A Study on Viewers’ Responses to Television Commercials In Sri Lanka

Abstract

Advertisements, as a part of communication strategies for marketing, are used to draw consumers’ attention and influence their decision to purchase the products and services. Television advertisements are the most authoritative, influential and persuasive advertising medium when to with other media. Television advertisements tend to use well known presenters, persuasive messages and audio-visual effects in perfect combination for lively display of products and services. Viewers have a variety of responses to TV commercials and such responses are reviewed through this article. In spite of the rise of big data and the ease in which online experiments and surveys are conducted, there is a need for qualitative advertising research. This study focuses on the role of qualitative analyses in revealing how viewers respond to advertisements. In-depth interviews and observations were the main tools which have been used to collect data from 15 participants to produce richer and clearer understanding of consumer behavior in response to advertising. However, this study used thematic analysis to analyses the data and noted four themes: experiencing the newness, recommendation of products, responding to personal related issues and avoiding of advertisements. Finally, the research concludes with practical implications like using crawler advertisements and product placing to target the correct target audience.