WJ#6 Research topic.

When we were asked to brain storm about possible topics in our majors I immediately knew there would be very little to write about in the field of chemistry.  So I decided to turn to ideas and issues that i find interesting, but have never actually taken the time to dive into.  Out of all my ideas, one thing seemed to stick out the most.  It became my first choice.

Topic for research:  Advertising and its effects on consumers.     

In my opinion, advertising in today’s society focuses less on trying to sell you a physical product, and much more on trying to sell you a lifestyle associated with a product.  All of us experience this daily, whether it is television ads, billboards, or ads in magazines, most of them try to pin-point unconscious desires within us.  Up until about WWII advertising focused primarily on functionality and durability.  If you needed a product back then, you needed it to last and to perform as long as possible, so the logical purchase was the one of best long term value.  Post WWII when the economy turned up and people had more money to spend things slowly became different as competition between companies became more and more important.  We see some of the first to attempts appear to manipulate public consumption with the idea of associating products with desirable lifestyles.  A very broad and generalized idea of this would be if you see an ad for a clothing line and everyone in the ad is not only wearing the clothes, but also socializing, laughing, physically fit, and unbelievably attractive then one could maybe relate the idea of the fabricated lifestyle in the ad to the clothes being sold. Thus, when given a choice between clothing, the consumer is drawn to the clothing that they think reflects the lifestyle of the ad.

 

There are tons of factors involved and this means that this isn’t always the case with all advertising 100% of the time, but i do think this is a common strategy in modern advertising.  I’m really interested into looking further into this idea and learning more about exactly how advertisements influence what we buy.  I think that there could be adequate sources to draw from and plenty of examples and perspectives to consider.