Consumer Behavior Enhancement through Vague Language in Advertising

Consumer Behavior Enhancement through Vague Language in
Advertising
1 Introduction (2)
2 Vague language and advertising (3)
2.1 Brief introduction to vagueness (3)
2.2 Advertising as linguistic communication (5)
2.3 Advertising as linguistic choice (5)
2.4 Vague language in advertising (6)
2.4.1 Efficiency (6)
2.4.2 Flexibility (8)
2.4.3 Appropriateness (9)
2.4.4 Persuasion (10)
3 Consumer psychology and advertising (12)
3.1 The communication goal of advertising (12)
3.2 The role of psychology in communication (13)
3.3 The communicators in advertising communication (14)
4 Vague language in advertising and consumer psychology and consumer behavior 15
4.1 Consumer psychology and consumer behavior (15)
4.1.1 Pursuing freshness (15)
4.1.2 Pursuing brand (16)
4.1.3 Curiosity (16)
4.1.4 Psychological Synchronization (16)
4.1.5 Pursuing for the beauty (17)
4.1.6 Seeking bargain (17)
4.2 Vague language and consumer psychology and behavior (18)
4.2.1. Stimulating consumer’s motivation (18)
4.2.2. Stimulatin g consumer’s purchase desire (20)
4.2.3. Changing the consumer’s attitudes (20)
4.2.4. Inspiring the consumer’s imagination and emot ional experience.
(23)
5 Conclusion (25)
References (25)
1 Introduction
Since professor Lofti. Zadeh in the United States put forward the “fuzzy sets” theory in 1965, many studies have been conducted on the vagueness and a series of relevant frontier branches of vagueness has emerged in succession.
In fact, the process of using language is an active process in which speakers and hearers constantly have to make choices out of variables. The use of vague language in advertising is closely related to psychological factors that influence the communicator, and the studies related to consumer behavior indicate that consumer’s psychology directly influences consumer behavior.
The wide use of vague language in advertising has prompted a vast mass of research, among which many researchers have studied the pragmatic functions of vague language in advertising from language level. these studies have made great contribution to the research of vague language in adverting. However, they often have neglected one important aspect----consumer’s psychology.
Basing on this background, this thesis is to demonstrate the use of vague language in advertising and the consumer behavior enhancement through vague language in advertising.
2 Vague language and advertising
2.1 Brief introduction to vagueness
Vagueness is defined as an expression which has more than one possible interpretation (Zhang Qiao, 1998: 4). For example, the word “good”has a range of interpretations: good (fine) weather, good (hard-working) student, and good (warm-hearted) people.
According to Channell (1994:58), an expression or word is vague if:
a. It can be contrasted with another word or expression which appears to render the same proposition; and/or
b. It is ‘purposely and unabashedly vague’. Although much work has been done about vagueness, there is a considerable confusion between the terms “vagueness”, “generality” and “ambiguity”. The three terms share the common characteristic of conveying imprecise information, but they differ in the types of imprecise meanings they refer to.
As to generality, Zhang Qiao(1998:86) maintains, “the meaning of an expression is general in the sense that it does not specify certain details, i.e. generality is a matter of unspecification.”For example, the meaning of city is general because it does not specify whether of not a city is big or small, modern or ancient. My friend is general, as it could mean a female friend, a male friend, or a friend from New Zealand. the following sentences can be the examples:
a. Mary saw John.
b. Mary changed a baby.
c. Mary received a degree.
The meaning of sentence (a) is general because it does not specify whether or not Mary saw john in a shop, or in a school, or any other place. In sentence (b), Mary could change her own baby, or a baby belonging to her husband’s ex-wife, or a baby she has kidnapped. The question of “whose baby it is” is left open. In sentence (c), Mary could have an art degree, or a science degree; a BA degree, or a PHD degree. Again, the sentence does not specify what kind of degree Mary received Compared with others, ambiguity has a more established definition. Taking truth condition as the standard, Kempson(1977:128) regards a sentence as ambiguous if it is true in quite different circumstances. In other words, a sentence is ambiguous if it is simultaneously true and false, relative to the same state of affairs. Zhang Qiao (1998: 11) defines ambiguity as “expression which have more than one semantically unrelated meaning; in other words, an expression is ambiguous if it has several paraphrases that are not paraphrases of each other”. One example often quoted is: Flying planes can be dangerous. This sentence is ambiguous, since the expression flying planes itself has two unrelated meanings: planes that fly and the flying of planes by people. That is, flying planes has two paraphrases that are not paraphrases of each other. Similarly,
in Chinese, Xinsheng(新生) means ‘new student’ or ‘new life’, these two meanings are semantically distinct. Also, mi (米) has two different meanings: ‘Rice’ or ‘meter’.
