Abstract

‘Magazine’ is a media to communicate different advertisements as well as promotion of variety of products to the consumers. Magazine is usually a periodical publication. We have taken the initiative to conduct a research on females only to investigate the effectiveness of magazine in communicating beauty products. Since, females are more exposed to beauty products than males so they are more able to judge the effectiveness of magazine in terms of promoting the beauty products ads.

We have carried out our research on female population. We had a population of 147 females and after the eligibility test we have selected 120 female respondents to continue with our survey. Most of the respondents were chosen randomly, we have conducted mall intercept as well as the students of North South University were surveyed as it was convenient for us. We have set a structured questionnaire in a Likert scale form. The questionnaire adhered mostly to all our preselected variables and composed hypothesis.

For the purpose of this research, we have conducted the following tests based on 10 hypotheses based on 11 variables which were selected carefully using proper scaling techniques. To test the validity of our hypothesis we have used SPSS (IBM statistical analytical software). We have done tests like:

• Frequency distribution or Factor analysis test by Mean, median, mode, standard deviation, variance, skewness and kurtosis.
• Hypothesis testing using:
•  Regression analysis
• ANOVA
• Correlation

Results:

Recommendations:

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction

Rational

Symptom

Broad definition

Probable problem/ research question

Specific definition

Chapter 2

Literature review

Chapter 3

Methodology Section

Variables

Hypothesis

Questionnaire

Chapter 4

Results and Discussion

Frequency Distribution:

Hypothesis Test

Regression analysis

Anova test:

Coefficients

Correlation test

Chapter 5

Recommendation and Conclusion

Recommendation

Conclusion

Appendix

Chapter 1

Introduction

Now a day, it becomes an essential element to establish any name, brand or activity. Advertising effectiveness can be defined as the extent to which advertising generates a certain desired outcome. And in that race magazine plays a vital role. To understand the role of magazine to other media in driving consumers, there are many research on the consumer journey is a central consideration utilizing many aspects like awareness, opinion, situation, perception etc. There are mainly three elements of the communication that shows how consumers react to the buying decision. They are the recipients (audience, memory), the media used (impact, coverage, frequency) and the feedback (attitudes, behaviors, opinions)

For magazine publishers and the advertisers, it is really important to involve the target market by delivering related advertising messages with the perfect mindset of the consumer. For a consumer, time, perception and choices are crucial elements to control that mindset. Efficient and effective ways are needed to understand how to achieve marketing communication goals through multiple touch points. Research has shown that “When print media are used synergistically, print can lead people to see the other commercial in new ways, encourage more response, reinforce the message, and create a more positive feeling towards the brand” (Cooke, 1997). And like this, magazine advertisement let the consumer to grow a buying behavior as well.

The active process element of magazine advertising was evaluated by Millward Brown in 1995. It found that “proven” recall levels tend to be highest for consumer in communicating the buying behavior. In magazine, most of ad category has fallen down for promoting product or service. But there is 3.8% growth in cosmetics and toiletries category (Domm, 2013). Now we are going to measure the effectiveness of magazine in communicating new ideas among consumers. To measure this effectiveness, we are choosing beauty product.

We have targeted female or women for our research as they r more exposed to magazine which promotes beauty products in comparison to men.

Rational: If we consider from Bangladesh perspective, magazine is not a popular media vehicle. But from our research we are trying to find out the effectiveness of magazine in terms of promoting beauty product. We think that we will get a vast knowledge about magazine and its effectiveness from our research. For promotion specially for beauty product, we think that magazine is a good medium if there are new ideas available those advertisements.

Now, there are many factors which will attract women for seeing beauty product advertisement in magazine. From our study, we think that we can identify those factors and make it better for advertisement purpose.

Companies have to know the effectiveness point for promotion. We are trying to focus on those points which will help them to know better about the effectiveness for getting maximum benefit from magazine. We are also trying to evaluate which kind of advertisement is effective for customer. Marketers will get sufficient result from our research for from our study to what extent they should focus for promoting new products. For promoting beauty product, women are the most effective one. We are conducting research for the effectiveness of magazine for communicating the beauty products among female consumers. Our main concern will be female consumer as we are focusing beauty products for female.

