- As a Marketing Activity:
Advertising is important for making decisions about other marketing tools and other business decisions about product, price, and place. The mix of different marketing tools in a given situation affects how a product is advertised and how far it is advertised.
The product is the most important part of any advertising plan. A successful advertising programme needs to know about the product’s features and where it fits in the market. Other important parts of effective advertising are the product’s packaging, its trade mark, and its taste, colour, texture, smell, style, and design.
Before these things are added to the advertising message, they are looked at to see how they might affect sales. Even though advertising doesn’t add any value to the product itself, it helps sell the product by telling people about it. One of the most important parts of building a brand is advertising.
If advertising costs money, it helps to compare prices between different brands. If not, the consumer gets a certain idea about the price of the product from the choice of media, the message content, and how the advertising is done. People seem to think that the price of a product and how much advertising it gets have a positive relationship.
Brands that spend a lot on advertising are thought to charge higher prices, while brands that spend less on advertising than their competitors are thought to charge less. At each stage of a product’s life cycle, the amount and type of advertising is tied to its pricing strategy. The positive relationship between high relative advertising and price level should be stronger for products in the later stages of PLC. This is especially true for products with a lot of sales and low prices.
How much advertising is seen depends on the goals and strategies for distribution. Product distribution can be broad, selective, or even just for a few people. Advertising as a way to reach a large number of people helps get a lot of product out there. It attracts people to the market and makes them want to buy the product. When a product has a limited or exclusive distribution strategy, advertising is mostly used to let people know that the product is available.
People often think of advertising as “salesmanship in print,” which verbally sells the product before the salesperson approaches the target audience. Advertising makes it easier for sales promotion techniques to be used in the market. Marketers often use tools like gifts, coupons, discounts, etc. to boost sales of products that aren’t selling as well as they used to or to counter the strategy of their competitors.
Advertising makes people aware of these tools and sets up the right conditions for success, which means more product sales. In the same way, advertising is a good way to let people know about public relations and publicity campaigns so that they can achieve their goals.
In a nutshell, advertising seems to be one of the many things that are done in marketing to talk to customers. A look at how decisions about advertising are linked to those about product design, pricing, and the choice of dealer. So, the ability of advertising decisions to help an organisation reach its goals is based on other decisions and how well they work together.
When decisions in other parts of the marketing mix get better, advertising decisions become more effective. At every stage of marketing, there is some kind of communication, and the main and most important act of communication is done by the end product itself.
But when advertising is used, it tends to be the most important part of an organization’s overall marketing and promotion strategy. So, the real goal of advertising isn’t to “sell” something, but to get people to try the product or service being offered and get them ready to be happy with it by “pre-sampling” it verbally.
Over the years, the advertising industry has grown by more than 15% per year, which shows how strong and hopeful the Indian economy is. The rising stock market, the lowering of prices across categories, and the growth of the real estate and entertainment industries have given advertisers new places to sell their products.
Along with the telecom and auto industries, the growth of the advertising industry is mostly driven by ads for new product categories like mutual funds, initial public offerings (IPOs), and aviation, as well as by more money spent on ads for rural and low-priced markets. In 2005, incoming traffic went up by 45.5%, and Rs 8,274 crores more were made than in 2003.
