Impact of Subliminal Advertising on Consumer Buying Behaviour: An Empirical Study on Young Indian Consumers

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to examine the impact of subliminal messages in TV advertisements on consumer behaviour. Though there are number of ways through which impact of subliminal advertisements can be unearthed, in the current study, behavioural approach was adopted, which included discussion on case study (group discussion on subliminal ads) followed by response on a questionnaire. A sample of 390 respondents was chosen from Kashmir division through multi-stage random sampling framework, which, by and large, consisted of young students being a part of higher education in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Data was collected through structured questionnaire which was reliability tested and validated as well. Apart from exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor, discriminant analysis was also utilized for reliability, validity and data analysis, respectively. On the whole, the observations have been found considerable and it has been observed that mostly subliminal exposure inveigles young consumers and seduces them into illicit relationships through the subconscious mechanism. Besides it, subliminal advertising has paramount significance in determining purchase intentions and compulsive buying tendencies of a young consumer. Consumers under study have shown significant differences in their compulsive buying propensity after having being exposed to subliminal advertising. The present study has greater importance for welfare advocates who can utilize present work and suggestions, in particular, to safeguard youth from the tactics of subliminal exposure.

Untying the Influence of Advertisements on Consumers Buying Behavior and Brand Loyalty Through Brand Awareness: The Moderating Role of Perceived Quality

“…From this perspective, this study has concluded that brand awareness created by advertisements influences the buying behavior of cosmetics consumers. Sofi et al (2018) stated that advertisement substantially predicts consumer buying behavior, while such an association becomes stronger when advertisement actively produced positive outcomes. In the same sense, this study has proved the mediation effect of brand awareness between advertisement and consumer buying behavior.…”

“…Advertisement is a mode of communication marketing through electronic or print media that persuade the customer to continue or adopt some action by paid content (Cheah et al, 2019). According to Sofi et al (2018), it is a non-personal way of sharing information related to a product produced by a sponsor with the help of media. Similarly, Ayanwale et al (2005) proposed that advertising is a paid, nonpersonal way in which concepts, products or services, ideas, and information are publicized through media (verbal, visual, and te't) and identified promoter influence behavior.…”

Identifying knowledge important to teach about the nervous system in the context of secondary biology and science education–A Delphi study

“…Another relevant context to discuss this principle is social media through which marketing has become an effective way of influencing people [ 123 ]. Students would perhaps benefit from knowing that the effect of unconsciously perceived sensory stimuli (subliminal priming) on human behavior is increasingly being used in political campaigns, product promotion and marketing across many areas of public interest to influence voters and consumers [ 124 ] beyond their awareness, and young people are particularly susceptible [ 125 ]. Consequently, introducing this principle in compulsory education is becoming more important since current technology is increasingly designed to impose consumer addiction by targeting the brain’s emotional and reward systems [ 126 , 127 ].…”

Neuromarketing: a systematic review

“…While a meta-analysis carried out in the 1990s (Trappey, 1996) found that the effectiveness of subliminal advertising is very low since each individual has different perceptions, the study by Hsu & Chen (2020) found this effect quite significant, using neuromarketing techniques. Furthermore, recent studies have found the influence of subliminal messages on the purchasing behavior of consumers, making them make purchases after being exposed to these messages in advertisements (Sofi et al, 2018), as well as indicating that the field of subliminal stimuli needs continuous research to really get a deeper understanding of how reliable this methodology can be (Madan et al, 2021). Thus, it can be understood that not only video can influence consumer behavior, but also the subliminal messages that are linked to it.…”