2.2 Advertising as linguistic communication
Nowadays, there are many techniques that advertising can make use of, for instance, illustration, pictures, sounds, etc. However, language still plays an important role in making the product well-known and remembered. Therefore it still can be placed under the category of linguistic communication. It is one of the special cases of linguistic communication, in which no actual communication takes place at the very time of linguistic production. However, that does not diminish the communicativeness of this kind of language use. On the contrary, once it has access to the audience, it will be perceived and interpreted, either passively or actively.
2.3 Advertising as linguistic choice
As advertising belongs to the category of language use, a series of linguistic choices should be made in both advertising production and interpretation. However, advertising production is the focus of the present research, so it will be solely referred to.
Because of the great degree of directedness of advertising language, the advertiser must be highly conscious of the linguistic choices.
Furthermore, he does not only choose communication strategies either linguistic and extra-linguistic ones, or, in other words, language-internal and language-external ones. Finally, choices are not equivalent. Though all sorts of choices are available, not all of them are preferred. For instance, commendatory expressions are more frequently chosen.
2.4 Vague language in advertising
In order to achieve the goal, the advertiser must make linguistic choices in advertising production to adapt to the psychology of the consumer. With the development of advertising production, more advertisers employ vague terms in advertising production to adapt to the psychology of the consumer more effectively. The reason why the advertiser employs vague language in advertising production is mainly because of its functions.
2.4.1 Efficiency
Efficiency is the first distinct function of vague language. In modern society, vast colorful information of permeates our daily lives, and our life rhythm is becoming faster and faster. Customers tend to just quickly take a brief look at something. An advertisement today must be short and simple, otherwise it would be very costly. Thus the advertiser has to manage to convey as many messages as possible within the limited space
or time to cut down the advertising cost. Moreover, the longer an advertisement is, the easier the consumer may be irritated. Readers do not have enough time to read what they think is the boring and useless thing, so if the salesmen intend to catch these busy people’s attention, they must focus and occupy as little of their time and energy as possible. What’s more, according to some research, the length of a sentence should not be longer than twelve words if one wants his information to be correctly remembered. (J .Channell,2000:188)
Taking these two factors into consideration, more and more advertisers employ vague terms during the process of advertising process of advertising production. Using vagueness in advertisement is not always negative, but positive sometimes. Vagueness in advertisement usually plays a positive role in conveying free scope to imagination and interpretation. Here are two examples.
“Koca-Cola, adds your life.” (Koca-Cola)
“Too convenient.” (Polaroid Camera)
In these two advertisements, the words “adds” and “convenient”are vague terms. Containing abundant meanings, they have broadened the interpretative range of the advertisement, thus left much room for the consumer to imagine.
Therefore, i t’s a wise choice for the advertiser to employ simple but rich-contented vague expression to publicize the product. At this
point of view, the skillful choice of vague language can make an advertisement succinct and economical and cut down the advertising cost as well.
2.4.2 Flexibility
A principle feature of vagueness is indeterminacy, that is to say, vagueness is relatively elastic and flexible. Vagueness can be employed to minimize categorical commitments. Advertisers often resort to vague language to achieve their purposive communication in avoidance of categorical commitments. J .Channell (2000:188) argues that “vagueness may be used as a safeguard against being later shown to be wrong”. There is an example below.
“Listerine fights bad breath.” (Listerine Collutory)
In this advertisement, “fights” is a vague expression of great flexibility. “Fights” is used instead of “stops”, as it is not a categorical commitment and doesn’t indicate a definite warranty. If the consumer misunderstands the meaning of fights and believes that this collutory can stop bad breath, the responsibility of interpretation will be imposed on the consumer rather than the advertiser. So this advertisement withholds the advertiser’s personal commitment and shifts off the advertiser’s possible responsibility. Here is another example.
“Rheingold: the natural beer” (Rheingold Beer)
The use of vague word “natural”in this advertisement greatly enhances the flexibility of linguistic communication. Rheingold beer is natural, and this quality fitly adapts to the consumer’s psychology of returning to nature and refusing pollution. In modern society, with the raising of consciousness of green environment conservation and green health, the natural goods are often regarded as the best and accepted by people. Looking at this advertisement, people will spontaneously believe that this brand of beer will not do any harm to their health, for it is natural. But what is natural? Nobody can give exact explanation. The advertiser uses natural here and gives no any definite warranty. Therefore, the responsibility of interpretation is accordingly imposed on the consumer but not the advertiser.
