Abstract
Puffery usually been used in beauty product advertisements especially in a cosmetic product as it is a major expenditure for many women. We conducted a content analysis on two beauty magazines in Malaysia that are Female and Cleo. We aim to identify the elements of puffery in the advertising slogans that are used by beauty products company in advertising their products in the magazines. Result shows that Female magazines has 74.5% puffery slogans while Cleo employs 25.5% puffery in the advertising slogans. On top of that, results also shows that the beauty products that employ puffery in the advertising slogans decrease from 2015 to 2018. Based from the results, we conclude that the usage of puffery in advertisements decrease over the years as it is viewed as less effective and exaggerated.
Highlights
The intense rivalry in today’s marketing has forced companies to go great length in constructing effective advertising strategies to sell a product and win the consumers’ heart
A content analysis is conducted on the magazines to identify the frequency of puffery advertising slogans that appear in the respective magazines
Magazine has been chosen as the data sampling rather than other printed advertisement such as newspaper because this study focuses on the beauty advertisement
Summary
The intense rivalry in today’s marketing has forced companies to go great length in constructing effective advertising strategies to sell a product and win the consumers’ heart. According to Zhang et al (2006) we are exposed to nearly 500 advertisements every day, 182,000 every year, and almost millions in a lifetime These various advertisements are ubiquitous and that makes us nonchalant to think about its function as a form of discourse and a system of language use. Strutton, Hamilton & Lumpkin (1997) stated that marketers are constantly searching for better alternatives to increase sales volume while considering the ethical issue. This is because ethical marketing practices bring more sales and long-term sales relationships with customers. Preston (1975) defined puffery as advertising or other representations in which praise the product to be sold by subjective opinion, superlatives, or exaggerations, vaguely and generally, stating no specific facts
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