Case Study

Question 1

Why should involvement be related to advertising in magazines?

If you were an advertiser what would be the advantages of service journalism based magazines?

Magazines engage their audience like no other medium. Readers are actively involved with the magazines they choose to purchase and read, enjoying a strong and personal relationship with them. This relationship has special benefits for advertisers.

Saying this all magazines have different involvement levels, this is terms how much the reader is involved with magazine and the contents inside. It is a theoretical concept and is what many advertising companies research when choosing to advertise in magazines.

Advertising in magazines is becoming a very big industry, with the amount of magazines on offer at the newsagent, there is a wide range of choices and this is where advertisers need to research in which they are going to put their advertisements in. obviously involvement should be related to magazines, because companies need to be able to choose what and where they advertise.

Certain magazines have different involvement levels, here in this case study (4.1), they use the examples of Better Homes and Gardens and Women's Day. These have two totally different involvement levels with Better Homes and Gardens having a much higher level because it is a magazine that is designed to educate and teach you to perform things around your own home. For advertisers this would be seen as a better option to advertise for house goods and white goods, compared to advertising these in the Woman's Weekly. This is why involvement should be related to advertising in magazines, it is pointless advertising for baby food in a sporting magazine, and this is the case for extensive research so that advertisers can choose the right magazines.

Service journalism magazines aim at providing an in depth relationship with the reader, by providing them with information that in one way or another enriches their lives. As an advertiser I would see this as a good mine. These service journalism based magazines attract readers that want to learn things and be so called "hands on" people. These are the people that buy these magazines to look for new ideas and as an advertiser this is a great opportunity to advertise our products that are related to the magazine and its genre. Because when the readers are taking action they want to know what products to buy and use and advertisements in the magazine can show this, and this is why we as advertisers love service journalism magazines.

Question 2

What are some problems with explicit (paper and pencil) methods to measure self-concept and associations with it?

What is the benefit of the IAT approach?

Obviously there are different methods to measure people concepts and association with certain magazines, the explicit method being the Personal Involvement Inventory here in this case study. This is a paper and pencil method, and along with this method comes a few problems compared to the implicit method the IAT approach. With the explicit method, this gives the customers and the people being tested time to think about their answer so naturally they will just write that down because they read a certain magazine. They are unable to give unconscious answers that are tip of the tongue they are very conscious in what they write. This is the main problem with explicit tests and it is hard to overcome peoples perceptions rather than what they actually think. They may want to think something because it is the right thing to think, for example in the case study people that read Woman's Day are more involved in that magazine, this may be right but comparing the two test the IAT approach has far more benefits compared to the explicit test.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a new technique that researchers are very excited about in terms of being able to measure the implicit or unconscious associations.

It is well known that people don't always 'speak their minds', and it is suspected that people don't always 'know their minds'. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology and market research ion terms of these tests.

This is the main attraction with this sort of testing because it allows us to delve into what consumers are thinking and we can do various tests so that we can work out the right magazines

Question 3

How would involvement and self-concept relate to advertising in other media?

Involvement and self concept are words that are concerned with the consumers and this relates to how they perceive and are interested in the magazine. For example it would be no good if we were selling the Times magazine at the football as this type of crowd does not relate to that type of magazine, a sportier and action magazine would be better suited to them as they would be more involved and have a better self concept on the ideas in the magazine.

Self image is how the consumer perceives and thinks of themselves and below is four specific kinds of self image:

* Actual self image

* Ideal self image

* Social self image

* Ideal social self image

These four make up self image, in terms of how people see them, how they want to be seen etc.

It is easy for magazines to focus on their audience as they create a magazine of certain genre and people who are interested buy it, apposed to other media like television, radio and newspapers. These types of media are offered to all people and it is harder to have a media demassification, where they are able to focus on a smaller group of customers.