2.4.3 Appropriateness
Appropriateness seems to be contrary to the characteristics of vagueness, but it is indeed the case. In fact, linguistic communication not requires only precision or accuracy, but also vagueness. Vagueness and precision is a dialectical unity. As Chen Guoping (1993:4) puts it, “fuzziness includes accuracy and indeterminacy contains determinacy.”In objective reality, there are too many “boundary phenomena”, in other words, the phenomena that belong to objective reality manifest indeterminacy. Vagueness is sometimes, an important means of accurately
stating or expressing these indeterminate, uncertain things and phenomena (Hyland, 1993：440). In advertising copies, advertisers always use vague terms to seek precision in expression.
“Simply better than other alcohols.” (Sop Whiskey)
If all the brands are identical, they must all be equally good, the legal minds have decided. Therefore, “best” means that the product is as good as the other superior products in its category. Here in this advertisement the word “better”has legally interpreted to be a comparative and therefore becomes a clear claim of superiority. The use of vague word “simply” better here does not show inferiority at all. On the contrary, it makes a promise to provide the alcohol with better taste and better quality. The promise is more real than such advertisements as “We produce best~~”“the most~~in the world”. The use of vague word “simply better”makes this advertisement more appropriate and acceptable to the consumer.
2.4.4 Persuasion
The ultimate goal of advertising is to persuade consumers to acquire goods or services advertised, and successful advertising should avoid pushing consumers to buy, but rather persuade them. The mission of advertising is to persuade people to act in a way that will be of advantage to advertisers. Thus the main role of advertising comes increasingly to
be persuading and appealing. Persuading is a process that changes a person’s attitudes, beliefs or behaviors by conveying certain information, yet the most effective method of conveying information is language. In other words, language is a component of realizing persuasion. The advertisers tend to employ all kinds of language skills to convey implicit or explicit information to achieve their goals, such as vague terms or something else. The following is the example.
“When seeking high taste, you will find JiaYi!” (JiaYi Dress) Here the vague word “high”implies that JiaYi dress owns the excellent quality and the rarefied design, meanwhile stirs the consumers’imagination---Wearing JiaYi dress, can help you possess higher taste and will be accepted more easily by other persons belonging to high class. The use of vague word “high”in this advertisement adapts to consumer’s psychology of pursuing status and identity and gives them deep impression. Here is another example.
“Miraculous and magnificent, beyond expression.”
(ShengHuang Lamps and Lanterns)
In this advertisement, the use of two vague terms “miraculous”and “magnificent”successfully reflects the high quality and magical effect of ShengHuang lamps and lanterns. Meanwhile, they arouse the consumer’s infinite imagination---staying at the room with such lamps and lanterns, one will feel very comfortable and contented; for the room decorated with
such lamps and lanterns looks very beautiful and feels very miraculous. The use of “beyond expression” heightens the brilliance of the light more effectively. What beauty cannot be explained in words? This simple phrase greatly arouses the consumer s’imagination and curiosity, and the only thing they want to do is to have a look and even have a try. Thus, the magic of the product advertised wells up in consumer’s heart and deeply impresses the consumer. In other words, such advertisement which deeply impresses the consumer would be more persuasive.
3 Consumer psychology and advertising
3.1 The communication goal of advertising
Because of the directedness of advertising language, the communication goal is of great importance. It can help explain why advertising language should get adapted to the advertiser’s assessment of the consumer’s psychology.
As the main purpose of the advertiser is to persuade the consumer to purchase the goods advertised in the consumer, therefore, it is of prime importance that he should adapt to the consumer’s psychology. Furthermore, since it is impossible to take all these factors into account, he has to decide to which aspect(s) his advertisement is to adapt.
3.2 The role of psychology in communication
Psychology plays an important role in verbal communication. The psychology refers not only to a person’s psychology, but also to his assessment of what the psychology of the interpreter looks like. (J .Channell,2000:188)
The psychology activated in language use contains two types of elements---cognitive and emotive elements. While the former provide a bridge between the mental and the social in the shape of conceptualizations in terms of which social interaction is interpreted, the latter are those elements such as affect and involvement, which reflect the participant’s attitudes and emotions characterizing and influencing the interaction.
Therefore, it is impossible to find a general summery for how the assumptions of the listener’s psychology are turned into. Besides, the mental state is dynamic rather than static. It is in a constantly changing state. Even if it is still hard to decide, apart from specific context, which aspects of it should be adapted to. On the other hand, supposing it is possible to decide which of the interpreter’s psychology should be adapted to, there occurs another problem---the degree of adaptation to different aspects may vary. therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the consumer’s psychology while producing the advertisement.
