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MARKETING AND
ADVERTISING
The aim of this tutorial is to help you learn to
identify and evaluate marketing strategies and
advertisements.
Marketing in a consumer culture
2
Marketing a product or service is an essential component
of doing business in a consumer culture, like that of the
United States. A business’s success depends on its
ability to determine what customers want and then
provide it at a reasonable cost. To achieve these goals,
businesses need to plan and implement effective
strategies for marketing and advertising these products
and services. This involves identifying target markets and
customer “hot buttons” through marketing research.
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Approaches to marketing research
3
There are several approaches to marketing research,
including surveys, observation, and experimentation, each
of which requires proficiency in critical thinking and
inductive logic.
 Survey research is used to collect information and
opinions about a product.
 Observation involves directly monitoring consumer
buying patterns.
 Experimentation measures cause-effect relationships
between product purchases and selected variables such
as packaging, logo, or price.
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Marketing strategies
4
After gathering relevant information through marketing
research, the next step is to engage in strategic planning.
A strategic plan is a method by which an organization
deploys its resources to realize a goal or objective. In
business, strategic planning generally involves the use of a
strategic model, defined as “a systematic list of policies
that will guide the future specification of inputs, outputs,
processes, and values of the complete operations of the
business of the corporation.”
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The SWOT model
5

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SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats. The model is used for
developing new marketing strategies, as well as by
businesses and individuals for making major life
decisions. The first two factors, strengths and
weaknesses, require an internal assessment, while the
last two, opportunities and threats, require external
assessment.
The key in using a strategic model like SWOT is to
develop strategies that concentrate on a company’s
strengths and opportunities in order to overcome internal
weaknesses and external threats.
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Advertising and the media
6

Advertising has three purposes:
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To create product awareness
To inform customers about a product or service
To motivate customer demand and create brand loyalty

The ultimate aim of advertising is to make money, not
advance truth.

Most advertising reaches us through the mass media
and the Internet.
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Product placement
7

Product placement involves embedding advertisements
of targeted products within television shows, films or
streaming video. Often these product placements go
unnoticed, especially by children.

Research shows children under the age of eight lack the
cognitive maturity to recognize either the intent of
advertising or the fallacious reasoning and rhetorical
devices that are frequently used in ads. These problems
persist through the teenage years.
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Evaluating advertisements
8

When evaluating advertisements, there are a number of
questions we should ask.

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
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Are scare tactics used to persuade us we need the product?
Does the ad provide credible evidence to support its claims?
Does the ad rely on our tendencies of peer and group
conformity?
Does the ad set up a desirable image or lifestyle unrelated to the
product?
Does the ad employ other informal fallacies, such as hasty
generalization?
Does the ad use emotive language, images, or euphemisms?
Is the grammar confusing or the wording misleading?
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Evaluating advertisements (continued)
9

When evaluating advertisements, there are a number of
questions we should ask (continued).
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Is the language vague, ambiguous, or obscure?
Are the claims exaggerated?
Does the ad omit necessary information?
If the ad uses analogy, is the analogy relevant?
If the ad uses statistics, are they credible?
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Conclusions
10
Advertising influences a great deal of our buying habits
and beliefs, often more than we are willing to admit.
Because of this, we need to be constantly vigilant in using
critical thinking skills to identify and evaluate advertising
messages. Recognizing our tendencies and learning about
advertising strategies makes us less susceptible to
manipulative advertising.
© 2010, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.