Abstract
This paper attempts to do a content analysis of print advertisements of the top five1 Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) brands in today’s highly competitive Indian automobile market. Specifically, Resnik and Stern’s (1977) classification system has been used to infer a pattern of advertising practices followed by the SUV advertisers and to analyse the informational cues and creative strategies used by these advertisers. The analysis suggested the presence of informational cues in all the advertisements analysed. Quality, shape and performance emerged as the most extensively used informational cuesfor the selected SUV advertisements as compared to others. The analysis of creative strategies of the selected SUV advertisements revealed that information; reasoning and psychological appeals are used more over any other creative strategies by advertisers.This result is unlike the common notion that the target market of SUVs is brand-conscious.The results complement the fact that, in India in general, the SUVs are preferred for safety, as four of the five brands have used safety as an informational cue in their advertisement.
Highlights
Research Questions This study aims to address the following research questions: RQ1: What informational cues do advertisers most frequently use to appeal to their prospective Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) target market? RQ2: What creative strategies do advertisers most frequently use to appeal to their prospective SUV target market?
All the thirteen commercials indicated the presence of informational cues and have been considered informative.Further analysis (Table 1) indicates that, quality (92%) and shape (92%) are the most extensively used informational cues followed by performance (85%) and components (69%) as well as new ideas (69%) respectively.An interesting revelation from Table 1 is that guarantees and warranties, independent research and company research are the three informational cues, which have not been used at all by SUV advertisers
Packaging cue has been used in all the SUV advertisements except Renault Koleos
Summary
Research Questions This study aims to address the following research questions: RQ1: What informational cues do advertisers most frequently use to appeal to their prospective SUV target market? RQ2: What creative strategies do advertisers most frequently use to appeal to their prospective SUV target market?
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