3.3 The communicators in advertising communication
Since advertising communication is different from face-to-face communication in which no real interpreter is present at the very time of advertising production, the audience of an advertisement is a “virtual interpreter”. The advertiser is constructing a virtual audience in his mind when producing an advertisement. In order to increase the possibility of the audience’s interpreting the advertisement as intended, he has to make some assumptions of what expectations the consumer might hold towards a product that is worth buying. Only after this stage will he make linguistic choices to make the consumer satisfactory, if not perfectly, interpret the message in the way as he has intended.
In producing an advertisement, the advertiser has to make sure to whom his advertisement is directed as well. Of course here whom the advertiser faces is no one else but a virtual interpreter. There is no other way except assessing what the psychology of consumer would be like. Before doing so, the advertiser should also make clear to what type of audience this message is oriented. That is to say, he should draw a picture of the potential consumer in his mind. Linguistic choices have to adapt to the perceived mental status of the addressee. Bearing how he looks upon the consumer in mind, the advertiser is expecting that what he produces would be properly understood and finally accepted by the consumer.
The consumer is not at present when the advertiser is producing the
utterance(s). The advertiser produces utterance(s) with the intention to present the product in such a way as to maximize chances of getting the consumer to buy it. The temporal and spatial positioning of the advertiser and the consumer is a little special, in that the consumer is not present the moment the advertisement is produced, and that the advertisement is delivered at a later stage to the interpreter. The linguistic channel for advertising can be both spoken and written language.
4 Vague language in advertising and consumer psychology and consumer behavior
4.1 Consumer psychology and consumer behavior
Consuming psychology has an important influence on consuming behaviors. During the process of buying products, consumers’ have the following psychologies which affect their behavior so much.
4.1.1 Pursuing freshness
New product can present one a kind of feeling of freshness and new trend which can make it fast-selling, people always curiosity and new things tend to give people a sense of curiosity and freshness. They can have an effect of “preconceptions”, and will not pay a lot of attention to the old products.
4.1.2 Pursuing brand
China consumers generally buy merchandise in the pursuit of prestigious brands, they trust brand names, even are loyal to the brand, and often dismissive on other similar non-brand products. Many Chinese people believe that the trademark is equal to quality, performance, price and characteristics, as it means it has established credibility and thus become the basis for decision making of the consumers.
4.1.3 Curiosity
Young consumers mostly have strong curiosity. Their lively and active thinking always push them to certain of aesthetic sense, and hope to lead trends. They are easily attracted by the novel things, and have strong respect for the wind of personality. Novelty merchandise can easily arouse consumers’ strong interest and purchase desires.
4.1.4 Psychological Synchronization
Social factors and psychological factors impact consumers in the purchase and use of goods, often with the hope to keep pace with others. They will purchase these products such as VCD, computer, as soon as after it has entered the tens of thousands of households. Most people take such a psychology: You have the VCD, I must have it too. This makes these commodities in the new stage very popular, this forced business had no
choice but to develop high-level new products to meet the need of consumers.
4.1.5 Pursuing for the beauty
Consumers choose the merchandise with specific packaging, this is consumer’s purchase psychology, constantly, a unique new and exquisite package and decoration can play an important role. Especially in a similar display of the products, the handsome packaging will be the summary qualitative factors for customers to buy the goods. When packaging aesthetic further meets customers’ demand, customers are willing to pay higher prices for goods.
4.1.6 Seeking bargain
The consumers often have a subjective valuation about the product. In other words, consumers understand the value of goods and price, also known as expected price. There is often an expected price range. If the price exceeded expectations, consumers will say it’s too expensive. When consumers can not distinguish products’ quality, they commonly use the evaluated price. Thus, low commodity prices do not mean sales promotions, high prices are not necessarily unsalable.
During the pursuit of marketing trade which makes the center of consumer, to obtain more marketing shares for an enterprise, advertisers
have to master consumers' psychology and make adequate selling strategies .At last, he can get an advantageous position and make more profits and marking
4.2 Vague language and consumer psychology and behavior
The ultimate goal of advertising is to facilitate consumer behavior through stirring consumer’s purchase desire, and then to enlarge the product sales. As it’s mentioned, consumer behavior greatly depends on consumer’s certain psychology. So the advertiser intends to employ vague language in advertising production to enhance consumer behavior through adapting to consumer’s certain psychology.
