Friend or foe : the consumers’ perception of fashion ads

In advertising, the target has traditionally been aimed towards the product’s advantages.Today the trend is that the advertisers want to create a restless and unsatisfied consumer. Theconsumer on her part is not trying to achieve a goal with her consumption, but experiences theconsumption itself as a goal. Because of this the consumer demands a fast and variedselection.In order to sell their products the companies must create a non-existent need amongst theconsumers. Therefore it is very common in advertising today to use emotions instead ofinformation to attract the customers. Fashion ads are often created to form an emotion withthe consumer. It is also very important to make ads that the target group can identify with.The advertisers often try to achieve this by using models with positive qualities that theconsumer can look up to. Because of this we see a tendency that today’s fashion ads are verysimilar and can be hard to separate from each other.In our paper we want to go deeper into marketing communication as a subject by examininghow the receiver is affected by the message in magazine ads. To reach our aim we haveinvestigated, described and analyzed the fashion ads of today to see if they are built by similarcomponents and whether they attract the target group. Our chosen target group is womenbetween 20 and 30 years old. We have decided to have a hermeneutic way of interpretationand an inductive reasoning. To enlighten our problem areas we have chosen to conduct aqualitative study consisting of personal interviews where the objects were asked to make astatement about three fashion ads. We also conducted a quantitative analysis of the ad contentin three fashion magazines. In our theoretical frame of reference we have used marketingliterature. The paper therefore consists of both primary and secondary data.The conclusion of our studies is that our target group mostly perceives fashion ads aspositive, but they do not to a great extent identify themselves with them. They want ads to benatural and that the model is presented in a trustworthy environment regarding the productsthat are in the picture. It is hard for the consumers to separate the ads from each other andconnect them to a specific brand. The women in our target group require that the ads consistof more information, mostly regarding price and store location. Our analysis of content showsthat fashion ads today is similar in imagery and existing elements. The most prominentfeatures are female models and homepage addresses.Program: TextilekonomutbildningenUppsatsnivå: C