Symptom: Beauty products advertisement in magazine is less effective in terms of commutating with the consumer.

Broad definition:  Beauty products advertisement in magazine is less effective in terms of commutating with the consumer because of less marketing effort provide by magazine.

Probable problem/ research question:  do we need to improve the marketing strategies of magazine to create effectiveness in terms of commutating with the consumer?

Specific definition:  Effectiveness of beauty products advertisement in magazine is based on- Presentation of the advertisement in magazine, size of the advertisement, image of the magazine, visualization, structure of the advertisement, awareness, attention, quality of product, simplicity, recognition and recall.

Chapter 2

Literature review

Magazine is one of the tools to communicate with consumer. It helps to build strong building brands.  Everyday many new ads are publishing in magazine of different company. If we go through all the ads of the magazine we can see that there are more luxury and posh type products ads.  It is applicable for different segments of product. Basically literate women are the reader of these magazines. That’s why in magazine we can see the ads of women based product more.  The study of Using magazines to boost campaign effectiveness PPA, 2005 to describe the importance of magazine to engage the consumers mentioned that Magazines have a unique advantage in this type of community Henley says: magazines dovetail well with the concept of ‘MY world’, because they enjoy many of the same characteristics as a close friend. They are triggers for conversations between friends – and are crucial to people in generating points of view. On the other hand, the study also mentioned that People look to their magazine as a trusted agent – which is critical to effective advertising as trust is a principal driver for brand development. (Source: Planning For Consumer Change, Henley Centre 2004)

Magazine advertising’s major benefit to businesses is its ability to display higher quality images than either newspaper or leaflet. It gives the opportunity to give higher quality glossy images which help the customer to get a better idea about the product and the company. “At the lowest level advertising can simply create a sense of familiarity, a feeling that the brand is ‘around’. This engages neither our intellect nor our emotions, and almost certainly happens below the threshold of conscious perception.” (hedges, 1974). It helps a customer to recall the product easily.

In 2013, 60 % consumer are trusting magazine for communicating with advertising which is 4% higher than 2007 (Consumer Trust in Advertising, 2013). From this perspective, we can say that people are communicating with magazine more than previous year. They are thinking it as a effective medium which they can trust. It is good news for adviser that consumer are understanding about their delivery product as a authentic sources.

When it comes to measure the power of magazine, it involves magazine brands as well. Magazine brands are important sources of content and it is playing one kind of art on paper. From the beginning it is influencing consumer on many effects. It creates a creative place for promoting product. Malcolm Net burn, Chairman, CDS Global has said that “The top 25 print magazines reach more adults and teens than the top 25 regularly scheduled primetime TV shows. Readership is consistent across generations, seeing less fluctuation among age groups than TV, Internet and radio.” (Net burn, n.d)

The study of using magazines to boost campaign effectiveness PPA, 2005 mentioned that Magazines cannot be consumed passively. The mental act of reading necessitates that attention is being paid to the content. Again magazines deliver advertisers the opportunity to embed their brands within the values of their readers.  So, this prove magazine is positively correlated with consumers attention to the magazine.

“Magazine advertising also scores very well when consumers consider guides to buying. This is because these are at the heart of why consumers buy magazines and why editors create content which helps them in this process. Advertising in magazines is considered an essential part of the media experience and is expected to be of real value.” (Source: Planning For Consumer Change, Henley Centre 2004, using magazines to boost campaign effectiveness PPA, 2005)

Again there are some criteria to measure the effectiveness of magazine. The content, color, theme, position is very important to make a magazine effective. And this is very important to measure are the consumer able to understand the meaning behind the advertisement of a particular product. When you’re competing with other advertisement from magazine to magazine, it is significant for designing the right layout and design elements to maximize the return on your advertising investment. Ashe-Edmunds (n.d) said that for reaching maximum people through advertisement, advertiser must know about their target audience, lead with advertiser benefit, emphasizes right benefits and using text blocks. If we know our target consumer, it will be easy for us to design the content easily.