4.2.1. Stimulating consumer’s motivation
Need is the most basic cause to impel people to engage activities. However, not all the needs can transform into purchase motivation. Therefore, it can be said that motivation is the more direct cause to arouse behavior. Regarding consumers, their purchase behaviors are similarly caused by motivation and reflect certain needs. Consumers’purchase motivation is the internal drive to impel them to purchase the product or service and it reflects consumer’s needs in psychology, mentality and emotion. So long as in awaked condition, all of people’s activities must be driven by certain motivation. Consumer’s purchase behavior in the market also belongs to this category; it is also dominated
by definite motivation or even dominated by multi-motivation. Therefore, in real consuming process, consumer needs, consumer motivation and purchase behavior are closely related to each other.
In advertising production, the advertiser always stirs the consumer s’ motivation through employing appropriate language strategy (vague language) to adapt to, induce and adjust consumers’ needs and motivation; and ultimately lead to purchase behavior.
“Value the natural, benefit our health. Drink Shanquan often, happy often.”
(Shanquan Mineral Water) This advertisement adapts to the consumer’s psychology of pursuing natural and health care. Why would consumer like to buy green natural products at the same or even higher price? This comes down to the purchase motivation of green consumption. With the development of economy, the quality of consumer’s living has improved universally. Once they are satisfied with the basic material needs, the consumers would yearn for higher-level living quality; then green needs emerged as the times require. In this advertisement, the advertiser employs the vague terms“natural”and “health” to awaken the consumer’s needs of pursuing natural and health care. Once being waken, needs would result in drive to impel the individual to seek needs; that is to say, needs would drive the individual to purchase certain product to satisfy his/her needs. This advertisement
has successfully aroused the consumer’s motivation of green consumption through awakening his/her purchase desire.
4.2.2. Stimulating consumer’s purchase desire
The perception process of human includes three inter-related phases: exposure, notice and comprehension. (Byrne,1976:6) Limited by cognitive ability, people are unable to notice and deal with all the information exposed on them in certain period of time; they only pay attention to and comprehend part of the information. In other words, when perceiving objects, people usually limitedly and selectively perceive certain ones or certain aspects of them.
In modern society, commodity advertising stands in great numbers. Limited by cognitive ability, consumers can only choose part of advertising information and refuse the others from psychology. Moreover, favorable perception of the advertisement would affect consumers subsequent behaviors related to the advertised product, for example, seeking more information about the product, and /or trying to obtain the consumers to purchase the product advertisement through attracting their attention and moving their emotions.
4.2.3. Changing the consumer’s attitudes
As mentioned above, consumer’s attitude influences his/her purchase behavior to a great extent. In some sense, consumer’s attitude directly
decides the direction and realizing degree of his/her purchase process. Although attitude reflects the individual’s internal situation and his/her taste tendency to objects, it is also the forerunner of individual’s behavior and the important index to predict it.（Joanna Channell, 2000:3）The stability of attitude doesn’t mean it is invariable, because it can be changed and forms into the new one with the change of external conditions and individual factors.
For advertiser’s part, potential consumer’s attitude towards any advertisements would result in the psychological tendency to buy the advertised product or service or not. Therefore, in advertising production, the advertiser must select appropriate language strategy to adapt to or change consumers’attitude and overcome their psychological prevention mechanism against advertisement; based on this, the advertiser would then persuade the consumers to form positive attitude towards advertisement and induce them to buy the advertised product or service.
“The best-selling drink in the world.” (Coca Cola Drink)
This is an advertisement for Coca Cola. The advertiser doesn’t directly tell the consumer the high quality of the product, and he just uses vague term “best-selling” to implicitly express this idea. The advertiser doesn’t directly praise the high quality of the product, he just tells the consumer Coca Cola is the best-selling in the world, but the consumer tends to give the following interpretation: selling well is
equal to the good quality of the product; certainly, “best-selling”is equal to “the best quality of the product”. Such high quality product surely is worth trusting. Therefore, best-selling vividly shows the strong actual strength of Coca Cola Company and the attractive charm of Coca Cola; it changes the consumer’s disgusting and distrust attitude towards the advertiser’s praise of product and successfully wins the consumer’s approval. Towards the products which they approve with, the consumers would rather like to buy and try to use it.
“Experts all use Chunhua.” (Chunhua Vacuum Cleaner)
The word “experts” in this advertisement is a vague term. What is the standard of experts? Which kind of people can be called experts? There is no definite standard and answer. The advertiser effectively uses this vague term to compliment the consumer with experts as initiator, thus this advertisement possesses great persuasion. The use of vague term”experts”leads the consumer into such imagination: the product what the experts choose must be the best one; now that the experts choose “Chunhua”, so it must be what is worth buying and using. The consumers always trust the expert’s judgment, so this advertisement aptly adapts to such attitude and psychology. In this way, the consumer’s trust towards the product generates the rational consumption reason forms and then the purchase behavior will surely come into being.。