Advertising is a form of communication which helps influence the behaviour of a target audience, towards purchasing the product or service offered in the message. Usually employing paid means, advertising is the act of promoting products, brands or services, with a view to create a favourable market for the same.
Advertising is primarily conducted to create awareness and subsequent demand for the products or services, primarily highlighting the positive features of the advertised. It is one such activity which is incredibly beneficial to the manufacturers, sellers (wholesalers and retailers), consumers and the society as a whole.
Let us discuss how advertising is helpful to one and all :
- ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR MANUFACTURERS :
- Creation of Market for New Products :Advertising helps introduce a new product in the market and boost its demand. It encourages people to purchase the product advertised by providing information about the product, emphasizing on the positive aspects of the product endorsed.
- Maintenance and Expansion of Existing Market :Advertising allows the manufacturer to expand his current market by exploring new markets for the product and retaining the existing ones. Advertisements help spread the message to customers even in remote areas.
- Helps Increase Sales Volume :Advertising promotes sales by making people aware of the products and their features. Awareness causes people to look for these products in the market and ultimately purchase them for use. As sales increase due to good advertising campaigns, the selling expenses also come down.
- Enhancement of Goodwill :Constant advertising and good quality of product ensures the popularity of the manufacturer and the product. This helps create a brand image and enhance the goodwill for the manufacturer.
- Helps Survive Competition :Continuous advertising is necessary to ensure that a product survives the competition posed by competing brands or products. People will choose the product offering them a better quality at a more reasonable price, and better features and advertising ensures a product stands out on these parameters.
- Higher Profits due to Elimination of Middlemen :Advertising helps create a direct link between the manufacturer and the ultimate consumer, thereby reducing the middlemen involved, resulting in higher profits for the manufacturers.
- ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR SELLERS :
- Supports Salesmanship :
- Supports Salesmanship: Advertising helps people become familiar with the products advertised. This reduces the work of salesmen who need less efforts to sell the products if people are already aware of them through advertisements.
- Increases Stock Turnover: Advertising causes the stock turnover rate to increase by popularising the product and creating demand for the same.
- Establishes Good Relationship with Customers: Sellers are able to establish good and permanent relationships with their customers on account of good quality products and services provided.
- ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR CONSUMERS :
- Consumer Education: Advertising acquaints customers with new products launched in the markets and their varied uses or with new uses of existing products. Thus advertising is highly educational in nature.
- Quality Products: Advertising helps an organisation become a brand. Branded products assure standard quality to consumers and hence help build confidence in the product.
- Encourages Thriftiness: Advertising promotes thriftiness among people and makes the audience aware of their responsibility towards their dependents. Various forms of insurance policies promoted through advertising have helped protect families from extreme poverty.
- Enables Comparison: Advertising helps consumers make rightful comparison between similar products or services on the basis of features advertised.
- Lower Prices due to Elimination of Middlemen: Customers get products at the lowest possible cost as there are no middlemen involved to charge higher prices to make secret profits for themselves. Advertising creates a direct connection between the manufacturer and the ultimate consumer.
- ADVANTAGES OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIETY :
- Rise in Standard of Living: Advertising helps raise the standard of living of people by stimulating their desire for a variety of new products and services or by providing them with alternative uses of existing products.
- Creation of Employment Opportunities: Advertising helps generate employment opportunities for many talented people such as artists, singers, photographers, cartoonists, painters, models, actors, musicians and other technicians involved in the advertisement making process.
- Promotion of Art and Talent: Advertising allows promotion of art and talent by employing various artists in the advertisement creating process.
- Public Education:Advertising is educative in nature and helps educate people through facts, figures and slogans used in various advertisements.
- Helps Create Public Awareness :Advertisements are useful for spreading general messages to the common public. They help protect people against deceptive products by making them aware of true facts and figures.
- Reduction in Selling Price of Newspapers :The expenditure on publishing the newspapers is largely met by the advertisements published in them. This results in bringing down the per unit cost of each newspaper.