A study of US 2001 proves that Magazines were discovered to generate advertising awareness three times more cost-efficiently than TV. This was due to the relative cost of ratings in the two media and the comparatively similar effect these ratings have on ad awareness. (Source: Planning for Consumer Change, Henley Centre 2004, using magazines to boost campaign effectiveness PPA, 2005).

From magazine advertising effectiveness (2000) we have seen that “television and magazine are offering repeat exposure for consumer but magazine advertisement can add additional ideas for their consumer.” For any advertisement achievement is necessary which can be achieved through proper objective. Magazine advertisement can use additional ideas for achieving this object.

Female consumers are the mostly targeted consumer for magazine advertising. According to National readership survey 21.5 million adults read consumer women’s monthly magazines across print and digital and 15.5 million adults read consumer women’s weekly magazines across print and digital. From this we can easily assume that most of the magazine reader are female. (Useful charts, 2016)

Elaborating the effectives of magazine in brand communication the study of Using magazines to boost campaign effectiveness PPA, 2005 mentioned “In radio and television advertising, the transient nature of the medium makes both the length of the commercial break and the number of different advertisers within it important factors which contribute to the impact of annot affect advertising in magazines.  Both  the  order  in  which advertisements are read and the degree of attention they are given are entirely up to the individual reader who can focus on whatever they like, whenever they like or as long as they like”.

The study of Using magazines to boost campaign effectiveness PPA, 2005 shows that “For the launch of a personal care product two media strategies with equal expenditures were tested: some households received 100 per cent television and others received advertising split 68 per cent television and 32 per cent magazines. After the campaign had run for one year the mixed-media strategy had outsold the TV-only strategy by 16 per cent. Most of the increase was due to increased weight of purchasing, rather than the greater penetration of the market – and this in turn was attributed to a more powerful communication of the advertiser’s message.”  As we are focusing on beauty product as it’s also a personal care product so this study proves that magazine is equally important as a message delivery media beside the other alternatives. Through magazine and newspaper, it is easy to get close to the maximum people. From Effective Advertising Makes People Remember Your Name. (2012) found that the lowly classifieds are perused by a huge number of people, especially on weekends If you slip a classified ad into the right category and keep it running consistently, you’ll probably get a response strong enough to at least pay the cost of the ad

From going through all this cases and secondary data we got some variable problem. To judge the effectiveness of the magazine we must have to think that is that magazine could create awareness among the customer to make them purchase the product. The advertisement should be easy to understand so that customer can recall the product easily. Magazine should be efficient in case of promoting personal care product. Most of the ads in the magazine are women based or posh product.  So content is very important of a magazine to attract the customer.

Chapter 3

Methodology Section

Variables: We have selected our variables based on the current trend of purchasing magazine among consumers as well as evaluating the earlier studies done in the similar field that describes the effectiveness of magazine and its overall impact on consumers specially woman,

Change in marketing strategies include

1. Price of the magazine
2. Content of the magazine
3. Font size
4. Font type
5. Color
6. Informative and persuasive message
7. Magazine recall
8. Image of magazine
9. Popularity of magazine
10. Other media reach (newspaper, television)
11. Growing popularity of social media (Facebook)
12. Less Social media cost
13. Readability
14. placement of magazine advertisement
15. Recognition and recall of magazine
16. Recall in shot run
17. Recall in long run
18. Create purchase intention
19. Message delivery
20. Ability to reach target audience
21. Awareness
22. Female are targeted mostly
23. Costs
24. Engagement
25. Boosts sales
26. Gaining trust of consumers
27. Efficient in mix media strategy
28. Clutter of message

Hypothesis: According to our variables we took some hypothesis.

