A study on public's view of advertising

Abstract

In this thesis public's view of advertising is studied. Salience of advertising to the public, and public's attitude toward advertising in general, and toward its institutional aspects in particular have been explored in determining public's view of advertising. Also, another major research area of the study was to find whether respondents make a distinction between advertising as the institution and advertisements as the instruments of the institution. According to the results o'f the study, advertising was found to have low salience among the respondents who have favorable attitudes toward advertising in general, and toward its social and economic institutions in particular. It is also found that respondents don't differentiate between the institution and instruments of advertising. A literature reviews presented to reveal the backgrounds of the study. As the instrument of the study a questionnaire has been made use of. Frequency, cross-tabulation, regression, and factor analyses have been applied by means of an SPSS program to the data. The results have been analysed, and the implications of the results for advertisers, marketers, researchers, and academicians are presented. One major contribution of this study will be on improving the functioning of advertising as an institution.