1. Consumer do not think that magazine is a good media to promote beauty product
2. Consumer cannot recall the advertisements of magazine while purchasing
3. Consumer are unable to interpret the meaning of the content in the magazine
4. Magazine ads cannot increase buying intention of beauty products.
5. There is no difference between the attitude towards font and color of the magazine.
6. Magazine ads are not informative to the customers.
7. Magazine can’t reach high level of target audience.
8. Consumers are unsure about the quality of products advertised in the magazine
9. Consumer cannot pay attention towards beauty magazine ad because of other ads in magazine.
10. Consumer does not consider the placement of magazine ads to recognize beauty products.

Questionnaire: the questionnaire we made to take sample was divided into three sections.

Section 1 was for our eligibility testing. We ask our respondents are they familiar with magazine ads on beauty products. The respondents who passed this answer, they could answer the other questions.

Section 2 was consisted to know the information about the respondents. In this section we asked them about their age, occupation and educational background. We asked these types of question to know what kinds of consumer are mainly aware of magazine ads on beauty products. As our target audience was only woman that’s why we did not ask for gender.

In section 3 we did use five-point likert scale. We took some crucial variables and asked our respondents to rate those variables according to their satisfaction and dissatisfaction. We use 121 variables here.

Sample Data: we took 120 respondents to conduct our survey. All of our respondents were women. As in our country women reads magazine more. We selected our respondent in a non-probability way. We focused on literate people who read magazine as our respondent. It took 2 days to finish this survey and data collection process.

Most of our respondents were young and the age range was 18 to 25 and our most of the respondents were students. We asked many respondents are they exposed to magazine. Many of them said no.

Statistical data: to test our survey data we use SPSS which is statistical software. We did ANOVAs test, regression, frequency test and hypothesis test. We also show our results in pie chart. This SPSS is trustworthy and relevant software that’s why we chose this.

Chapter 4

Results and Discussion

Frequency Distribution:

Variable 1:

Graph:

This pie chart represents that Magazine’s is overall a good media to promote beauty products. The research findings show that 7.5% respondent are strongly disagree with the opinion, 16.7% are disagree, 38.3% give a natural review, 26.7% respondent are agree with this and 10.8% respondent are strongly agree  with the opinion that magazine is a good media to promote beauty product.

Variable 2:

Graph:

This pie chart represents thatrecalling tendency while buying beauty products. The research findings show that 5.8% respondent are strongly disagree that they can recall the product while buying it, 18.3% are disagree, 37.5% give a natural review, 25.8% respondent are agree with this and 12.5% respondent are strongly agree  with the opinion.

Variable 3:

Graph:

This pie chart represents the understandability of the message of magazines ads. The research findings show that 6.7% respondent are strongly disagree with the opinion, 13.3% are disagree, 38.3% give a natural review, 29.2% respondent are agree with this and 12.5% respondent are strongly agree  with the opinion and they understand the message of magazine ads.

Variable 4:

Graph:

This pie chart represents that Magazine ads create purchase intention of beauty product. The finding state  that 7.5% respondent are strongly disagree with the opinion, 20.8% are disagree, 34.2% give a natural review, 25.8% respondent are agree with this and 11.7% respondent are strongly agree  with the opinion and thought magazine ads create purchase intention of beauty product.

Variable 5:

This pie chart represents that font size of magazine ads is acceptable. The research findings show that 5.8% respondent are strongly disagree with the opinion because they thought font siz are not acceptable, 15.8% are disagree, 28.3% give a natural review, 30% respondent are agree with this and  20% respondent are strongly agree  with the opinion.

Variable 6:

Graph:

This pie chart represents that Magazine ads are informative. The research findings state that  only 5% respondent are strongly disagree with the opinion, 13.3% are disagree, 39.2% respondent give a natural review, 31.7% respondent are agree with this and 10.8% respondent are strongly agree because they believe that magazine ads are informative  .

Variable 7:

Graph:

This pie chart represents that Magazine is effective in terms of color. The research findings show that 3.3% respondent are strongly disagree with the opinion, 14.2% are disagree, 23.3% give a natural review, 40% respondent are agree with this and 19.2% respondent are strongly agree  with the opinion that magazine is effective in terms of color .

Variable 8: