A STUDY OF TAIWANESE SIXTH GRADE STUDENTS’ RESPONSES TO SELF-SELECTED ADVERTISEMENTS
A thesis submitted to the College of the Arts of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
by
Yen-Ping Lee
August, 2009 Thesis written by
Yen-Ping Lee
B. Ed., National Taipei University of Education, 2001
Approved by
, Advisor Koon-Hwee Kan
, Director, School of Art Christine Havice
, Interim Dean, College of the Arts John R. Crawford
ii LEE, YEN-PING, M.A., AUGUST, 2009 ART
A STUDY OF TAIWANESE SIXTH GRADE STUDENTS’ RESPONSES TO SELF- SELECTED ADVERTISEMENTS (181 PP.)
Director of Thesis: Koon-Hwee Kan
Advertisements play a significant part in the everyday lives of students, advertisements impacting not only their purchasing habits but also the way they construct knowledge about the world in which they live. Art education inspired by visual culture could be a beneficial place for students to develop abilities to see advertisements critically and then make informed choices in their lives. In order to design an effective curriculum to meet both the needs and interests of students, an understanding of their responses to advertisements is essential. Thus, the purposes of this study were (a) to understand how a selected group of the sixth-grade students in Taiwan formulate their preferences for self-selected advertisements, and (b) to investigate their responses to advertisements. The researcher used a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach to collect data, which consisted of three survey questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. A convenience sample that included a class of 32 sixth-grade Taiwanese students was used. Data analysis yielded two important, broad findings. First, the students have indicated their advertisement preferences and have identified the purposes of the advertisements and interpreted them in complex and various ways. Second, advertisements permeated the daily lives of students, who interacted with them positively
1 2 and passively. Furthermore, implications for art education practice and general education in Taiwan were discussed along with recommendations for future research in this area. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
TABLE OF CONTENTS...... iii
LIST OF FIGURES...... vii
LIST OF TABLES...... ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... xi
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION...... 1
Overview...... 1
Purposes and Significance...... 3
Research Questions ...... 4
Definitions of Terms...... 4
II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND RESEARCH...... 6
Overview ...... 6
Visual Culture...... 6
Visual Culture Art Education (VCAE) ...... 7
iii The Impact of VCAE on Art Education...... 9
Ads as a Part of Visual Culture...... 10
Strategies of Ads ...... 11
Ads Inside of the Schools...... 12
Effects of Ads on Children and Adolescents...... 14
Strategies of Deconstructing Ads in VCAE...... 17
Related Research...... 19
Summary...... 22
III. RESEARCH DESIGN...... 23
Overview...... 23
Methodology...... 23
Setting and Sampling...... 24
Methods...... 25
Data Collection and Procedure...... 27
Data Analysis ...... 29
Role of the Researcher, Ethical Issues and Limitations...... 30
Summary ...... 31
IV. RESULTS OF QUESTIONNAIRES...... 32
Overview...... 32
Media Exposure Survey...... 32
Print Ad Media and Commercial Logos...... 38
Results Related to the First Research Question...... 49 iv Results Related to the Second Research Question...... 61
Results Related to the Third Research Question...... 81
Results Related to the Fourth Research Question...... 89
Summary...... 106
V. RESULTS OF INTERVIEWS...... 107
Overview...... 107
Students’ Perceptions of Gender...... 107
Students’ Perspectives on Spokespersons...... 118
Cultural Influences on Students’ Willingness to Be Spokespersons...... 126
Entertainment Effects in Ads...... 132
Students’ Positive and Passive Interaction with Ads...... 140
Summary...... 148
VI. CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS...... 149
Conclusion...... 149
Implications...... 151
Suggestions for Future Research ...... 159
APPENDIXES
A. Consent Form...... 161
B. Recruiting Script...... 163
v C. Assent Form...... 164
D. Audio Consent Form...... 165
E. Audio Assent Form...... 167
F. Media Assessment Form...... 168
G. Print Ad Media Questionnaire...... 169
H. Critical Inquiry into Advertisements...... 171
REFERENCES...... 173
vi LIST OF FIGURES
Figures Page
1. The average amount of time the students devoted to all media and each of the 37 six media during a week……………………………………………………….....
2. Bar figure depicting the frequency and percentage of each print ad medium 42 chosen by the students as their top three most familiar print ad media…….….....
3. Bar figure depicting all commercial logos drawn by students as the top three 47 most familiar commercial logos……………………………………………….....
4. Bar figure depicting five categories of students’ top three most familiar 48 commercial logos……………………………………………………………......
5. Bar figure depicting nine categories of the students' self-selected ads………...... 55
Breakdown of responses to “Which part of the ad attracts you most?” by gender 6. 60 ……………………………………………………………………………..…......
7. Breakdown of responses to “Who is speaking in the ad?” by gender………….... 64
8. Breakdown of responses to “Is that person who is speaking in the ad worthy of 68 trust?” by gender…………………………………………………………...... …
9. Breakdown of responses to “Who do you think this ad targets?” by gender…..... 72
10. Breakdown of responses to “What is the purpose of the ad?” by gender……...... 76
11. Breakdown of responses to “Who gained the most benefit from this ad?” by 80 gender………………………………………………………………………….....
12. Breakdown of responses to “How do you feel when you are looking at this ad?” 84 by gender………………………………………………………………......
vii 13. Breakdown of responses to “What does this ad think you of” by gender……...... 88
14. Breakdown of responses to “How do you feel the text and images go together? 92 Successfully or not?” by gender……………………………………......
15. Breakdown of responses to “Have you ever purchased the product that is shown 96 in this ad? Were you satisfied with the product?” by gender…………......
16. Breakdown of responses to “If you have enough money, do you want to buy the 101 commodities or do the things suggested by the ad?” by gender…………......
17. Breakdown of the effect of previous purchase experience on willingness to buy 105 the product, by gender……………………………………………………......
viii LIST OF TABLES
Tables Page
1. The average amount of time the students devoted to all media and each of the six media during a week………………………………………………………...... 36
2. Frequency and percentage of each print ad medium chosen by the students as their top three most familiar print ad media…………………………………...... 41
3. Breakdown of all commercial logos drawn by students as the top three most familiar commercial logos………………………………………………...... 46
4. The products and brands endorsed by the student’s self-selected ads, by gender……………………………………………………………………………...... ….... 52
5. Breakdown of non-Taiwanese brands and Taiwanese brands...... 53
6. Frequency and percentage of each category of the students' self-selected ads...... 55
7. Breakdown of responses to “Which part of the ad attracts you most?” by gender …………………………………………………………………………...... …..… 59
8. Breakdown of responses to “Who is speaking in the ad?” by gender…………...... 63
9. Breakdown of responses to “Is that person who is speaking in the ad worthy of trust?” by gender……………………………………………………………...... 67
10. Breakdown of responses to “Who do you think this ad targets?” by gender…...... 71
11. Breakdown of responses to “What is the purpose of the ad?” by gender……...... 75
12. Breakdown of responses to “Who gained the most benefit from this ad?” by gender…………………………………………………………………………...... 79
ix 13. Breakdown of responses to “How do you feel when you are looking at this ad?” by gender………………………………………………………………...... 83
14. Breakdown of responses to “What does this ad make you think of?” by gender…………………………………………………………………………...... 87
15. Breakdown of responses to “How do you feel the text and images go together? Successfully or not?” by gender……………………………………...... 91
16. Breakdown of responses to “Have you ever purchased the product that is shown in this ad? Were you satisfied with the product? ” by gender……...... ….. 95
17. Breakdown of responses to “If you have enough money, do you want to buy the commodities or do the things suggested by the ad?” by gender………...... ….. 100
18. Breakdown of the students’ reasons why or why not they want to purchase the products in the ads, by gender…………………………………………...... ….. 102
19. Breakdown of the effect of previous purchase experience on willingness to purchase the product, by gender…………………………………………...... ……. 104
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people deserve thanks for their contributions to this thesis. First, I heartily thank Dr. Koon-Hwee Kan, my advisor, whose intelligent insight and constructive guidance have enhanced this thesis in numerous ways. She has always helped me, broadening my perspectives throughout the 2-year academic journey. I feel very fortunate to have the other committee members who have been of enormous benefit to me in the writing of this thesis: Dr. Linda Hoeptner Poling, whose critical eyes and unique teaching methods have always inspired my thinking; and Professor Janice Lessman-Moss, whose genuine support and valuable suggestions have encouraged me from the outset. I thank the student participants who spent time completing the questionnaires, talking with me, and sharing their life stories. This thesis would not have been possible without their cooperation. I cannot end without thanking my friends and family, who provided me with constant love and support. Among these friends, I particularly thank Wen-I Chang, who has always motivated me to pursue my goal. I am also grateful to my parents and two sisters in Taiwan, without whom this academic trip to the United States would never have been possible. Finally, I offer my regards and blessings to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the study.
xi 1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Overview
A Story about the Power of Ads
When I was teaching in a fifth grade class in a geographically remote elementary school in Taiwan, the mother of one of my students came to discuss a problem she was having with her child, who pestered her to buy the newest Nike shoes, which cost her one tenth of her salary. After she denied her child’s request, the child saved breakfast and lunch money for a month. In another class, several students even stole money from others in order to buy these expensive brands. These incidents motivated me to pay closer attention to my students, most of whom were attracted to Reebok and Puma brands in general and Nike in particular. Comparing their newest shoes and discussing the newest commercials with one another, they wore Nike shoes to fit in with their peers and distinguish their peer group from others. Brand logos and commercial images often appeared on their works of art, their backpacks, desks, and uniforms; and they frequently used the slogans and songs in their conversations, imitating the actions and styles of the celebrities in commercials.
I wanted to discuss the situation with my students, so I asked them why they bought or even wanted Nike, Reebok, and Puma products, which cost them a great deal of money. Some of the answers I received included the following:
“I saw these brands a lot. They make cool commercials.”
“The brand names are very important!” 2
“Everyone likes Nike. It makes people cool.”
“No reason. Just do it!”
“Without the right brands, I am not good and may be ostracized.”
One of my students suddenly asked me: “Why are you, Teacher, also wearing
Nike shoes?” Startled by the question, I thought that I had bought the pair of shoes because I liked the function and aesthetic design of the shoes; but I can’t deny that the
Nike brand name, logo, and its advertisements (ads) made me feel special, athletic, cool, and a little fashionable. In the sporting goods stores, I always went directly to the Nike section and bought only Nike products; and I enjoyed the exciting and attractive Nike commercials. For my students and me, Nike, Puma, and Reebok were not merely commodities but also indicators of a specific lifestyle and moreover a part of our identity.
Problem Raised by the Story
Many educators in the field of art education, both in the United States (Tavin,
2003a) and in Taiwan (Chao, 2005b) have recognized ads as one of the most ubiquitous and powerful elements of visual culture. People are exposed to ads from the day they are born; in fact according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children watch television every day and view at least 40,000 television commercials each year (Quart, 2003).
Advertising not only plays a significant part in students’ everyday lives, but it has also become the most influential curriculum used by students to construct knowledge of the world (Freedman & Schuler, 2002).
Ads exert both positive and negative influences on individuals and society as a whole. On one hand, ads are necessary for economic growth (Arens & Bovee, 1994). 3
They provide people with pleasure and fun, and represent the dream-life of the culture
(Tavin & Anderson, 2003). Researchers have found that public service ads have effectively promoted the welfare of society (Snyder, 2001; Zimmerman & Palmgreen,
2008). On the other hand, driven by capitalism, the purpose of ads is to create desire and discontent and then, ultimately, to provide people with solutions—specific products
(Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005). For advertisers, students represent an immense market because they spend enormous amounts of money and have great influence on the purchasing habits of their peers and families (Quart, 2003). In the 21st century commercials have insinuated themselves in the schools. By offering commercials and corporate-sponsored curricula, advertisers have attempted to persuade students to define themselves as consumers (Giroux, 2001). Numerous researchers have determined that ads may affect young people in terms of at least four basic kinds of health issues, including physical, emotional, cultural and social health (Fox, 2001).
Purposes and Significance
If public educators ignore the pedagogical functions of ads, the myths conveyed and the manipulation carried out by ads will not only weaken the values important to democratic life but also reproduce class, race, and cultural hierarchies (Giroux, 2001). Art educators must design proper curricula to help students develop critical, meaningful, and reflective thinking through visual culture, such as ads, so that students can make informed decisions (Tavin, 2003b). If educators incorporate ads into the art curriculum, students can uncover the influences of ads upon them, reflect their identities constructed by ads, and discuss larger issues of politics, economics, gender, race, and class. 4
Ultimately, this kind of curriculum can contribute to personal growth, social justice, and democracy.
The purpose of this study is (a) to understand how a selected group of sixth-grade students in Taiwan formulate their preferences of self-selected ads and (b) to investigate the ways that they respond to ads. In addition, I also want to explore the relationship between gender and the students’ responses to ads, which serves as a pilot study to help me develop the direction of my future study.
The study could help art educators understand more deeply students’ preferences, understandings, interpretations, and evaluations of ads in Taiwan. Effective learning takes place when students are engaged through their interests and needs (Yuan, 1996).
Practically, this study could help art educators design better curricula that meet not only students’ learning needs but also their interests.
Research Questions
1. What preferences are indicated in the students’ self-selected ads?
2. What purposes do students see in the ads?
3. How do the students interpret the ads?
4. How do the students evaluate the ads?
Definitions of Terms
For the purpose of this study, the following terms are defined operationally:
• An advertisement, or ad, is one of the important parts of visual culture. An ad
consists of any message produced by commerce to attract people’s attention, to 5
convey information about products and consumable commodities in order to
influence people’s purchasing decisions.
• A print advertisement, or print ad, is a type of advertisement that informs people of
its message through some static means, such as newspapers, commercial flyers/store
ads, Internet, magazines, books, billboards, posters, and commercial product
packaging.
• A logo is a graphic symbol or a design item used by a manufacturer or seller to
distinguish its product or products from those of others.
• Media refers to the means of mass communication, by which commerce delivers the
ads to the public, including television, internet, radio, newspapers, magazines,
billboards, movies, commercial flyers/ store ads, and so on.
This chapter has introduced the purposes and significance, research questions, and definitions of terms. The next chapter explores related literature and research, including visual culture, visual culture art education (VCAE), the impact of VCAE on art education, ads as a part of visual culture, strategies of ads, ads inside of the schools, effects of ads on children and adolescents, strategies of deconstructing ads in VCAE, and related research. 6
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND RESEARCH
Overview
This study focused on a selected group of sixth grade Taiwanese students’ perspectives and preferences of ads and the ways they responded to ads. In this chapter, related theories and studies are presented as a foundation for the current study.
Visual Culture
The definition of visual culture varies in the field of art education. Freedman and
Stuhr (2004) defined it as “the totality of humanly designed images and artifacts that shape our experience” (p. 816). Mirzoeff (1999) asserted, “[v]isual culture is concerned with visual events in which information, meaning, or pleasure is sought by the consumer in an interface with visual technology” (p. 3). Foster defined visual culture as “both a partial description of a social world mediated by commodity images and visual technologies, and an academic rubric for interdisciplinary convergence among art history, film theory, media analysis, and cultural studies (as cited in Tavin, 2003b, p. 203).
In this paper, I have adopted Freedman and Stuhr’s definition: visual culture refers to an all-encompassing category of visual imagery, artifacts, and experiences. The visual culture includes paintings, sculptures, performing arts, music videos, television, comics, video games, computer graphics, toys, billboards, magazines, fashion, packaging, interior design, shopping malls, theme parks, and any other manmade visual influences on our lives, all of which represent in part the visual culture (Freedman & Stuhr, 2004). 7
More recent technologies, such as television and the Internet, have greatly increased the power and influence of visual imagery and visual experiences in students’ everyday lives. Visual culture, particularly popular culture through mass media, has become one of the most influential curriculums used by students to construct their identities and their relationship with others (Tavin, 2003a), more than any other institution, such as religion, schools, communities, or families, which once played the principal role in shaping students’ knowledge and beliefs (Efland, 2005).
Visual culture cannot, however, completely represent the reality of our world, but instead creates a plethora of virtual imagery and experiences in the real world. Giroux
(2001) stated that the pedagogical function of popular culture is often ignored in public education, where students are often left to negotiate the imagery on their own without critical perspective (Smith-Shank, 2004). Students’ passive interaction with imagery may cause them to accept imagery and its messages unconsciously; moreover, unexamined imagery could be recycled to become students’ prior knowledge, which they use as a guide to make sense of the world. As a result, the system of prior knowledge may be a catalyst for intolerance, such as racism and sexism (Smith-Shank, 2004); hence, developing students’ abilities to see visual culture critically in this field is important.
Visual Culture Art Education (VCAE)
By the end of the 20th century, interest in visual culture in the field of art education increased. Visual culture art education was a new movement or approach that followed
Discipline based art education (DBAE) in the United States (Dorn, 2005). Visual culture art education (VCAE) (Duncum 2002, 2006) has also been called Visual Culture Studies 8
(Efland, 2005) and Visual Culture Education (Chalmers, 2005). I use VCAE in this study because it precisely refers to the study of visual culture in the field of art education.
The main goal of VCAE is empowerment and social reconstruction through critical understanding of art works and other visual artifacts in their authentic contexts instead of creating, attaining, or understanding the heightened aesthetic experience that is at the center of education based on the fine arts (Tavin, 2003b). Teaching VCAE is not based on traditional modernist concepts of artistic genius or the elements and principles of design, but instead emphasizes researching the social, cultural, economic, and political functions of these visual products and experiences (Freedman, 2007).
Students are encouraged to examine visual culture in terms of the given meanings, assumptions, and purposes. Students can also study how these familiar visual forms are produced and distributed, how they impact viewers and society, and how they help to shape students’ identities within the social context (Duncum, 2002). As a result, teaching
VCAE can motivate students to inquire into the meanings and influences of images that are most influential and familiar to them, connecting their life experiences outside school with their art learning in school (Keifer-Boyd, Amburgy, & Knight, 2007).
In Taiwan, the term visual culture appeared in some journal articles in the mid
1990s. By the end of the 20th century, authors of more and more articles and books discussed visual culture. Interest in VCAE is growing with an increase of professional conferences, college-level classes, and research regarding visual culture in the field of art education (Chao, 2005b). Worthy of notice, some educators have pointed out that the concepts and practices of VCAE are grounded in Western theories and contexts. Art 9 educators in Taiwan should explore local visual imagery to build the foundation for the research of Taiwanese visual culture upon which to develop appropriate curricula for
VCAE (Chao, 2004).
The Impact of VCAE on Art Education
VCAE has positively impacted contemporary art education. First, VCAE provides opportunities for students to inquire critically into a postmodern view of visual representations (Freedman & Stuhr, 2004). It encourages students to go beyond passively accepting a single viewpoint or standing to see the complexities and understand the diversity through a dialogue from multiple perspectives.
Second, VCAE emphasizes students’ everyday visual encounters and therefore increases the awareness of the visual environment in which students live and by which their lives are influenced (Duncum, 2002). It also contributes to a more student-centered approach, in which art teachers are encouraged to pay more attention to their students’ interests, educational needs, and life experiences (Freedman, 2003).
Third, the previously prevailing DBAE tended to describe the arts as freestanding disciplines and ignored that arts are bound to their cultures of origin (Anderson &
Milbrandt, 2005). It overly focused on the high art but failed to address other traditional or untraditional art forms. VCAE remedies these two tendencies by encouraging students to explore the context and cultural influences behind various forms of visual culture (Li,
2007).
Fourth, VCAE has provided art educators with another alternative approach from which to choose according to their students’ learning needs in local settings. 10
However, not everyone accepts this movement: Some educators indicated some difficulties and challenges inherent in VCAE. Efland (2004) was concerned with the problem of “the leveling tendency within visual culture,” (p. 241) that is, the lack of pre- established or privileged hierarchy of visual objects in visual culture. Art teachers or educators must choose visual artifacts as examples or study subjects in the teaching of
VCAE, and it is difficult to justify what kinds of visual forms are worth studying without any parameters. Li (2007) also pointed out the lack of any reliable means and standards to assess teaching and learning in VCAE.
Ads as a Part of Visual Culture
Advertising is one of the most ubiquitous and powerful forms of visual culture.
Many forms of visual art and aesthetic elements are often employed in ads on multiple levels, including the formal, technical, and metaphorical levels, and vice versa
(Freedman, 1997). For example, Freedman analyzed coffee commercials and pointed out that fine art images of well-known paintings are sources for ideas for scene design, costumes, lighting, and various photographic techniques.
In capitalist societies, imagery and aesthetic elements are employed in ads primarily to draw people’s attention, evoke emotion and stimulate reactions, communicate ideological messages, and consequently create and sell desire (McGuire,
2004). In other words, images and aesthetic elements are used for psychological and manipulative effects. For example, researchers have found that most young people prefer yellow, and middle-aged and older people tend to prefer blue. Shape often also has sexual connotation. Round and almond shapes represent the feminine; angular and squarish 11 shapes represent the masculine. Advertisers rely on research results to use aesthetic elements in the design of manipulative commercials (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005).
Masterpieces of fine art are often included in today’s ads. The association and juxtaposition of products with fine art can effectively communicate desirable lifestyles
(Freedman,1997).
Strategies of Ads
According to Fox (2001), grocery stores stocked approximately 9,000 items in the 1970s, but the figure rose to over 30,000 items by the late 1990s. The increased number of items required more commercials. In the early 1970s, about 560 ads per day targeted the average American. By 1999, the number rose to 3,000 ads per day. In such a competitive marketplace, manufacturers need more and more aggressive commercials to promote their products. The function of ads is to create desire and discontent and then to provide us with solutions—specific products. Advertising works on us psychologically by making us identify with products in terms of our desires (McGuire, 2004). In a sense, advertisers attempt to establish a connection between a product and the consumer.
Branding, one of most effective techniques to establish this kind of connection, is distinguished by its process of differentiation (McGuire, 2004). For one specific group of consumers, choosing a brand represents a way to differentiate themselves from others.
Young people often have a strong connection with their favorite brands, which reflect how they think of themselves and how they want to be seen. They often use brands to stand out in the crowd and express their personalities (McChesney & Foster, 2003).
Branding has been found to create a sense of identity for adolescents (Fox, 1996). Fox 12 reported that about 70% of adolescents believe that brand names are important; consequently, “advertisers realize that establishing brand loyalty at an early age will help ensure lifelong users” (Freedman & Schuler, 2002, p. 166).
In order to establish branding and effectively promote consumption, advertisers often make use of popular themes, such as humor, fun, success, self-improvement, self- worth, reward, pleasure, and sex appeal (Savage, 2006). These themes can generate feelings of happiness and well-being. Exciting, successful, and pleasurable experiences created by ads seem to be absent from many people’s daily lives and are therefore desirable. Advertisers often use these themes to associate consumption with an enjoyable life (Savage, 2006). Employing human values is also a popular strategy in ads. Young people often identify with their heroes, including famous actors and athletes. By employing celebrities to promote products, consumers often equate the products with the celebrities’ images. Buying the products, in effect, is buying what the consumers want themselves to be (McGuire, 2004).
In the construction of ads, the tangible products decrease in importance; however, in the process of creating the psychological connection between people and products, manipulative imagery and specific ideology can influence not only people’s views of consumption but also their values, beliefs, and identities (McGuire, 2004). Because ads are so influential, we need a critical perspective to see it.
Ads Inside of the Schools
For advertisers, students represent an immense market because they spend enormous amounts of money and have great influence on the purchasing habits of their 13 peers and families (Linn, 2004). According to Quart (2003), adolescents spend $155 billion of their own money, children younger than 12 years spend another $25 billion, and both groups may influence another $200 billion of their parents' money per year. Students are also potential consumers for advertisers, who not only work to develop brand loyalties for products that students want to buy now but also aggressively try to educate students about consumer attitudes, habits, and loyalties that will affect their future purchasing behaviors (McChesney & Foster, 2003).
As a result, advertisers have made efforts to develop a lucrative market—schools.
Students watch countless commercials outside and inside the school without critical perspective. Strapped for money, many public school administrators have had to accept corporate-sponsored curricula or lease out school space for advertisers in exchange for money and equipment. Boninger, Garcia, Merrill, and Molnar (2006) stated that 82.6 % of public schools have corporation ads in their schools, and 24% have ads by more than three corporations. Public schooling is more heavily financed through ads than ever before. Ads appear in school hallways, buses, textbooks, and other school space. The corporate-sponsored curricula, such as that provided by McDonald’s and Nike, promote neither critical thinking nor meaningful learning (Giroux, 2001). These curricula aim at teaching students to define themselves as consumers and develop the appropriate attitudes for working in low-skilled, low-paying jobs in the future (Giroux, 2003).
A commercial television program consisting of 10 minutes of news and two minutes of commercials, Channel One has accelerated commercialism in schools. In exchange for approximately $50,000 worth of electronic equipment, participating schools 14 agree to make 90% of their students watch the programming in their entirety on 92% percent of all school days (Fox, 1996). Researchers have found that commercials on
Channel One have caused children trouble in distinguishing between commercials and programs and between commercials and reality. For example, in a study about student response to Channel One commercials, Fox (2001) reported that of 150 students only 5 understood that Pepsi had produced a commercial for the purpose of selling the product.
Commercials in schools are likely to legitimize the products they promote (Fox,
2001). In a learning environment increasingly bombarded with ads, the students are provided with the message that “everything is for sale, including student identities, desires, and values” (Giroux, 2001, p. 94). Students have adopted “an overall materialistic worldview . . . that defines and describes the world as a place where goals are achieved and problems are solved through buying and selling, a world that crowds out the life of the body, the mind, and the spirit” (Fox, 1996 p. 20).
Effects of Ads on Children and Adolescents
Advertising has both positive and negative influences on individuals and societies as a whole. On one hand, a meta-analysis reported that public service announcements
(PSAs) impacted the behavior of exposed audiences by approximately 7% to 10% more than non-exposed groups on average (Snyder, 2001). However, researchers also found that the effectiveness of PSAs was seriously limited by minimal airtime and small audiences (Gantz, Schwartz, Angelini, & Rideout, 2008).
On the other hand, ads affect at least four basic kinds of health: physical, emotional, social, and cultural. With regard to physical health, researchers have found 15 that commercials influence children and youth’s beliefs about food and reduce their resistance to poor nutrition and unhealthy foods, such as junk food, alcohol, and tobacco
(Molnar et al, 2006). For example, one study found that the increase in television viewing is associated with children’s obesity because children will increase consuming calorie- dense low nutrient foods that are frequently shown on TV (Wiecha et al., 2006). Besides the junk food, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported that an increase in the consumption of alcohol by youngsters has resulted from their exposure to approximately
2,000 television ads for beer and wine each year (Fox, 2001). Moreover, the ads for alcohol, which commonly appeal to physical appearance and sexuality, caused youngsters to associate drinking alcohol with sexuality, romance, sociability, and relaxation (Fox,
1996).
In terms of emotional health, childhood and adolescence are crucial periods of identity formation and sexual development. When young people seek information about developing issues, such as sexuality, self-representation, physical appearance, and maturity, ads and mass media provide them with abundant images and messages about these issues (Freedman, 2003). Markello (2005) stated that commercials often carry the messages related to attractiveness, and approximately half the commercials presented by
Channel One related to students’ sense of their own sexuality and physical appearance
(Giroux, 2001).
The images and messages in commercials are manipulated to create discontent and desire, not beneficial information. For example, after girls compared their own physical appearances with those on television, they were more dissatisfied with their 16 physical appearances (McChesney & Foster, 2003). Children and adolescents are particularly sensitive and vulnerable to media-imposed definitions of the perfect body image and beauty (Markello, 2005). The images about beauty can cause emotional problems in youth, such as feelings of inferiority, eating disorders, and even suicide (Fox,
1996).
Regarding social health, because ads have the ascendant ability to communicate, their negative messages can reinforce competition, appearance, instant gratification, materialism, and so on (Linn, 2004). For example, research has found that children's exposure to television advertising is directly related to their materialistic attitudes, increased purchase requests, and even the conflicts between parents and their children
(Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003).
Finally, ads represents social roles and can reduce students’ cultural health by exposing them to the stereotypes of race, sex, gender, age, occupations, and social class. I would like to focus the discussion on gender stereotyping. Early research has shown that a group of high school girls, after watching TV commercials dating back to childhood, tended to accept gender roles represented by the commercials (Grabe, Ward, & Hyde,
2008). Robinson (2008) examined ads in magazines to see how contemporary ads depict household labor, finding that the medicine and food ads still maintained the traditional gender ideologies. For example, “mothers are predominantly presented as being responsible for the care of family members, such as preparing foods or caring for sick children, whereas fathers are generally shown as having fun” (p. 481). Carlos and Paloma
(2008) analyzed the most frequent images of women portrayed in the fashion luxury 17 brands advertisements, identifying two obvious tendencies of visualizing women in magazine ads: one is a “delicate, fragile and unhealthy woman who is excessively thin and has a passive attitude” (p. 303), and the other is an “aggressive, active woman who is taking the initiative in the affective and sexual relationships and having negative attitudes related to aspects like invasion, imposition, evidence or arrogance”(p. 303). The study concluded that these ads reinforce the stereotype that a successful woman relies on her physical attractiveness, but not on her intelligence or personality (Paloma & Carlos,
2008). The negative effects of those images identified in their study may, in turn, impact students’ perceptions of both genders.
Strategies of Deconstructing Ads in VCAE
In order to help students to think critically and actively about ads, art educators have developed or adapted some strategies to deconstruct ads. Barrett (2003) suggested that learners of all ages can successfully use Barthes’ (1977) interpretive strategy to better understand ads. He identified three parts of ads: (a) the linguistic message is the actual word and brand name in the ads, which carries both denoted and connoted messages; (b) the denoted image is what the viewers literally see in the image itself; and
(c) the connoted image is what the image implies or suggests. He maintained that the interpretive strategy can be flexibly adjusted for learners of different ages. Teachers can lead older students to understand in-depth connotative meanings, the definitions, and
Barthes’ interpretive strategy. Teachers of young children can use simple questions to guide them to interpret images without explaining the technical terms. 18
Besides this specific strategy, existing art criticism in art education is also useful to decode ads as well. The art criticism developed by Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) includes four steps:
1. Reaction: While encountering anything new or not understood, we all ask some
questions instinctively. This basic reaction can serve as a reason to direct our
inquiry imagery further; for example, we can ask what the advertisement does to
you emotionally and intellectually.
2. Description: Guided by our reactions, description is used to discover what it is
about a work that causes these reactions. We find the formal information by
describing how a work looks and find the contextual information by defining the
place of a work in the world of human affairs. In this stage, we can describe the
formal qualities in the advertisement and how they condition our response. More
importantly, we can perform a contextual investigation with some questions, such
as the following: What is the purpose of the advertisement? Who promoted it and
in what context? Who are the intended audiences?
3. Interpretation: “Interpretation is our guess at what the work means” (p. 103) based
on reactive and descriptive evidence. It concerns the meaning of the work and is
the heart of art criticism. We can question the advertisement by asking what the
advertisement means, suggests, implies, and of what it makes the viewers think.
4. Evaluation: In evaluating an artwork, all the work done in the previous stages is
used to reach a conclusion about the value of the work and our experience of
encountering the work. The successful evaluation relies on students giving sound 19
reasons for assigning values and significance. For evaluating ads, we can ask the
following: Why do you agree or disagree with the advertisement? Would you buy
the product after analyzing the advertisement? Why?
Related Research
Investigating the reactions of a class of high school students to the aesthetic values presented in a shopping mall, Stokrocki (2001) reported gender differences in their expression of their favorite mall art, stores, window displays, and clothing designs. After conducting a class discussion in the mall, she found that they had difficulty discussing art because they perceived art only in terms of art making. Besides, the students tended to accept the value of art that was determined by institutions or the art world but did not understand the social, political, or cultural implications of the visual images and objects.
In the conclusion, Stokrocki suggested that teachers should develop students’ ability to understand the layers of meaning that constitute a “cool picture.” For example, political implications of imagery can be understood in terms of the art of persuasion. Students can discuss “how . . . advertisers persuade customers through psychological or social pressure to purchase certain goods of images over others” (p. 23).
Freedman and Wood (1999) examined the way a group of high school students responded to both fine art and visual culture. The study consisted of both qualitative and quantitative methods, a survey questionnaire, and a thematic case study. The researchers found that the student responses to fine art resembled their responses to visual culture; however, they tended to make connections between various popular culture images but often excluded connections with fine art images because they were more familiar with 20 visual culture than fine art. The researchers also found that the students tended to believe the purpose of images was communication or emotional expression but did not believe that images can influence people. In the conclusion, the researchers stated an understanding of students’ responses to visual culture images may help teachers to understand their responses to fine art images. Therefore, art curriculum must include all visual culture and critical skills so that students can learn to discover the multiple meanings of images.
Chou (2005) conducted a quantitative suvery to investigate how children and adolescents in Taiwan interpret visual culture images, including a propaganda poster, a cartoon, a commercial, a computer graphic, and a photograph. The subjects consisted of
589 students from fifth, eighth and eleventh grades. She reported that the students’ interpretations of images were influenced by gender, age, and the number of art classes they had taken. Most of them tended to describe what they saw in the images literally or based on aesthetic forms but did not notice the social or political meanings carried by the images. Furthermore, they liked or disliked the images and analyzed the most attractive part of them based primarily on their “subjective preferences.” The “aesthetic form” was the second factor, and the “social value” was the least important factor. As a result, she suggested that students must be taught to research the social, economic, and political meanings of various visual images. She stated that only limited studies researching
Taiwanese students’ interpretations of visual culture imagery had been completed and, therefore, called for more related studies to develop a better art curriculum. 21
Cheng (2002) examined whether children in Taiwan respond differently to images from commercials and the world of fine art. After in-depth interviews of 56 students from second, fourth, sixth, and eighth grades, he found that students responded to both types of images based on their own life experience, especially popular culture. Their interpretations of all images were deeply influenced by popular culture through mass media, such as commercials, TV news, comedy shows, and films. His interviews revealed that students used the virtual visual experience from popular culture to make sense of the world in which they lived. Cheng suggested that instead of insisting on the “standard” interpretations, the teachers in Taiwan must understand and respect the students’ interpretations and then guide them to think critically and actively about all visual images and experiences.
Chung (2005) explored a group of junior high school students’ responses to an art curriculum entitled “Ad Deconstruction Project,” created to develop students’ critical thinking and creative skills. In his case study he found art criticism a useful tool for the students to deconstruct cigarette ads. They looked for the implicit and explicit meanings behind the commercial images and discussed the issues of visual manipulation, consumerism, ad persuasiveness, intended message, inferred meaning, and health.
Students also uncovered how they were targeted by the tobacco industry through the commercials. He concluded that this project, which included art criticism, helped students to “integrate aesthetic sensitivity and social awareness and equipped them with critical knowledge necessary to live in a world of commercial image-saturated consumerism in which they are profit-motivated targets” (p. 24). 22
Summary
This chapter has presented related literature and research, including visual culture, visual culture art education (VCAE), the impact of VCAE on art education, ads as a part of visual culture, strategies of ads, ads inside of the schools, effects of ads on children and adolescents, strategies of deconstructing ads in VCAE, and related research. The next chapter addresses research design, including methodology, setting and sampling, methods, data collection and procedure, data analysis, and the role of the researcher, ethical issues and limitations. 23
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH DESIGN
Overview
In order to answer the four research questions, the researcher used a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach to collect data from a convenience sample that included a class of 32 sixth-grade Taiwanese students. This chapter is divided into five sections, including (a) methodology, (b) setting and sampling, (c) methods, (d) data collection and procedure, (e) data analysis, and (f) the role of the researcher, ethical issues, and limitations.
Methodology
The research methodology for this study consisted of semi-structured interviews and three survey questionnaires; thus, a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach was used to collect data. Questionnaires often serve as a way to streamline the process of learning about people’s habits, preferences, and decision-making patterns (Thomas,
1998). Another advantage of using questionnaires is that they can be administered to a large group of people at the same time (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2000), making them an efficient way to gather firsthand information on the participants’ thoughts about the particular questions in this study.
Interview is an important method used in qualitative research to collect data through real-life contact. Qualitative research is characterized by the search for qualities
—the characteristics of people’s experiences (Stokrocki, 1997)—and is especially suitable to discover the perspectives of the subjects of a study (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2000). 24
Because this study aimed to analyze students’ perspectives, preferences, and responses to ads in some detail, it was appropriate to use interview.
Content analysis and descriptive statistics were employed in analyzing the data.
According to Fraenkel and Wallen (2000), content analysis, a primary method for collecting qualitative data, enables researchers to make comparisons about the attitudes and beliefs of different groups of people. Because the major data in this study were qualitative, content analysis was the preferred method.
Setting and Sampling
The study was conducted in Taiwan. The participants were selected from one urban school in northern Taiwan, specifically in Keelung City, which has a population of approximately 400,000. I chose this city for some specific reasons. First, the school was near one of the most commercialized districts in Keelung City, so the participants were exposed to an abundance of ads of various kinds. Second, I was familiar with the student participants and their local context because I had been both a teacher and a resident there.
As a cultural insider I had a foundation for understanding the participants, for developing rapport with them, and for analyzing my data. Observing and understanding the various events and local culture within the participants’ community was natural for me.
The study involved a convenience sample. The student participants were 32 sixth- grade students from one class, including 18 girls and 14 boys whose ages range from 11 to12. They had had at least one art class every week since they entered elementary school but never had any class related to art criticism or analysis of ads. Most participants came from middle-class families. I chose this class because I knew their room teacher and art 25 teacher. The two teachers were appropriate informants who provided me relevant information about the participants and their context.
Methods
In the following, I am going to describe the methods that were used to collect data. These included (a) a media assessment form (Appendix F), (b) a print ad media and commercial logos questionnaire (Appendix G), (c) a critical inquiry of ads (Appendix H), and (d) a semi-structured interview.
The media assessment form was used to ascertain how much time the participants were exposed to various types of media and by which media they were most influenced.
This questionnaire was mainly modeled after Lee and Browne’s (1995) and Lefler’s questionnaire (2006), which consisted of six types of media: television, magazines, newspapers, Internet, movies, and radio. The media are the vehicle by which ads are delivered to the audiences (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003). This questionnaire, therefore, helped me to assess the approximate number of ads that the student participants viewed in each type of media.
The print ad media questionnaire was used to examine what commercial logos were most familiar to the student participants and what type of print ad media they noticed most often and why. This questionnaire was developed by the researcher and revised by two professors of art education.
A document entitled “Critical Inquiry into Advertisements” was used to understand students’ preferences, interpretations, and responses to ads. It was based on a questionnaire done by Lefler (2006); the model of art criticism was developed by 26
Anderson and Milbrandt (2005); and the strategies used to construct ads were suggested in the review of literature (Barrett, 2003; Chung, 2005; Savage, 2006; Stokrocki, 2001).
All three questionnaires were designed for age appropriateness. The overall format with illustrations was designed to encourage participants to respond in detail. The language was easy for them to understand, and the questions were clear and well organized. The three questionnaires were pretested in my pilot study, and then ambiguous questions were revised and refined as needed.
The nature of the questionnaire, however, posed some disadvantages. First, some unclear or ambiguous questions for the respondents may not have been clarified. Second, because the respondents were preteens and have limited writing abilities, some of them could not express their ideas thoroughly. The face-to-face interviews were necessary to improve these disadvantages. Interviews also provided me with an in-depth understanding about the respondents’ motives, reasoning patterns, and emotional reactions, which could not be gained by questionnaires.
Two types of interviews were conducted for this study. The first type of interview was used to help the participants finish the questionnaire. I interviewed the participants who left answers blank on the questionnaire. The second type comprised the semi- structured interview, which included two focus group interviews and 10 one-on-one interviews. Based on their responses to the questionnaire, I selected five boys and five girls with whom to conduct this type of interview. First, a group of five boys was interviewed, followed by a group of five girls. Then 10 one-on-one interviews were conducted. 27
Data Collection and Procedure
Before the research began, I sought approval from the participants, their parents, the principal, administrators, and room teachers by both assent forms (Appendix C;
Appendix E) and consent forms (Appendix A; Appendix D). The forms included the purposes and procedures of the study in appropriate language. On the first day of collecting consent/assent forms, I met with the principal, administrators, and room teachers, described the purposes and procedure of the study to them, and then clarified issues and answered their questions. They granted their permission by signing their names on the consent forms. On the same day, I mailed the consent forms and self- addressed stamped envelopes to the students’ parents. The parents allowed their children to take part in this study by signing their names on the consent forms. They either mailed it back to me or gave it back to me through the students within two days. On the second day of collecting those forms, I orally explained the purposes and procedure of my study to one sixth-grade class, and then provided each student with the assent form. I read the contents in the assent form word for word in Mandarin Chinese and then clarified and answered the questions that the students asked. I assured them that they had the right to refuse or withdraw from the study at the beginning or any time thereafter. After collecting both forms, the investigation began.
On the first day of the investigation, I provided the participants with two questionnaires, entitled “Media Assessment Form” (Appendix F) and “Print
Advertisements Questionnaire” (Appendix G), and then explained exactly how to complete them. Each participant recorded her or his media exposure for seven days on 28 the media assessment form by recording how much time they were exposed to media. At the same time, I asked them to find their favorite print ads. Each participant was provided with a large envelope in which he or she could put an ad and then bring it in to the class confidentially. The seven days not only provided the participants with sufficient time to finish their assignments, but also provided me with opportunities to develop a rapport with them and remind them to keep recording information on their questionnaires.
On the morning of the eighth day of my investigation, the participants brought in one print ad to be used to complete the document called “Critical Inquiry into
Advertisements” (Appendix H). In the classroom, free of distractions, I read each question to the participants. I informed them that all answers were acceptable (no right or wrong answers), and that the questionnaire did not affect their art grades. Each participant answered the questionnaire independently and had enough time to finish the questionnaire completely. I also encouraged them to complete the questionnaire honestly and completely. During the entire procedure, I clarified or explained any question that participants had on any part of the questionnaire. After finishing the questionnaire, each participant put the advertisement and questionnaire into his or her envelope and then turned in everything directly to me. As a result, the participants’ choices of ads and responses to the questionnaires were kept confidential.
After reviewing all responses on the questionnaires, I selected the interviewees for the interviews according to their responses to the questionnaires. I also assured them that they had the right to refuse or withdraw from the interviews at any time and to hear the audio tapes before the tapes were used. After collecting both forms, the interviews began. 29
The school provided me an appropriate room for the interviews so that they did not disrupt other people or school events. At the beginning of the interview, I had a warm-up with each child in order to create a friendly and comfortable atmosphere for him or her.
The participants had sufficient time to respond to each question as well as the opportunity to ask for clarification on any interview question. I paid careful attention to their responses, maintaining eye contact. Each interview was within a half-hour and conducted in Mandarin Chinese. Audio tape was used to capture accurate interview data in its original form. After each day’s interviews, I listened to the tapes immediately, transcribed them in Chinese, and then translated them into English.
During the entire process of the study, I kept descriptive and reflective field notes, which also included the cultural or special events in the classroom, school, community, and society. Because those events provided the participants’ cultural contexts and visual references, they were helpful in my analysis of the participants’ responses.
Data Analysis
In this study, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected. For quantitative data collection from student participants through the Media Assessment
Form, I calculated the average time that all students were exposed to the six different media on weekdays and weekends. For the quantitative collection through the print ad media questionnaire, I counted the frequency of each type of print ad medium chosen by all students to identify the top three print ad media they most often noticed.
The qualitative data collection from student participants included three parts: voluntary ads collection, semi-structured interviews, and the two open-ended 30 questionnaires: The Print Advertisement Media Questionnaire and the Critical Inquiry into Advertisements. I conducted a separate content analysis on each of them. All responses were coded into one of the categories formulated according to the results of my pilot study conducted in June 2008. The categories were adjusted and new emergent categories were also created after I reviewed the data collected from this study. Then I reviewed all coding to ensure each was externally distinct and internally consistent. In order to present accurate data related to the four research questions, descriptive statistics associated with the data emerging from the research questions were analyzed with SPSS
13 statistical software. Each category was reported through frequencies and percentages in cross-break tables (matrixes) that showed the relationship between genders and each category.
The stages of content analysis and descriptive statistics were constructed to discover the major themes for each of my four research questions. Data analysis was based on the themes with the goal of answering my four research questions.
Role of the Researcher, Ethical Issues and Limitations
In this study, my role was that of data collector and interpreter. To be aware of and control my bias, I maintained thorough notes and reflected on them frequently. I also acted as a research instrument during the interviews. Because the participants were minors, they were more vulnerable in the interview context than adults. I did what I could do to protect their rights in terms of their privacy, confidentiality, and conditions free of harm. First, I provided their parents or legal caretakers with a consent form that included all necessary information in appropriate language and gave them the opportunity to 31 choose not to participate in the survey. I also provided the participants with an assent form and assured them that they had the right to refuse or withdraw from the study at any time. During data collection, the questionnaire and interview did not pose any risk or discomfort, nor did this study involve deception. I maintained confidentiality of the participants by assigning numbers or pseudonyms to each one, keeping the original data collected anonymous.
Because of the small size of the convenience sample used in this study, the researcher is unable to generalize the findings to all Taiwanese children or to any groups other than to the student participants in this study. Sufficient information regarding the participants and their context is provided in this study so that the readers can decide the applicability of the findings to their situations.
Summary
This chapter has presented research design, including methodology, setting and sampling, methods, data collection and procedure, data analysis, and the role of the researcher, ethical issues and limitations. The next chapter addresses the results of questionnaires, including media exposure survey, print ad media and commercial logos, and the results related to the four research questions. 32
CHAPTER IV
RESULTS OF QUESTIONNAIRES
Overview
This chapter, which presents the collected data and results from the student participants’ self-selected ads and their responses to three questionnaires, is organized into six major sections; and each section includes descriptive statistics and content analysis. The first section presents the results related to the length of time students were exposed to six different media, collected from the questionnaire entitled “Media
Assessment Form.” The second section presents the results related to print media and commercial logos with which the student participants were most familiar, collected from the questionnaire entitled “Print Media Questionnaire.” These two sections aim to provide more in-depth information about the context and conditions in which the student participants were exposed to various ads. The third through sixth sections present the results related to the four research questions presented respectively, including the student participants’ self-selected ads and written responses to the open-ended questionnaire entitled “Critical Inquiry into Advertisement.” In these four sections, for the purpose of presenting precise data related to the research questions, the descriptive statistics were analyzed with SPSS 13 statistical software.
Media Exposure Survey and Results
This section provides descriptive statistics related to students’ time exposed to six media, including (a) television, (b) the Internet, (c) radio, (d) movies (e) newspapers, and 33
(f) magazines. Table 1 illustrates the average amount of time the participants devoted to all media and each of the six media during a typical week of a semester.
First, the results reveal that the average amount of time a student devoted to all media per day in an entire week was about four hours (230 minutes). The student participants devoted more time to all media per day on weekends than on weekdays. The average amount of time a student devoted to all media was about five hours (285 minutes) per day on weekends but only about three hours (174 minutes) per day on weekdays.
Lefler (2006) reported that the average time a group of eighth graders in the
United States devoted to the same six media per day was about 7.5 hours. In comparison with Lefler’s findings, Taiwanese students in this study devoted much less time to these media perhaps because Taiwanese students, specifically those in this study, had less leisure time and greater academic demands. Children in United States are in school for an average of six or more hours per day, Monday through Friday, for approximately 185 days per year (Baines, 2007). By contrast the participants in this study were at school for over nine hours (7:30 a.m.– 4:45 p.m.) on weekdays except Wednesdays (4.5 hours) for approximately 200 days (Ministry of Education, R. O. C., 2009).
After school, they had large amounts of homework and 30 of 32 participants
(94%) spent about two hours at cram schools, improving their performance in core courses, such as math (cram schools in Taiwan are specialized schools, which train their students to meet particular goals. One common goal is to improve students’ academic performance to pass the high school or university admission examinations.) 34
Consequently, most of the students were confined to schools and cram schools over 11 hours on weekdays, having much less time to spend on the six media than the eighth graders in Lefler’s study did.
Second, the most popular medium among the participants on both weekends and weekdays was television. On average a student devoted about 2.5 hours (159 minutes) to
TV, but only 40 minutes to the Internet, 11 minutes to radio, 9 minutes to movies, 7 minutes to newspapers, and 4 minutes to magazines per day. The student participants used media other than TV and Internet relatively less frequently.
The participants’ TV viewing time per day was a little more than Taiwanese children’s, but much less than American children’s. In 2005, Taiwanese children ages 7 through 12 years watched about 2 to 2.5 hours of TV per day (Child Welfare League
Foundation. R.O.C., 2005), and American children ages between 2 and 11 years watched about 3.5 hours of TV (Television Bureau of Advertising, 2006).
Although Taiwanese children and the participants did not spend as much time viewing TV as American students did, their TV viewing time occupied more than one half of their leisure time, excluding cram schools hours and homework time (Yi & Wu,
2004). In other words, watching TV is the major extracurricular activity for Taiwanese students, having replaced the time they should devote to other beneficial activities.
Third, other than TV, the Internet was the second most popular media for the student participants. The average amount of time a student devoted to the Internet was about 40 minutes per day and about 4.7 hours a week. A survey exploring the North
American adolescents’ online time showed that young people between 12 and 17 were 35 often online daily and averaged almost 11 hours per week. (Forrester Research, 2005). By comparison, the participants in my study spent much less time than the students in North
America; however, some researchers also found the Internet has not only become part of
Taiwanese adolescents’ daily lives, but is also one of the most important media. Lin and
Yu (2008) conducted a survey study exploring Internet accessibility among Taiwanese adolescents, their motives for use, and online activities. After surveying 629 fifth and sixth graders, they concluded that the Internet has become the second most important medium for receiving information after TV, as perceived by Taiwanese students regardless of their gender.
Almost all media are vehicles through which ads are delivered. The children and young people growing up in industrialized countries use media nearly everyday (Yi &
Wu, 2004) and therefore they receive commercial messages every day. Although the media survey results did not measure the number of ads carried through each of the six media, the abundant amount of time the student participants devoted to these media implies that the student participants were exposed to a glut of ads. When ads become such an overwhelming visual component of our culture, students become numb to their presence everywhere and are seldom aware of the strong influence (Fox, 2001). 36
Table 1
The Average Amount of Time the Students Devoted to All Media and Each of the Six
Media During a Week
Average time per student (Minutes)
Media Per day on weekends Per day on weekdays Per day
The sum of all media 285 174 230
TV 207 112 159
Internet 45 35 40
Radio 10 12 11
Movies 12 5 9
Newspapers 7 9 8
Magazines 5 3 4 37
Figure 1. The average amount of time the students devoted to all media and each of the six media during a week. 38
Print Ad Media and Commercial Logos
This section presents the student participants’ responses to the questionnaire entitled “Print Advertisement Media Questionnaire.” It is divided into two parts. The first part presents descriptive statistics related to print ad media, and the second part presents descriptive statistics related to commercial logos noticed most often by participants.
Print Ad Media Noticed Most Often by Participants
This section provides descriptive statistics related to print ad media noticed most often by the participants. The student participants were asked to mark nine types of print ad media in numerical order, indicating which ones they noticed from most often to least often. The print ad media included the Internet, commercial flyers/store ads, product packaging, newspapers, magazines, books, billboards, posters, and billboards on vehicles.
The top three choices marked by each of the student participants were deemed as the most familiar print ad media for them. Table 2 illustrates the frequency and percentage of each print ad medium rated in the top three. Notably, static ads can also be delivered through the Internet; therefore, the Internet is also regarded as a medium for print ads.
Considering the Internet as a print ad medium may have confused some of the student participants, so I explained this before administrating the questionnaire to them.
The results reveal that the Internet was the most familiar print ad medium for the student participants even though it is the newest medium in the world. About 88% of them marked the Internet among their top three most familiar print ad media primarily because they surfed the Internet almost daily. 39
Many studies found the adolescent and young adult populations to be the mainstream Internet users. For example, a report released by eMarketer in 2004 reported that preteens and teens consisted of over 20% of the American online population. Almost one half of all preteens and teens (about 34.3 million) were often online in 2003 (as cited in Lin & Yu, 2008). A similar trend also surfaced in Taiwan: A survey conducted by the
Taiwan Network Information Center showed that the Internet population in Taiwan had reached 15 million, and among those users, about 2.86 million were younger than 20 (Lin
& Yu). In short, youth also constituted about 20% of the online population in Taiwan; moreover, this study pointed out that youth ages 12 to 15 had the highest rate of Internet usage (98%) of any other age groups.
Advertisers have therefore viewed the Internet as a powerful media and endeavored to develop various ad strategies to allow the Internet to reach more youth
(Bosman, 2006). According to my findings about 88% of the student participants responded that the Internet was one of the three top print ad media through which they noticed ads most often. This finding confirms that the Internet serves as an effective medium through which advertisers are able to deliver commercial messages to adolescents. However, only two girls chose their self-selected ads from the Internet. From the casual conversations with the student participants, I deduced that most of them did not have printers to print out their favorite print ads on the Web.
Other than the Internet, about 59% of the student participants marked commercial flyers/store ads as their top three, 41% marked product packaging, and 41% also marked 40 newspapers. Predictably, the student participants often chose their self-selected ads from these three media. Students noticed the rest of the print ad media less frequently. 41
Table 2
Frequency and Percentage of Each Print Ad Medium Chosen by the Students as Their
Top Three Most Familiar Print Ad Media
Total students (n=32)
Categories N %
The Internet 28 88%
Commercial flyers/Store ads 19 59%
Product packaging 13 41%
Newspapers 13 41%
Magazines 7 22%
Books 6 19%
Billboards 4 13%
Posters 3 9%
Billboards on Vehicles 3 9% 42
Figure 2. Bar figure depicting the percentage of each print ad medium chosen by the students as their top three most familiar print ad media. 43
Most Familiar Commercial Logos
This section provides descriptive statistics related to the commercial logos with which the student participants were most familiar. They were asked to draw three most familiar commercial logos; these have been classified into five main categories: (a) food,
(b) convenience stores, (c) sporting goods, (d) motor vehicles, and (e) other.
Table 3 illustrates the frequency and percentage of each category and each logo drawn by students. The most familiar logos among the five categories were for food products, then for convenience stores, and finally for sporting goods. Specifically, logos for McDonald’s, OK Mart, and Nike were the most familiar commercial logos for the students. About 78% of the student participants drew the McDonald’s logo, 69% drew
OK Mart’s logo, and 63% drew Nike’s logo. Only a few students drew other logos.
In terms of logos for food products, the McDonald’s logo was the most familiar logo for the students. All students who drew at least one logo of food products drew the
McDonald’s logo. Except for the Kentucky Fried Chicken logo drawn by one student, no logos for other international fast food chains or any local fast food restaurants appeared in the student participants’ drawings. The McDonald’s logo is more popular for the student participants than logos for any other fast food chains perhaps because McDonald’s is not only the largest but also the most advertised fast food chain in Taiwan (Hu, 2002). In addition, among many fast food chains located near the school, only McDonald’s provided the school with free meal coupons as rewards for students.
In the United States, strapped for money, many public school administrators have had to accept corporate-sponsored activities or lease out school space for advertisers in 44 exchange for money and equipment (Boninger, Garcia, Merrill, & Molnar, 2006). Molnar
(2000) further indicated that corporations use incentive programs to promote schoolhouse commercialism. In addition, ads or any commercial activities appearing in schools are likely to legitimize the advertised brands and products (Giroux, 2001); that is, students might tend to believe that those brands and products are guaranteed by schools and therefore have positive attitudes toward them.
In my findings, McDonald’s free meal coupons appearing in the school revealed that ads in varied forms may pervade throughout the student participants’ school. Thus, the free meal coupons appearing so frequently in the school might influence students’ perceptions about McDonald’s and its products.
Regarding the logos for convenience stores with which the student participants were most familiar, the local OK Mart’s logo was the most familiar one. The OK Mart convenience store had been affiliated with the American Circle-K, but separated from it in 2007. Now, renamed and operated by a Taiwanese company, OK Mart operated approximately 900 stores at the end of 2007. Surprisingly, OK Mart’s logo was more popular than 7-Eleven’s logo for the student participants even though 7-Eleven is the largest convenience store chain in Taiwan (approximately 4800 stores in June 2008).
About 69% of the student participants drew the OK Mart logo, but only 19% drew the 7-
Eleven logo. One possible explanation is that an OK Mart is located opposite the student participants’ classroom, where they often see it.
With regard to sporting goods logos with which the student participants were most familiar, Nike was the most familiar commercial logo for the student participants. 45
About 63% of the student participants drew the Nike logos, whereas few students drew logos for other brands, such as Adidas, New Balance, and Puma.
Generally, commercial logos most familiar to the student participants were nonlocal (not Taiwanese) brands. Twelve of 16 logos drawn by the student participants represented nonlocal brands; furthermore, Business Week had named 6 of 12 nonlocal logos to its 2008 “100 Top Brands” list, containing the best global brands (“Best Global
Brands,” 2008), including McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Nike, Adidas,
Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota. My findings may suggest the influence of globalization of markets on these Taiwanese students. “The globalization of markets has put global brands on the center stage” (Özsomer & Altaras, 2008, p. 1). With global ads appearing everywhere—in stores, on the streets, in the media—global brands have exerted their power and influence upon people across countries (Özsomer & Altaras, 2008).
In addition, simple design is a common characteristic among the logos drawn by the student participants. Simplicity may be one reason why some of the student participants drew logos of McDonald’s, OK Mart, and Nike. Simple logos are not only easy to remember, but also easy to draw. When the students were asked to draw logos, the complexity of logos may also have affected their choices. For example, a boy wanted to draw Ferrari’s logo and asked me how to draw it during a recess. Although I told him where he might find the logo, he decided to draw another simpler logo for cars instead of
Ferrari’s logo. 46
Table 3
Breakdown of All Commercial Logos Drawn by Students as the Top Three Most Familiar
Commercial Logos
Total student (n=32) Categories Logos n % Food McDonald's 25 78%
KFC 1 3% 77-Chocolate (Taiwanese snack brand) 1 3% Convenience stores OK 22 69% 7-Eleven 6 19% Sporting goods Nike 20 63%
Adidas 4 13%
New Balance 1 3% Puma 1 3% Motor vehicles Mitsubishi 5 16%
Mercedes-Benz 5 16%
Audi 1 3% Toyota 1 3% Others Leofoo Village (Taiwanese theme park brand) 1 3%
Pentel (Japanese stationery brand) 1 3% CS (Taiwanese video game brand) 1 3% 47
Figure 3. Bar figure depicting all commercial logos drawn by students as the top three most familiar commercial logos. 48
Figure 4. Bar figure depicting five categories of students’ top three most familiar commercial logos. 49
Results Related to the First Research Question
This section presents the results of the findings pertaining to the first Research
Question: What preferences are indicated in the student participants’ self-selected ads?
The section is subdivided into two parts, respectively presenting (a) results related to the student participants’ collection of self-selected ads, and (b) their written responses to item
3 on the questionnaire entitled “Critical Inquiry into Advertisement”, which asked,
“Which part of the ad attracts you the most?”
Student’s Collection of Self-Selected Ads
First, the students’ self-selected ads were classified into nine categories: (a) food,
(b) electronics, (c) grocery, (d) real estate, (e) motor vehicles, (f) accessories, (g) beauty products, (h) books, and (i) traveling. Table 4 presents each product and its brand in all students’ self-selected ads. Table 5 presents the breakdown of Taiwanese brands and non-
Taiwanese brands. Finally, Table 6 presents the frequencies and percentages of these nine categories.
Table 4 addresses diversity in the preferences of students as shown in their self- selected ads. They chose ads on different kinds of products from various brands. Both international and Taiwanese brands were included as shown in Table 5. Among 32 students, only 13 students chose ads for non-Taiwanese brands. Only a few students chose ads for the same brands of similar products. Two boys chose ads for Domino’s
Pizza, two boys chose ads for Pizza Hut, and two girls chose ads for oolong tea from
Vitalon. 50
Table 6 reports significant gender differences in students’ preferences as shown in their self-selected ads. Boys’ preferences were more consistent than those of girls: About
57 % of boys preferred food product ads. By contrast, girls’ preferences as revealed by their selection of ads were not so consistent: Among 18 girls, about 28% of them chose food product ads, 17% of them selected electronic ads, 17% of them chose grocery ads,
11% of them chose real estate ads, and 11% of them chose accessory ads.
Food product ads were the most popular kind of ads for the student participants, especially boys. About 57% of the boys, but only 28% of the girls chose ads for food products. An experimental study reported that boys ages 5 to 11 years had higher-level preferences for and consumed more advertised food than girls did after both genders were exposed to gender-neutral food ads (Chermin, 2008). Similarly, my findings also show that boys were more likely to prefer ads for food products than girls.
Perhaps boys’ high preference for food ads is associated with the use of gender in those ads. On one hand, males often serve as chief voice-overs, dominant product users, and main character roles in food ads. For example, Childs and Maher (2003) conducted a study to examine the use of gender in food advertising to children in the United States. In comparison with the use of gender in nonfood ads, they found the use of males dominated in food ads to children. On the other hand, childhood and adolescence are crucial periods of identity and social role formation. When young people seek information about social roles and behaviors, they learn abundant relevant images and messages provided by ads
(Freedman, 2003). Because males were more frequently depicted as food product consumers than females in food ads directed at children, boys may be more likely to 51 internalize their roles as food product consumers and to prefer food ads more than girls did.
Beside more boys preferring food ads than did girls, boys’ and girls’ preferences on ads for food products also differed widely. Boys preferred ads for fast-food chains: three boys chose Domino’s Pizza ads, two boys chose McDonald’s ads, one boy chose a
Kentucky Fried Chicken ad, and one boy chose a Pizza Hut ad. Only one boy chose an orange juice ad instead of a fast-food chain ad. By contrast, girls preferred food product ads claiming the products were good for health. For example, two girls chose an oolong tea ad that claimed to reduce cholesterol, and one girl chose an ad for fat-free yogurt.
Noteworthy, 3 of 18 girls (17%), but no boys, chose grocery ads. These three girls chose ads on facial tissue, an insecticide, and a recycled glass container. However, the girl who chose an ad for a package of facial tissue misunderstood what the ad was supposed to advertise. Because the ad showed a lot of racing cars, she thought that the ad was to promote racing cars instead of facial tissue. 52
Table 4
The Products and Brands Endorsed by the Student’s Self-selected Ads, by Gender Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14)
Categories Products Brands Products Brands Oolong tea Vitalon Pizza(n=2) Domino’s Pizza (n=2) Sport drink Vitalon Pizza(n=2) Pizza Hut
Chocolate cookies Weilih McMeal McDonald's Food Yoghurt Yoplait Coffee McDonald's
Fried Chicken Kentucky Fried Chicken Orange juice Minute Maid Sony Acer, Asus, LG, Cell phones Personal computers Ericsson HP, Chimei, Lemel Electronics Cell phones Nokia Air conditioner Kolin
Facial tissue Ceng Feng
Grocery Insecticide Crocodile Recycle glass Working
containers House
Condominium Bay Villa Condominium Jia Shan Lin Real estate Taipei Apartments Bingo Ergonomically Accessories Watches Rolex Impact designed bookbags Fashion apparel Unimall Motor Scooters Yamaha Cars Luxgen vehicles Cars Audi Shampoo, hair Beauty conditioner, smooth Nobori products gel Cherry Blossom No specific Traveling Festival brand Books Chinese dictionaries Nani 53
Table 5
The Breakdown of Non-Taiwanese Brands and Taiwanese Brands
Non-Taiwanese brands Taiwanese brands Audi Acer Domino’s Pizza Ausu HP Bay Villa Impact Ceng Feng Kentucky Fried Chicken Chimei LG Crocodile Sony Ericsson Jia Shan Lin McDonald's Kolin Minute Maid Lmeml Nokia Luxgen Pizza Hut Nobori Rolex Taipei Bingo Yamaha Unimall Yoplait Vitalon Weilih Working House Note: A few students’ self-selected ads show more than one brand. 54
Table 6
Frequency and Percentage of Each Category of the Students' Self-Selected Ads, by
Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Food 5 28% 8 57% 13 41%
Electronics 3 17% 1 7% 4 13%
Grocery 3 17% 0 0% 3 9%
Real estate 2 11% 1 7% 3 9%
Accessories 2 11% 1 7% 3 9%
Motor vehicles 1 6% 2 14% 3 9%
Beauty products 1 6% 0 0% 1 3%
Traveling 1 6% 0 0% 1 3%
Books 0 0% 1 7% 1 3% 55
Figure 5. Bar figure depicting nine categories of the students' self-selected ads. 56
The Most Attractive Part in the Ads
Regarding the student participants’ answers to item 3, “Which part of the ad attracts you the most? Why?” on the questionnaire entitled “Critical Inquiry into
Advertisement” responses are presented in Table 7. They have been classified into five categories: (a) pictures, (b) products, (c) spokespersons, (d) sale price, and (e) other.
The results show that the student participants felt they were most likely to be attracted by the pictures (38%), and then by the products (28%). Regarding the category of pictures, about 38% of the student participants responded that pictures attract them the most. By contrast, no students reported that text attracted them the most. Putrevu (2004), who conducted a survey to examine American undergraduate students’ responses to print ads, reported that both genders preferred visual elements over purely verbal or text content in ads. Similarly, my findings also show that girls and boys were attracted to visual elements but not to text content in the ads.
However, some differences arose between the boys’ and girls’ reasons for why the pictures in the ads attracted them most. Girls seemed to be attracted to romantic pictures because they create special feelings. For example, one girl said: “Cherry blossoms attracted me most because they are the key role in this ad. They are so romantic.” Another girl said: “The house looks really luxurious and makes me feel happy and fulfilled.” By contrast, boys were attracted to images of fast food and responded that the pictures of the food stimulated their appetites.
Other than pictures, the student participants felt they were most likely to be attracted by the products in the ads. About 28% of the student participants responded that 57 products attracted them most. For example, one girl responded that she selected the ad because she liked the racing cars in it. One boy responded that he liked the personal computers in the ads because the products had very big RAM specifications.
Furthermore, some students also preferred the colors of the products. For example, a boy responded: “I like the blue book bag because blue is my favorite color.”
Worthy of notice, five girls (28%) but no boys were attracted to the spokespersons in the ads. Girls were attracted to spokespersons that were funny, cute, famous, or good- looking. For example, two girls responded that they liked the cute and famous animated character on the ad and would purchase all the products endorsed by this animated character. The other two girls said that they liked the funny human character and even emulated the spokesperson’s styles and slogans. When students identified features of the characters they liked or identified emotionally with the characters, celebrities drew students’ attention and positive responses as noted by Brand, Bahr, Borchard, and Neves
(2007). Similarly, my findings also show that students were attracted by and had positive responses to the spokespersons that they liked.
Premium offers were also an attractive part in the ads for about 16% of the student participants. About 21% of the boys and 11% of the girls responded that they were attracted to discounts or free gifts offered by the ads. Roberts (2005) conducted a qualitative study to examine the influences of premium offers on Australian primary school students. After interviewing the students and their parents, Roberts reported that premium offers captured the students’ attention, further increasing their interest in and 58 requests for products. My findings also show some of the student participants were attracted to premium offers.
In addition, two girls were attracted to the implication of environmental protection in the ads. One girl responded that the lawn and glass containers in the ad reminded her of environmental protection, which she cared about very much. Putrevu’s (2004) survey study found that female adults were more likely to prefer the ads emphasizing both self and others than male adults did. Furthermore, Brunel and Nelson (2003) in their survey study reported that female adults were more responsive to help-others charity ad appeals than help-self ads, but males expressed the opposite preference. In comparison with the two aforementioned studies, my findings also show that two girls were attracted to help- other messages, such as environmental protection. 59
Table 7
Breakdown of Responses to “Which Part of the Ad Attracts You Most?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Pictures 5 28% 6 43% 11 34%
Products 4 22% 5 36% 9 28%
Spokespersons 5 28% 0 0% 5 16%
Premium offers 2 11% 3 21% 5 16%
Topics of environmental 2 11% 0 0% 2 6% protection 60
Figure 6. Breakdown of responses to “Which part of the ad attracts you most?” by gender. 61
Results Related to the Second Research Question
This section presents the results of the findings pertaining to the second Research
Question: What purposes do students see in the ads? The section is subdivided into three parts, representing the student participants’ written responses to various items on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into Advertisement, specifically (a) item 7, “Who is speaking in the ad? Is that person worthy of trust? Why?” (b) item 8, “Who do you think this ad targets? What is the purpose of the ad?” and (c) item 12, “Who gain most of the benefits by this ad? Why?”
Identification and Trustworthiness of Spokespersons
First, students’ responses to item 7 on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into Advertisement—“Who is speaking in the ad? Is that person worthy of trust?
Why?”—are represented in Tables 8 and 9. Table 8 presents the student participants’ identification of spokespersons in the ads, classified into four categories: (a) person in the ad, (b) none, (c) object in the ad, and (d) a person not appearing in the ad. Table 9 presents their responses to the trustworthiness of the spokespersons, classified into three categories: (a) trustworthy, (b) trustless, and (c) somewhat trustworthy. Their explanations of the trustworthiness of the spokespersons or lack of it are also presented in this section.
The results in Table 8 show significant gender differences between girls’ and boys’ identification of spokespersons in ads. Girls tended to identify the persons in the ads as spokespersons. About 72% of the girls but only 29% of the boys identified the persons in the ads as spokespersons. By contrast, boys tended to respond “no 62 spokespersons” in the ads. About 64% of the boys but only 17% of the girls responded
“no spokespersons.”
The primary reason that those students responded “no spokesperson” may be that their ads had less or no obvious visual clues to suggest specific spokespersons. After double-checking those students’ self-selected ads, the researcher found that nine boys’ and two girls’ ads had less or no obvious persons, characters, or other visual clues to suggest specific spokespersons; however, among those ads, some had obvious textual matter, suggesting specific spokespersons. These texts were often ignored by the student participants who responded “no spokespersons.” For example, a girl ignored the text in a condominium ad, suggesting that the spokesperson may be a resident in that condominium. The text said, “We are enjoying the gorgeous condominium when you are complaining about your small apartment.” Only one boy apparently referred to the text in his ad to recognize the spokespersons. His written response indicated that he believed the home builders of the condominium to be the spokespersons; he further explained that he came up with this answer based on the text in the ad: “Because the text said, ‘We offer residents in each condominium with a first-class swimming pool.’ I think ‘we’ means the home builders of the condominium.”
In addition, some students may have mistakenly answered the question or misunderstood what spokespersons are. One girl and one boy ignored the obvious persons in their ads and responded “no spokespersons,” but they mentioned the persons in their ads in other questions. For example, the girl responded “no spokesperson” to this question, but responded that she liked the modern woman in her ad to another question. 63
Table 8
Breakdown of Responses to “Who Is Speaking in the Ad?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
The persons in the ads 13 72% 4 29% 17 53%
None 3 17% 9 64% 12 38%
The objects in the ads 2 11% 0 0% 2 6%
Persons not in the ads 0 0% 1 7% 1 3% 64
Figure 7. Breakdown of responses to “Who is speaking in the ad?” by gender. 65
Second, Table 9 presents 20 students’ responses to the trustworthiness of spokespersons, which have been classified into three categories: (a) trustworthy, (b) trustless, and (c) somewhat trustworthy. Because 9 boys and 3 girls recognized no spokespersons in their ads, they did not respond to item 7, which asked “Is that person worthy of trust? Why?” Consequently, only 20 students’ responses to trustworthiness of spokespersons have been presented.
The results show that most of the student participants tended to trust the spokespersons in the ads; however, more girls tended to trust the spokespersons than boys did. Thirteen of 15 (87%) girls but only two of five boys (40%) trusted the spokespersons in the ads.
The reasons for trusting spokespersons differ. On one hand, some students trusted laymen in ads because they, unlike actors who do ads for personal profits, are more likely to tell people the truth. On the other hand, some students trusted famous celebrities and thought they told people the truth; otherwise, they would lose their celebrity status.
Celebrity endorsement is a common strategy to promote sales (Um, 2008). Through celebrity endorsement advertisers attempt to transfer celebrities’ positive reputations and credibility to the endorsed products (Carroll, 2008). Similarly, in my findings, some of the student participants not only trusted the celebrities in the ads, but also transferred the celebrities’ reliability to the endorsed products.
By contrast, only 2 of 15 girls (13%) and three of five boys (60%) did not trust the spokespersons in their ads. One main reason for distrusting the spokesperson is that they 66 had never used the products in the ads. Two boys and one girl shared this reason. The other boy’s reason was that the spokespersons were animated characters, not real persons. 67
Table 9
Breakdown of Responses to “Is that Person Who is Speaking in the Ad Worthy of Trust?” by Gender
Girls (n=15) Boys (n=5) Total (n=20)
Categories n % n % n % 12 80% 2 40% 14 70% Trustworthy 2 13% 3 60% 5 25% Trustless Somewhat trustworthy 1 7% 0 0% 1 5% 68
Figure 8. Breakdown of responses to “Is that person who is speaking in the ad worthy of trust?” by gender. 69
Specifically Targeted Groups and the Purposes of the Ads
Students’ responses to item 8 on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into
Advertisement—“Who do you think this ad targets? What is the purpose of the ad?”—are presented in Tables 10 and 11. Table 10 presents student identification of the targeted groups, classified into three categories: (a) toward specific groups, (b) not toward specific groups, and (c) other. Table 11 presents student identification of the purposes of the ads, classified into two categories: (a) encourage purchase and (b) provide information.
First, the results in Table 10 show that more girls than boys were capable of recognizing some specifically targeted groups. About 61% of the girls but only 43% of the boys did so. By contrast, more boys than girls thought the ads targeted “all” people instead of some specific group. About 50% of the boys and 33% of the girls held this view. Although about 53% of the student participants recognized specifically targeted groups, most of them named a group based on either the product or characters in ads. For example, one girl named the targeted group as the working class because the people in the ad were members of that class. One boy thought car ads targeted people who like cars. Another girl thought sport drink ads targeted people who work out. Lefler (2006) reported that most of the eighth-grade students in his qualitative study did not know that ads targeted more than one group or used one specific group in the ads to attract the other different groups. Similarly, my findings also show that only a few students were able to recognize more than one specifically targeted group.
In addition, many students did not know that ads target not only current consumers, but also potential consumers. For example, a girl who selected a branded real 70 estate ad thought that it targeted only parents. She was unaware that she was also attracted to the ad and was actually one of the targeted people. By contrast, few students knew that they were targeted by the ads. For example, a girl noticed that not only adults, but children were also targeted by a scooter ad because children would purchase the scooters when they reach 18 years old or older. 71
Table 10
Breakdown of Responses to “Who Do You Think This Ad Targets?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Toward specific groups 11 61% 6 43% 17 53%
Not toward specific groups 6 33% 7 50% 13 41%
Other 1 6% 1 7% 2 6% 72
Figure 9. Breakdown of responses to “Who do you think this ad targets?” by gender. 73
Second, Table 11 presents students’ identification of the purposes of the ads, which have been classified into two categories: (a) encourage purchase and (b) provide information. The results in Table 11 show most of the student participants thought the purposes of the ads were to encourage purchases. More boys than girls held this view.
About 79% of the boys and 67% of the girls thought the purposes of the ads were to encourage purchases. By contrast, only 33% of the girls and 21% of the boys thought that providing information was the purpose of the ads.
Regarding students’ understanding of the purposes of ads, many researchers have presented abundant if differing findings. In a meta-analysis of the influence of TV advertising on children commissioned by the Australian Communications and Media
Authority, Brand et al. (2007) reviewed over 100 empirical studies conducted in the
United Stated, the United Kingdom, and Australia. They reported that cognitive development plays a major role in children’s developing the ability to understand TV advertising. Furthermore, they found many studies supporting that children aged seven years were capable of thinking skeptically about ads; however, a qualitative study showed many American children aged 10 years did not realize the persuasive intent of ads, tending to believe that ads were created to provide people with necessary information (Oates, 2003). Similarly, Lefler (2006) reported that the students in his study believed that ads were used to inform them about something in which they were interested. In a comparison of these aforementioned studies with my findings, the participants were 11 or 12 years old; and only two thirds of them understood the true 74 purposes of ads—sales. The others believed that the purposes of the ads were to provide some sort of information. 75
Table 11
Breakdown of Responses to “What is the purpose of the ad?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n % Encourage purchases 12 67% 11 79% 23 72% Provide information 6 33% 3 21% 9 28% 76
Figure 10. Breakdown of responses to “What is the purpose of the ad?” by gender. 77
Persons Gaining Most Benefit From the Ads
Students’ responses to item 12 on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into
Advertisement—“Who gained the most benefit from this ad? Why?” —are presented in
Table 12. They have been classified into four categories: (a) consumers or potential consumers, (b) merchants, (c) both (merchants and consumers), and (d) other.
The results show that most of the student participants thought consumers or potential consumers gained the most benefits from the ads, followed by merchants. About
44% of the student participants thought consumers or potential consumers gained the most benefit from the ads. The major reason identified by them is that consumers could enjoy the products or gain necessary information about the products from the ads. In addition, about 31% of the student participants said merchants gained the most benefits from the ads. The reason for most of them is that merchants could earn a lot of money by selling the products. Worthy of notice, two boys and one girl said both (potential) consumers and merchants gained the most benefit from the ads. For example, one of the boys said: “Both gain benefits. Consumers can enjoy inexpensive fried chicken, and the merchants can make profits.” Two of 18 girls (11%) thought the celebrities in their ads gained the most benefits from the ads because appearing on the ads made them famous and rich.
Lawlor and Prothero (2008) conducted a qualitative study to explore children’s understanding of television advertising. After interviewing 52 Irish children ages 7 to 9, they found the children thought that not only advertisers and merchants, but viewers also gain benefits from advertising. The major reason why they held this view was that they 78 thought viewers could gain information from TV advertising. Similarly, in my findings, some students thought that consumers and potential consumers were the persons who gained the most benefit from ads because they learn useful information from ads. 79
Table 12
Breakdown of Responses to “Who Gained the Most Benefit from This Ad?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Consumers & potential consumers 8 44% 6 43% 14 44%
Merchants 6 33% 6 43% 12 38%
Both (Merchants & Consumers) 1 6% 2 14% 3 9%
Celebrities in the ads 2 11% 0 0% 2 6%
Nobody 1 6% 0 0% 1 3% 80
Figure 11. Breakdown of responses to “Who gained the most benefit from this ad?” by gender. 81
Results Related to the Third Research Question
This section presents the results of the findings pertaining to the third Research
Question: How do the students interpret the ads? The section is subdivided into two parts, respectively presenting students’ written responses to various items on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into Advertisement, including (a) item 5, which asked, “How do you feel when you are looking at this ad? ” and (b) item 9, “What does this ad remind you of?”
Students’ Feelings While Looking at the Ads
Student responses to item 5 on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into
Advertisement—“How do you feel when you are looking at this ad?—are presented in
Table 13. The student participants’ responses have been classified into two categories: (a) positive emotion, and (b) negative emotion.
The results show that most of the student participants had positive emotions while looking at the ads. Sixteen of 19 girls (94%) and 13 of 14 boys (93%) expressed positive feelings, such as happy, delicious, healthy, comfortable, cool, awesome, and so on in their responses. By contrast, only one girl and one boy had negative emotion. The girl said: “The main color, black, on the ad makes me feel a little sad.”
Pictures and aesthetic elements in the ads are often for psychological effects; that is, to evoke positive emotion and stimulate strong reactions (Anderson and Milbrandt,
2005). For example, researchers have found that warm colors like yellow are favored ad colors because they generate positive feelings. In my findings, although one girl felt a 82 little sad because of the black, her choice of that ad may suggest black had little negative effect on her fondness for the ad.
In general, the findings reveal that the ads are connected with the student participants on an emotional level. Many ads draw people’s attention and are connected with people through pleasant emotion and stimulating experiences, such as family, stunning scenery, humor, sex, cute children, animals, music, ethics, and so on (McGuire,
2004). Ads become memorable and persuasive when people feel good about or like them; at this time, products’ qualities are integrated into our psyches. Consequently, consumption has become associated with desirable experiences and lifestyles, which were defined by capitalism (McGuire, 2004). 83
Table 13
Breakdown of Responses to “How Do You Feel When You Are Looking at This Ad?” by
Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Positive 17 94% 13 93% 30 94%
Negative 1 6% 1 7% 2 6% 84
Figure12. Breakdown of responses to “How do you feel when you are looking at this ad?” by gender. 85
What Students Associate With the Ads
The student participants’ responses to item 9—“What does this ad make you think of?”—on the questionnaire entitled “Critical Inquiry into Advertisement” are presented in
Table 14. They have been classified into five categories: (a) imaginary scenes involving product use, (b) related products, (c) practical life experience, (d) nothing, and (e) encouraging purchases.
The results show that the ads made most of the students (about 66%) think of either using the products in the ads or related products. About 44% of the girls and 29% of the boys imagined scenes involving product use. For example, a girl thought about living, playing, and running in the luxury condominium. Another girl recalled an experience when she drank a sports drink. The student participants in relation to the original product also frequently identified related products. Roughly, 28% of the girls and
29% of the boys thought of related products. For example, a pizza ad prompted a boy to think of other fast food, such as French fries and hamburgers. Notably, celebrities in the ads made two girls think of other products also endorsed by the same celebrities. For example, a girl who chose a yogurt ad said: “I think of Koondom green tea because it is also endorsed by the same singer.”
Only 13% of the student participants’ thoughts went beyond using the product advertised or related products; these students thought of practical life experiences. For example, a girl who chose an air conditioner ad thought of global warming. A boy thought that the luxury condominium in the ad was not affordable for everyone because of the economic recession. 86
The functions of ads are to influence people’s attitudes toward advertised products, reinforce people’s memory about the products, and create people’s desires for the products (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003). My findings reveal that the ads may affect the student participants to some degree. The ads made about 66% of the student participants think about either using the products in the ads or related products. Through this kind of association, ads may increase the likelihood that students will remember the product. 87
Table 14
Breakdown of Responses to “What Does this Ad Make You Think of?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Imaginary scenes involving 8 44% 4 29% 12 38% product use
Related products 5 28% 4 29% 9 28%
Nothing 3 17% 3 21% 6 19%
Practical life experience 2 11% 2 14% 4 13%
Encouraging purchases 0 0% 1 7% 1 3% 88
Figure 13. Breakdown of responses to “What does this ad think you of?” by gender. 89
Results Related to the Fourth Research Question
This section presents the results of findings pertaining to the fourth Research
Question: How do the students evaluate the ads? The section is subdivided into four parts, respectively presenting students’ written responses to various items on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into Advertisement, including (a) item 4, “How do you feel the text and pictures go together? Successfully or not? Why?” (b) item 10, “Have you ever purchased the product shown in this ad? Were you satisfied with the product?
Why?” and (c) item 11, “If you had enough money, would you want to buy the products or do the things suggested by the ad? Why?” The remaining section is whether students’ previous purchases of the products in the ads affect their willingness to purchase the same products (i.e., the relationship between student responses to items 10 and 11).
Evaluation of the Relationship between the Text and Pictures
Student responses to item 4 on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into
Advertisement—“How do you feel the text and pictures go together? Successfully or not?
Why?—are presented in Table 15. They have been classified into six categories: (a) successfully; text and pictures clearly introduced the products, (b) successfully; text and pictures are attractive, (c) successfully; text and pictures are relevant to the products, (d) successfully; aesthetic forms, (e) successfully; text and pictures are funny, and (f) not successfully.
The results show that most of the student participants (about 94%) felt the text and pictures in the ads related successfully. The first major reason is that they felt text and pictures clearly introduced the products. About 50% of the student participants 90 shared this reason. For example, a boy responded: “Successfully. Because the pictures of coffee are clear. The text tells us buy three get one. Without the pictures, we would not know what the product looks like. Without the text, we would not know about this discount.”
The second major reason is that they felt both text and pictures were attractive.
About 28% of the student participants shared this reason. For example, a boy said: “Both the pictures and text attracted me. They make me want to buy the product right now.” In addition, two girls and one boy evaluated their ads based on aesthetic form. The two girls responded that arrangement of pictures and text made the ads clear. The boy responded that the text and pictures were very colorful. Only one girl and one boy thought the text and pictures did not relate well. They said either the pictures or the text in their ads were too small. 91
Table 15
Breakdown of Responses to “How Do You Feel the Text and Pictures Go Together?
Successfully or Not?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Successfully; text and pictures 8 44% 8 57% 16 50% introduce the products
Successfully; text and pictures 5 28% 4 29% 9 28% are attractive
Successfully; aesthetic forms 2 11% 1 7% 3 9%
Successfully; text and pictures 2 11% 0 0% 2 6% are funny
Not successfully 1 6% 1 7% 2 6% 92
Figure 14. Breakdown of responses to “How do you feel the text and pictures go together? Successfully or not?” by gender. 93
Degree of Satisfaction with Previous Product Purchase
Student responses to item 10 on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into
Advertisement—“Have you ever purchased the product that is shown in this ad? Were you satisfied with the product? Why?”—are presented in Table 16. They have been classified into three categories: (a) never purchased the product, (b) purchased and satisfied, and (c) purchased but not satisfied. The student participants who never purchased the products had no previous purchasing experiences to answer the related questions—“Were you satisfied with the product? Why?” The reasons that the student participants felt satisfied or not have been subclassified into two subcategories: (a) products fulfill demands and (b) like the spokespersons.
The results show that many of the student participants (about 66%) have never purchased the products shown in the ads. More girls than boys have never purchased the products in the ads. About 72% of the girls and 57% of the boys have never purchased the products in the ads. In addition, there are about 34 % of the student participants that ever purchased the products. More boys than girls felt satisfied because the products fulfilled their demands. About 43% of the boys, but only 17% of the girls felt that way. A girl expressed a unique reason: She felt satisfied after the purchase because she liked the spokesperson (a cute animated character) on the product packaging.
Only one girl felt unsatisfied after purchase. She said: “The clothing is beautiful on those models in the ad. But it did not fit me. I do not have such a slim body like those models.” A number of researchers have reported that children and adolescents are particularly sensitive to the perfect body images shown in the media, and therefore media 94 exposure of unrealistic body images may cause females’ body dissatisfaction and other emotional problems (Markello, 2005). One of my female student participants also felt dissatisfied with her body image after seeing the models in the ad. 95
Table 16
Breakdown of Responses to “Have You Ever Purchased the Product That Is Shown In
This Ad? Were You Satisfied With The Product?” by Gender
Girls Boys Total
(n=18) (n=14) (n=32)
Categories Reasons n % n % n %
Never purchased the 13 72% 8 57% 21 66% products
Purchased & satisfied 4 23% 6 43% 10 31%
Products fulfilled 3 17% 6 43% 9 28% demands
Liked the 1 6% 0 0% 1 3% spokespersons
Purchased, but not 1 6% 0 0% 1 3% satisfied 96
Figure 15. Breakdown of responses to “Have you ever purchased the product that is shown in this ad? Were you satisfied with the product?” by gender. 97
Willingness to Purchase the Products in the Ads
Student responses to item 11 on the questionnaire entitled Critical Inquiry into
Advertisement—“If you have enough money, do you want to buy the products or do the things suggested by the ad? —are presented in Table 17. They have been classified into two categories: (a) will buy products and (b) will not buy products. The reasons that the student participants wanted or did not want to purchase the products suggested by the ads are presented in Table 18.
First, the results in Table 17 show that the student participants who wanted to purchase the products on the ads outnumbered those who did not. About 63% of the student participants wanted to purchase the products in the ads, but 37% of them did not.
In addition, more boys than girls wanted to purchase the products in the ads. About 71% of the boys but only 56% of the girls wanted to purchase the products in the ads.
Second, diversity shows in the reasons that students wanted to purchase the products. Boys’ reasons were more consistent than those of girls. The first major reason that boys wanted to purchase the products was previous purchase and satisfaction with the products. Among 14 boys, 6 boys (43%) shared this reason. The second major reason for the boys was that they trusted the ads before their purchases. Three of 14 boys (21%) shared this reason. The reason was also shared by 5 of 18 girls (28%) regarding their willingness of purchases. For example, a boy responded: “The picture of the book bag convinced me that it is healthy to my spine and physical development even though I have never used it.” 98
Some unique reasons emerged in students’ responses about reasons that they wanted to purchase the products in the ads. For example, one boy and one girl wanted to purchase the products because they wanted to find out whether the products were as good as described in the ads. Another girl’s reason was that her friends recommended the products.
Third, diversity also shows in the reasons that the student participants did not want to purchase the products in the ads. The most common reason for both genders was that they did not need the particular product. Four of 18 girls (22%) and 4 of 14 boys
(29%) shared this reason. For example, one girl who did not want to purchase the product said: “We already have one air conditioner, so we do need to buy a new one now.” One boy also said: “Although I liked this car, buying it is too luxurious. My father has had an old car and does not need a new car. But I will ask my father to buy it after the old car breaks down.” It is apparent that although some of the student participants liked the ads, they would still consider their practical needs before making their purchasing decisions.
However, four of these eight students also expressed their willingness to purchase the products when their needs change later.
Some special reasons emerged in students’ reasons not to purchase the products in the ads. One girl did not want to purchase the product (scooter) because she was too young to make the purchase. She said: “I am less than 18 years old, so I do not want to purchase it. But if I were over 18 years old, I would buy it.” Another girl’s reason was that “the products were too expensive. I will not buy it until it is discounted.” The reasons preventing the two girls from making purchases are the product’s purchasing restrictions 99 and the high prices of the products. However, they expressed the willingness to purchase the products when they are eligible to purchase or when the price drops in the future. 100
Table 17
Breakdown of Responses to “If You Have Enough Money, Do You Want to Buy the products or Do the Things Suggested by the Ad?” by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories N % n % n %
Will buy products 10 56% 10 56% 10 56%
Will not buy products 8 44% 8 44% 8 44% 101
Figure 16. Breakdown of responses to “If you have enough money, do you want to buy the products or do the things suggested by the ad?” by gender. 102
Table 18
Breakdown of the Students’ Reasons Why or Why Not They Want to Buy the Products in the Ads by Gender
Girls Boys Total (n=18) (n=14) (n=32)
Categories Reasons n % n % n %
Want to buy Trust ads before 5 28% 3 21% 10 31% products purchases
Satisfied after 3 17% 6 43% 9 28% former purchases
Intend to find out whether the products are as good as 1 6% 1 7% 2 6% described in the ads
Refer to other people 1 6% 0 0% 1 3%
Do not want to buy Do not need the products 4 22% 4 29% 8 25% products
Dislike the products 1 6% 0 0% 1 3%
Too expensive 1 6% 0 0% 1 3%
Products’ purchasing 1 6% 0 0% 1 3% restrictions
Suspect the authenticity of the 1 6% 0 0% 1 3% ads 103
Effect of Previous Experience on Willingness to Purchase the Products
Table 19 presents whether or not the students’ previous purchase of the product in the ads affected their willingness to purchase the same products. The data were collected from the student participants’ responses to item 10, which asked “Have you purchased the products?” and to item 11, which asked “If you had enough money, would you buy the products or do the things suggested by the ad?” They were classified into four categories: (a) never purchased; want to purchase the product, (b) never purchased; do not want to purchase the product (c) have purchased; want to purchase the product, (d) have purchased; do not want to purchase the product.
The results show that most of the student participants wanted to purchase the products in the ads regardless of their past purchases of the same product. About 62% of the student participants wanted to purchase, and about 34% of them did not. In addition, about the same number of student responses fell into the three categories: (a) Never purchased; want to purchase the products, (b) never purchased; do not want to purchase the products (c) have purchased; want to purchase the products. Only one student had ever purchased the product in the ad but did not want to purchase it again. In addition, more boys (43%) than girls (22%) had purchased the product previously and wanted to purchase it again. By contrast, more girls (39%) than boys (29%) had never purchased the product but wanted to purchase it now. 104
Table 19
Breakdown of the Effect of Previous Purchase Experience on Willingness to Purchase the Product, by Gender
Girls (n=18) Boys (n=14) Total (n=32)
Categories n % n % n %
Never purchased; 7 39% 4 29% 11 34% want to purchase the products Never purchased; do not want to purchase the 6 33% 4 29% 10 31% products Ever purchased; 4 22% 6 43% 10 31% want to purchase the products Ever purchased; do not want to purchase the 1 6% 0 0% 1 3% products 105
Figure 17. Breakdown of the effect of previous purchase experience on willingness to purchase the product, by gender. 106
Summary
This chapter has presented the results of questionnaires, including media exposure survey, print ad media and commercial logos, and the results related to the four research questions. The next chapter addresses the results of interviews, including students’ perceptions of gender, students’ perspectives on spokespersons, cultural influences on students’ willingness to be spokespersons, entertainment effects in ads, and students’ positive and passive interaction with ads. 107
CHAPTER V
RESULTS OF INTERVIEWS
Overview
This chapter presents the qualitative data collected from the student semi- structured interviews, which were divided into five main themes, including (a) students’ perceptions of gender, (b) students’ perspectives on spokespersons, (c) cultural influences on students’ willingness to be spokespersons, (d) entertainment effects in ads, and (e) students’ positive and passive interaction with ads. This chapter has two major purposes.
First, the previous chapter presented general findings to the research questions, and this chapter aims to provide more detailed findings, which supplement the earlier one.
Second, many intriguing themes and important issues emerged during the interviews, and therefore it is necessary to present them in this separate chapter. All data from the 10 one- on-one interviews and the translations of two focus-group interviews were interwoven for open coding and then selective coding under emerging subthemes and further classified into five main themes. All students’ names were changed to pseudonyms alphabetically.
The structuring of the five main themes and their subthemes was based on three major factors, including (a) the frequency of each theme as it appeared in students’ interviews,
(b) the comparison of specific subthemes, and (c) the fluency of this chapter.
Students’ Perceptions of Gender
Interviews during which students discussed their self-selected ads revealed their perceptions of gender and were presented in terms of five subthemes. First, general gender attributes in students’ views of ad preferences were discussed. 108
Second, among the student participants’ views about gender attributes, some female stereotypes and body images emerged and were further discussed. Third, for the purpose of comparing with the former subtheme, male stereotypes and boys’ body images were discussed. Fourth, the student participants’ interviews further revealed the various sources helping them to form their perceptions of gender. Those sources included mass media, life experiences, and societal values and were discussed in this subtheme. And finally, some social pressures, that is, which force the student participants to meet the gender roles, were also discussed.
Gender Attributes in Students’ Views of Ad Preferences
Gender differences appeared in the student participants’ opinions about boys’ and girls’ preferences for ads. They thought that boys and girls preferred different ads because of different gendered characteristics. They judged ads and products as masculine, feminine, or neutral based on various factors, such as colors, sizes, and spokespersons in the ads.
First, the boys’ views about boys’ and girls’ ad preferences are shown in the following.
Andrew: Sometimes, boys and girls like the same things, but mostly they
don’t. Boys like ads dealing with big and heavy products because they are strong.
By contrast, girls are weak; they like ads about small and light products.
Ben: Boys’ and girls’ personalities are not the same, and therefore their
favorite ads differ. Boys are braver than girls, so they like looking at something
exciting and cool. Girls are cowardly and favor cute, pretty, and mild ads. They 109
also prefer different colors. Boys like black and blue. Girls like red or pink. No
boys like pink. It is disgusting.
David: I think most girls care about beauty. They prefer ads on clothing,
jewelry, and skin care products; but boys like thrilling ads about motors, sporting
goods, and video games. In addition, girls like ads that include cute animated
characters, such as rabbits. But boys don’t. We like cool athletics, such as Chien-
Ming Wang of the Yankees.
Generally speaking, boys’ discussions about girls’ ad preferences reflected traditionally feminine attributes, such as small, light, weak, cowardly, cute, pretty, mild, pink, red, and decorative. By contrast, masculine attributes reflected in their discussions about boys’ ad preferences included qualifiers such as big, heavy, brave, cool, exciting, athletic, thrilling, black, and blue.
Second, the girls’ views about boys’ and girls’ ad preferences are somewhat different from boys’ opinions.
Amy: Both girls and boys like cool products and ads, but boys prefer ads with
simple colors and patterns; girls like colorful and complicated patterns.
Betty: Boys’ and girls’ preferences depend on the ads and the products.
Overall, their choices are different. Boys like cool and aggressive ads, such as
racing car ads. But girls like cute and delicate products, such as Japanese
products. In terms of colors, girls like red, pink, and light colors. By contrast,
boys like dark blue and black. 110
Mia: Boys are more athletic and daring than girls are, so they prefer sport ads
or wild ads, such as motors. Girls like pretty and romantic ads for cell phones and
clothing.
Similarly, girls’ discussions about boys’ and girls’ ad preferences also reflected traditionally feminine and masculine attributes. Masculine attributes, such as aggressive, cool, exciting, daring, athletic, black, and blue, were used to describe boys and their ad preferences. By contrast, feminine attributes, such as light, cute, pretty, delicate, romantic, colorful, pink, red, and decorative were identified for girls. In one evident difference from boys’ views, some girls thought coolness was also favored by girls.
Even for identical ads and products, four students thought boys’ and girls’ favorite parts differed. For example, Mike said: “Even though men and women like the same car, they are attracted to different parts of it. Men are more likely to be attracted to engines, radiators, and exterior design; whereas women only care about seats and interior design.” Ben also responded: “Both boys and girls like juice, but boys prefer large-sized containers. Girls tend to buy small ones.”
When comparing the student participants’ views about ad preferences of the opposite sex and their actual ad preferences, the female views about boys’ ad preferences approximately reflected the boys’ real ad preferences; but male views did not precisely reflect girls’ actual ad preferences. On one hand, all boys in the interviews agreed they like cool and exciting ads, such as cars, as stated in girls’ opinions about boys’ ad preferences. On the other hand, many boys believed that girls preferred cute and decorative products, but three out of five girls expressed an opposite attitude, like Amy: 111
“I don’t like cute products. So boring, and they mean nothing to me! I also don’t like jewelry and clothing. They are just used to decorate bodies. I like more practical and durable products, such as cars.”
Female Stereotypes and Body Images
When discussing boys’ and girls’ preferences for ads, some negative gendered stereotypes emerged. Negative stereotypes represented in ads seemed to affect the student participants’ perceptions of body weight. Betty’s and Emma’s responses to an oolong tea are typical examples:
Betty: “Cholesterol woman” is the most attractive part of this ad for me, but she is not attractive to boys. It is proper for a fat and ugly woman to play the role of cholesterol.
She hugs and kisses the working class male crazily. Do you see the man’s uncomfortable expression? That is very funny. Ha . . . . I think the man feels miserable when the fat woman harasses him. Cholesterol cannot be played by a slim and pretty woman. If it is the case, the working class male will feel happy because he can be kissed by a hot chick.
All men like hot chicks but dislike fat women. I don’t want to be a fat woman. Being a fat man is not good, but being a fat woman is terrible. If I am getting fat, I will drink lots of this tea.
Emma: “The oolong tea ad works for me! I want to buy this kind of tea because I am a little fat now. I think that fat women have unhappy futures. For example on TV, they often do something stupid or are teased by others. Sometimes they are very funny; sometimes I pity them.” 112
A number of studies have suggested that media exposure affects female body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and eating behaviors and beliefs (Grabe,
Ward, & Hyde, 2008). For example, Ata, Ludden, and Lally (2007) conducted a questionnaire survey to examine how self-esteem, social support, pressure from family, friends, and media relate to body image, eating-related attitudes, and behaviors among
American adolescents ages 13-19 years. They indicated that both male and female adolescents tended to be dissatisfied with their current bodies. Males wanted to have ideal muscular bodies by increasing their upper bodies; by contrast females wanted to have slim bodies by decreasing the overall size of their bodies. In comparison with males, however, females displayed more serious psychosocial pressures from higher weight- related ridicule in the media and from friends. Similar findings were shown in another questionnaire survey, which examined various factors in middle and high school students’ eating disorder symptoms in China. Chinese female adolescents expressed significantly higher concern about excessive weight and social pressures resulting from teasing about weight or appearance than male adolescents did (Jackson & Chen, 2008)
In comparison with these two earlier studies, my findings also showed that pressure from weight-related teasing may negatively impact girls. The oolong tea ad delivered weight-related teasing by representing cholesterol as fat woman, making girls worry about their own body images.
Male Stereotypes and Body Images
Notably, different from Ata, Ludden, and Lally’s (2007) findings that American male adolescents were concerned with muscular body image and felt dissatisfied with 113 their own bodies, my findings showed no Taiwanese boys concerned about muscular body image. A survey study that examined Taiwanese heterosexual male undergraduates’ dissatisfaction with their bodies (Yang & Grey, 2005) reported that Taiwanese men exhibited significantly less dissatisfaction with their bodies than Western men (the United
States, French and Austria) did.
Perhaps, muscular body images in Taiwanese media and masculinity in Confucian culture account for this. First, in Confucian culture, muscularity is not as important a measure of masculinity as it is in Western culture. Chinese men have aspired to the
Confucian ideal of the Junzi for most of the past two millennia. Junzi is a gentleman, a refined or virtuous man, with morality, self-cultivation, and literary and cultural attainment (Louie, 2002). The Chinese idiom “strong limbs, simple mind” clearly shows the negative impression of men who only have physical strength but no mental or intellectual capacities (Qin, 2009). Among traditional Chinese heroes and in modern
Chinese literature, intelligent males often beat brawny ones (Louie, 2002). Muscularity is not the key criterion of masculinity in Taiwan, where Confucian philosophy prevails.
Second, Asian muscular body images are less emphasized in Taiwanese magazine ads. Yang and Grey (2005) examined muscular body images in Taiwanese magazine ads and found that half the Western men and women were shown partly undressed, but only
5% of Asian men shown were partly undressed. The researchers conclude that muscular body image is not a major criterion for defining a Chinese man as masculine, whereas the body has greater importance in defining an American man. Consequently, Taiwanese boys may be less exposed to muscular body image and have fewer concerns about it. 114
Sources From Which the Students Formed Perceptions of Gender
As shown in previous subthemes, the student participants’ self-selected ads served as a source for them to form their perceptions of gender. Except the self-selected ads, interview discussions further revealed that the student participants also learned some gender-role stereotypes from other sources, including mass media, life experiences, and social values.
First, for example, Ben’s discussion on car ads shows how he learned gender-role stereotypes from his life experiences:
Boys like car ads and cars more than girls do. I seldom see women as drivers and
men as passengers. Even though women can drive, they are not as good as men.
My father always said women were bad drivers who hardly controlled big
machines. At home, only my father and I like to discuss car ads. My mother and
sisters are not interested in cars.
Second, Amy’s interview also revealed how she learned gender-role stereotypes from school and society.
Amy: “When seeing a car ad, boys only pay attention to cars, but not to trivial
stuff on the ads, such as background. Boys are not detail-oriented. Everyone says
girls are more detail-oriented than boys are.”
Interviewer: “How about boys in your family and classes? Are all of them not
as detail-oriented as girls?” 115
Amy: “Not necessarily. But I think most girls are born that way. When I
forgot to bring in my homework, my teachers always said, ‘You are a girl, not a
boy. Why do you often forget things? You are not detail-oriented.’”
Third, other gender roles stereotypes learned by the student participants from the mass media also showed in the girls’ focus groups.
Mia: “Boys would not choose this insecticide ad as their favorite ad because
boys don’t care about cleanliness. Everyone says that.”
Tina: “Oh, like Shen-Chen (a TV star) in Star Garden (a soap opera). He likes
his room dirty, not clean.”
Betty: “I think they [the advertisers] should put in some men holding guns and
killing cockroaches. Guns draw boys’ attentions. You know, many boys like
aggressive or violent stuff.”
Emma: “Yes, I think so. Another insecticide ad just did that. It is effective to
attract boys.”
According to Bland (2005), gender role is defined as the behaviors, attitudes, values, and beliefs that a specific cultural group deem proper for males and females based on their biological sex. Gender-role stereotype is the socially determined model, which includes the cultural values regarding what the gender roles should be. Different from gender role, gender-role stereotypes tend to be the way people think others should behave as a male or female. Perceived gender-role stereotypes are frequently reflected in contemporary Taiwanese print and broadcast media and ads. They and their resultant inequities are perpetuated and reinforced by educational institutions and mass media 116
(Chen, 2005). My findings show many problematic gender-role stereotypes were transmitted to the student participants through mass media and their life experiences inside and outside of school.
Social Influences on Students to Meet Gender Role Stereotypes
Furthermore, some students’ responses in the interviews showed that the possible influences of gender-role stereotypes on their gender-role formation. On one hand, they learned their own gender behaviors from prevailing gender-role stereotypes; on the other hand, they are expected or even pressured to meet these roles by their peers. Peer influences on the student participants were obvious in the interviews. In Taiwan, during the transition from elementary school to junior high school, students appear to rely more strongly on friends than on parents for advice (Yi & Wu, 2004). Both girls and boys in my study are expected to meet some established gender roles by their peers. For example,
Andrew’s comments reflected the pressure he felt from his peers to abide to certain gender roles.
I don’t want to buy this book bag. Boys cannot buy a book bag with “Hello Kitty”
on it. It is too gay. If a boy has this kind of book bag, he will be made fun of and
even ostracized by his friends. And also pink! Never use pink stuff! Others will
think you are gay if you use pink stuff. If you want to fit in with peers, listen to
them and don’t act gay.
A qualitative study examined the expected gender roles at home and school for
Chinese immigrant adolescents in middle and high schools in the United States (Qin,
2009). The author reported that many Chinese male adolescents are pressured by peers to 117 demonstrate their masculinity; if they displayed feminine behaviors as defined by peers, they are often regarded as gay. In comparison with Chinese immigrant adolescents, although Taiwanese boys were not necessarily involved in sports, video games, and nonacademic activities to demonstrate masculinity, they were also pressured to demonstrate their heterosexuality by avoiding feminine behaviors defined by their peers.
Not only boys but also girls felt the peer pressure of expected gender roles as shown in the girls’ focus group.
Tina: What ads did you [Amy] bring? Oh, why did you choose a racing car ad
as your favorite ad? Hey, man, only boys like these kind of racing cars! [Other
girls laughed loudly.]
Mia: Yes, you often do things unlike girls. You are just like a man.
Amy: Really? Ha. . . . I don’t know.
Betty: Yes, you are. The way you talk to teachers is as loud and daring. Only
boys do that. You are not tender at all.
Judging by Amy’s expressions and body language, I sensed she felt uncomfortable and uneasy when her classmates ridiculed her ad preference. In Taiwanese students’ views (about 10–14 years old), normal girls should be tender, clean, polite, and good at housekeeping (Chen, 2005). Discussion in the girls’ focus group disclosed pressure from Amy’s peers to meet feminine gender expectations, such as tenderness and politeness.
Generally speaking, my findings in this section showed that Taiwanese boys and girls were immersed in preconceived gender roles from the mass media as well as life 118 experiences at home and school. Peer pressures further reinforced preconceived gender roles. Young children often believe they can be anything and can do anything, but negative gender stereotypes limit their dreams and experiences. These preconceived ideas prejudice people’s capacity to see the real interest, talent, and occupational skills of individuals. Although gender-equality education has been emphasized in both society and schools in Taiwan for several years, students still need more help in breaking through gender-role stereotypes to understand themselves and others without the lenses of bias.
Students’ Perspectives on Spokespersons
Another apparent theme revealed during students’ interview discussions was students’ perspectives on spokespersons. According to the student participants, spokespersons serve as a necessary part of ads in numerous ways. Many of them knew who put spokespersons into ads as well as what their purposes were; however, they identified the purposes of the spokespersons in the ads differently based on the spokespersons’ social status. In general students’ favorite celebrities exerted the most influence on them as spokespersons.
Identification of the Purposes of Spokespersons in Ads
All of the student participants understood that advertisers or merchants were the ones who put spokespersons in ads and that their purpose was to promote products.
Amy’s interview typified the view of these students: “This actress is beautiful, so the advertiser hired her to do this ad. The advertiser hoped that she could promote this product, helping the company make money.” 119
When talking about a sport drink ad in the girl’s focus group, all five girls also knew that advertisers or merchants put the most popular cartoon characters in ads to promote products. Mia verbalized students’ understanding:
The advertiser put Wanwan [a cartoon character] in this ad just to attract people.
You know. Recently, he has become so popular that information about him appears even on the TV news. Now many advertisers use him to do ads to draw people’s attentions.
They knew people would be more likely to buy the products if they liked Wanwan.
Mia was quite aware that the most popular cartoon characters often drew people’s attention and could persuade people to make purchases. She also knew advertisers used popular cartoon characters for their ads. In addition, Mia further talked about the use of the most popular characters as an advertiser’s common strategy:
Wanwan is just another temporary fad and will fade away after a while just like
Pikachu or Monkey D. Luffy [Japanese animated characters]. Many advertisers
put them in their ads when they were hot. But now they are not hot, so advertisers
don’t put them in ads. Wanwan is hot now, but advertisers won’t put him in ads
when he is not hot anymore.
Mia observed that advertisers use the “hottest” or most popular characters to promote sales. She also knew that a specific character was popular only for a short time, so advertisers’ use of Wanwan is just a fad.
Six students talked about celebrities. All of them understood that advertisers or merchants put celebrities in ads because they want to use celebrities’ supposed trustworthiness to promote sales. For example, John said: “Peach is a famous singer, so 120 many people would likely trust him. Advertisers like hiring Peach to do ads.” John not only understood that Peach is a celebrity who seems to the public to be trustworthy, but he also knew advertisers hope his trustworthiness can promote sales.
However, the student participants’ identification of the purposes for spokespersons’ appearances in ads was not limited to promoting sales. They identified the purposes based on spokespersons’ social status. The student participants generally thought adult lay spokespersons were simply actors promoting products for personal profit. For example, Betty said: “I don’t know these spokespersons. They may be new actors and do the ads to promote the products. Doing so, they can make money.”
In addition, in the girls’ focus group interview, all the girls thought these spokespersons did ads also for fame. Amy said, “This actress did the ad because she wanted to be famous. She is not famous, but if she did a good job in the ad, she may become famous and be invited to do more ads or even dramas.”
With regard to young lay spokespersons, all of the boys in the boy’s focus group believed they were simply laypersons and appeared in ads only to help consumers learn more about the products. For example, Andrew said:
The two kids in the ads are ordinary students just like me. They may be fourth
graders. They were in this ad to try these book bags for us, helping us know what
the bag looks like on kids. They may only earn a little money by doing so because
they are just students, not actors.
Andrew did not realize that young spokespersons were also actors and had done this ad for personal profit. When I further asked him whether the two children were in 121 this ad to promote this book bag, his answer confirmed his belief again: “No! The kids did not say anything to promote this bag. They are there just to try the bags for us, helping us know about this bag.”
Regarding celebrity spokespersons, the six students who talked about celebrities understood that advertisers and merchants put celebrities in ads to promote products, but they all believed that celebrities appeared in ads to recommend good products. For example, John said: “Peach drank this tea, and he liked it; so he did this ad to share information about this delicious tea with people.”
The Effects of Celebrity Endorsements on Students
Clearly, the six students tended to believe that celebrities appeared in ads to recommend good products; therefore, they also tended to believe that the products endorsed by celebrities are good. John’s discussion of Peach’s endorsement is typical:
He is famous and everyone knows him, so he cannot tell a lie. He recommends
only good products, not rip-offs. Otherwise, he would lose his celebrity status.
That’s why I am willing to try the brand of tea recommended by him.
According to Silvera (2004), celebrities are people publicly recognized for their attractiveness, trustworthiness, and other distinctive attributes. Many studies have supported the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement. For example in a Federal Trade
Commission study, children ages 8 to14 watched various ads for a model racing set, including one featuring a famous race-car driver and including real racing footage. The results of the study showed that children who watched the celebrity-endorsed ads were convinced that the race-car driver was an expert about the model car and believed the 122 product endorsed by that driver was better in quality than the others (Levine, 2003).
John’s statements supported this study; celebrity endorsement increased the student participants’ trust in the endorsed products.
In addition, a celebrity may also serve as a reference to various products endorsed by the same celebrity. Amy is one of the two students who talked about how a celebrity reminded them of their brands or products: “This cell phone ad reminded me of a green tea ad because both ads are endorsed by Lou. And McDonald’s and Pepsi. They are also endorsed by him.” Lefler (2006), who examined American eighth graders’ response to print ads, arrived at some similar findings: Students’ favorite celebrities also served as reference points to other brands and products endorsed by the same celebrities.
David’s discussion about his favorite ad reveals that celebrity endorsements may also increase a viewer’s recall of ads and products. He said:
One time my mother went to a supermarket, called me on her cell phone, and
asked me which brand of soda I wanted. There were so many brands, and I
couldn’t immediately name one. Suddenly, I thought of Chien-Ming Wang. He is
my favorite Yankees ball player, and he did an ad for a soda. I told my mom to
buy Wang’s soda. My mother knew what I was talking about. Ha! Wang’s soda
was easy for her to remember, too.
Evidently, David’s favorite celebrity captured his attention. When David had his choice of drinks, the first thing he thought of was his favorite celebrity, who reminded him of a specific ad and its products. Researchers have suggested that once an ad with a particular character draws a child’s attention, his or her recognition of the character may 123 increase long-term memory about the product and brand (Brand, Bahr, Borchard, &
Neves, 2007). My findings show David’s favorite celebrity helped him remember the endorsed product.
Ultimately, celebrity endorsements may fulfill the advertiser’s goal. All of the six students who talked about celebrities responded that celebrity endorsements increased their willingness or desire to purchase the endorsed products.
Emma, one of these students said: “I like Wanwan. I want to buy all products endorsed by him as long as I can afford them.” Offering another typical example, Tina talked about how celebrity endorsement increased her desire for the endorsed products.
Tina said:
Sometimes but not always, my favorite singer Lou influences my purchases. For
example, recently, I could not decide which cell phone to buy—a Sony or a
Nokia. After I found out that Lou endorsed the Sony, I immediately made my
decision to buy that one. I wanted to own the same cell phone as Lou. That is
really cool.
For advertisers, celebrity endorsement has been a common strategy to attract consumers and increase brand awareness, ad recall, and favorable attitudes toward the advertised brands, ultimately increasing sales and profits (Um, 2008). In my research, students were quite aware that the purpose of advertisers who spent countless dollars on celebrities was to promote products for profit, but they were still influenced by celebrities in many ways. David’s favorite celebrity captured his attention and helped him to recall ads and increase his favorable attitudes toward the endorsed product. Like John, he 124 believed all products endorsed by celebrities are good, as did Emma and Tina; favorite celebrities ultimately increased students’ desire and willingness to purchase the products.
Students’ Views about the Effects of Lay Spokespersons
Even though some spokespersons were neither famous nor particularly favored by the student participants, they thought that a spokesperson functioned as a necessary part of ads, that is, to improve their content and composition. Both girls’ and boys’ focus group interview discussions supported this idea.
In a focus group discussion for boys, they talked about how two spokespersons in an ad for book bags improved the ad composition.
Ben: The two spokespersons are just regular people and mean nothing to me,
but without them this ad would be dull.
David: I think so. Maybe the kids are cute. They made the ad look attractive.
Mike: They make the ad more balanced. Without them that park looks plain.
John: Yes, they made this ad look more elaborate.
David: I think they make this ad more colorful. There are many colors in it.
Another example came from a discussion about two spokespersons in an insecticide ad during an interview with a girls’ focus group. They talked about how spokespersons improve the content and composition of ads.
Amy: Putting a couple in this insecticide ad seems improper because they are
not related to its theme.
Tina: There should be cockroaches instead of this couple. (Amy, Betty, and
Emma agreed with her by nodding their heads.) 125
Interviewer: Would you change your views or feelings toward this ad if they
were deleted?
Amy: I prefer that they remain in this ad. They make this ad look complete.
Betty: A complete ad should contain both products and people.
Emma: Perhaps characters make ads look more interesting, not boring.
Betty: They make this ad look richer and more complex.
Some researchers have found that students favor ads featuring characters. For example, researchers tested the affective responses (liking or disliking) of students ages
10–17 years old to various elements featured in ads, including characters (people, animals, and other characters) (Chen, Grube, Bersamin, Waiters, & Keefe, 2005).
Findings indicate that students favor ads featuring characters more than those focused primarily on product qualities. In addition, the former evoked more students’ desire to purchase the product than did the latter. The researchers concluded that characters would be more likely than product qualities to enhance advertising effectiveness. In my findings, the student participants also preferred ads with characters (spokespersons) over ads without them. For my participants, characters may have enhanced their positive response to ads because the characters made the ads look complete, balanced, and rich in both content and composition. Betty stated: “A complete ad should contain both products and people.” Generally speaking, the student participants viewed spokespersons as a necessary part of an ad. 126
Cultural Influences on Students’ Willingness to Be Spokespersons
The researcher asked the participants, “Do you want to be the spokesperson in the ad?
Why?” Their responses differed widely, based on the ads that they discussed. Their responses reveal many cultural influences, such as social values and parents’ expectations.
Reasons Students Would Like to be Spokespersons
The reasons students wanted to be spokespersons in ads were various as shown in the following.
First, Mike and Tina responded that the best feature of serving as a spokesperson was the opportunity to take photos with their favorite products. For example, Mike said:
“Yes, I would like to be a spokesperson in this car ad. I wanna take pictures with my favorite car. Being in the photo would be fun. Everyone wants to take pictures with their favorite things.” Interestingly, Mike felt happy just by taking photos with his favorite car even though he did not use or own the product. Perhaps the idea of owning a photo of himself with his favorite product made him feel as if he has already owned that car.
Second, another reason for Tina’s desire to serve as a spokesperson was her belief that doing so would make her rich and famous. Tina who wanted to be the spokesperson of a cell phone ad said:
Of course! I may become famous and rich as this spokesperson is. Before doing
ads, some spokespersons were just unknown; but they became popular after doing
ads. Many advertisers want to spend a lot of money to hire popular spokespersons
to do more ads. 127
Third, one student, John expressed his desire to be a spokesperson because he wanted to enjoy the products as the spokespersons did. John, who chose an ad for a luxury condominium with a swimming pool, said: “Sure, if I were the spokesperson, I could play in this large swimming pool and live in a beautiful house. I want to enjoy these things, not just see them.” Desire to enjoy the products in the ad was John’s reason to be the spokesperson.
Fourth, Emma had a special reason. She believed being a spokesperson would help her become more confident. Emma said:
Yes! I want to be Chi-Yia [a spokesperson in a chocolate cookie ad]. If I were her,
I would become more confident. On her blog, I learned that she had also been
insecure and unhappy. But now she is confident because many people like and
support her.
Judging from my interaction with Emma, I detected that she was a shy and introverted girl. Her descriptions about the spokesperson’s past experience may reflect that she was insecure and unhappy at the time of her interview; therefore, she hoped to be a famous spokesperson favored by people.
Reasons Students Did Not Want to be Spokespersons
Diverse reasons were also apparent in why students did not want to be spokespersons in ads.
First, in contrast to the foregoing example in which being spokesperson could increase students’ self-confidence, two students rejected the idea of serving as a spokesperson because of their insecurity or shyness. For example, David, who chose an 128 orange juice ad, said: “No, I don’t want to be seen or noticed by people at all. Although the spokesperson could make money, I don’t want to be that guy.”
Amy, who talked about an ad for a racing car, made the following statement: “Not at all. I don’t want to be a focal point. I am neither pretty nor elegant enough to be the spokesperson. Putting me in the ad might make this ad look bad. Being noticed by people makes me uncomfortable.”
In general, East Asian people are more conservative and shy than Westerners. In my findings, David and Amy expressed their shyness by saying that they did not want to be noticed by people. The attention of others may make them feel uneasy and uncomfortable. Judging by my interaction with Amy, I thought she was confident and outgoing. A little surprising to me, she did not want to be noticed by people and further expressed a lack of confidence in her appearance. She thought that a good spokesperson should be pretty and elegant, but she was not. Perhaps, peer ridicule of her lack of feminine characteristics as mentioned in the previous section had diminished her confidence.
Second, the reason that girls did not want to be spokespersons in the insecticide ad was very interesting: They didn’t want to have any connection with sex or sexuality.
All girls quickly detected sexual implications in that ad and then rejected the idea of being its spokesperson. For example, Emma said: “There is a young couple close to each other in this ad. I don’t want to be the young woman because I don’t want to be close to or even touch men like that. It’s improper.” 129
Mia also responded: “Of course not! I don’t want anything to do with sexuality.
The ad implies sexuality. I don’t want to be that girl. It is disgusting! People would look down upon me if I were her.”
In contemporary Chinese culture, concepts regarding sexuality have become more and more open to the general public, but they still remain taboo for high school girls.
Parents often teach their daughters not to relate too much with boys and not to dress up in a sexy manner because doing so is bad for girls’ reputations and may bring shame to the family (Qin, 2009). In my findings, girls’ responses reflected this societal norm. Like
Emma, who avoided any physical interaction with boys, the girls were sensitive to and afraid of any associations with sexuality because they did not want to be scorned by others.
Third, some students stated that they did not want to be a spokesperson because that was not their career goal. For example, Ben’s discussion about an ad for book bags was a typical example. He said: “I don’t want to be these two spokespersons because being a model or actor is not my goal. It does not indicate successful achievement. My parents said that being an actor or singer is not good.” When I asked what are his goals,
Ben responded: “Getting excellent grades and then getting into a top private junior high school, then a top senior high school, and finally a top university. My future will be successful if I get good grades.”
Betty gave another example in the following interchange with me about an oolong tea ad. 130
Betty: For me, being a spokesperson would be interesting. I think it would be
fun to play a character in an ad, but it is not my ambition. I have no time to do
that. I need to study every day. If I were a part-time spokesperson, I may have less
time for study. And thus I might not attain a top school.
Interviewer: Is attaining a top school your ambition?
Betty: I think so. You can only have a good job and good life after you
graduate from a top university. My parents work hard, earning money to afford
my study. I don’t want to disappoint them.
The foregoing students’ statements about their willingness to be spokespersons reveal that academic achievement is highly valued by parents and society in Taiwan. For these students the major goal was academic success, motivated by their desire to meet their parents’ expectations. In Western culture where individualism is highly valued, most parents tend to encourage children to pursue personal goals that involve maintenance of positive self-regard. By contrast in Taiwan, where Confucian culture prevails, most people are more interested in fulfilling their role obligations to others who are important in their social network (Chen, Wang, Wei, Feu, & Hwang, 2009).
Although students may pursue personally constructed goals, they also strive for socially constructed goals involving their role obligations (Hwang, 2001). For students in
Taiwan, one of the most important socially constructed goals is achievement in academic domains (D’Ailly, 2003). In contrast, personal goals irrelevant to academic achievement receive less social acclaim and encouragement. For example, achievement related to singing, painting, or sports merits less social value than academic achievement (Yi, & 131
Wu, 2004). In my findings, although some students like Betty were automatically interested in starring in ads, they did not deem it as an important goal to achieve and also showed low motivation toward doing so. The emphasis and value of academic achievement contribute to many valuable advantages for both individuals and society as a whole (Chen et al, 2009). If parents expect only children’s academic achievement and ignore their personal interests and specialties, children may pursue socially constructed achievement goals without exploring and developing their intrinsic interests.
A fourth reason for Andrew was fear of failure. Andrew said:
Being a famous spokesperson is a good dream for everyday. For people like me,
being famous is so great, I guess. But if I did not do a great job or I did something
wrong in the ad, people may dislike me or even ridicule me. So I probably don’t
want to be a spokesperson.
Ng, Pomerantz, and Lam, (2007) conducted a survey to examine cultural differences in Euro-American and Chinese parents’ responses to their children’s performance. Based on analyzed data collected from questionnaires completed by
Chinese and American fifth graders and their parents, they found that Chinese parents emphasized children’s failure rather than children’s success; by contrast, Euro-American parents did the opposite. In contrast to the emphasis on self-enhancement in the United
States, Chinese culture generally emphasizes self-improvement. Failure signals areas needing improvement, so Chinese children may view failure as particularly important and respond more strongly to it than to success. They may also have only a minor positive effect in the face of success but a major negative effect in the face of failure. In my 132 findings, Andrew’s reason not to be a spokesperson may show that he responded to possible failure more strongly than possible success. Although he liked the feeling of being famous, he decided he did not want to be a spokesperson because he did not want to risk failure.
Entertainment Effects in Ads
Another apparent theme revealed during students’ interview discussions was the entertainment effects in ads, which had both positive and side effects on them. On one hand, entertainment effects amused the student participants, helping them escape from the pressures of their everyday lives. Humor in ads also stimulated their creativity and facilitated their communication with others. On the other hand, by connecting entertainment effects and products through ads, advertisers effectively make some students react to ads emotionally and further develop students’ brand loyalties.
Positive Influences of Entertainment Effects in Ads
With regard to positive influences of ads, first, entertainment effects, which came from positive spokespersons, nontraditional plots, and fantastic scenes in ads, helped students escape from pressures.
In terms of positive spokespersons, all of the five girls in a focus group for girls wanted to be the optimistic fictional character Wanwan to escape from pressure.
Interviewer: Would you like to be the person in the ad? How do you feel being
the person in the ad?
Emma: I like Wanwan so much. He is cute, honest, and upbeat. I want to be
him. Being him is cool. 133
Betty: Absolutely! He has no worries and is easy to get along with. He just
plays and relaxes. He doesn’t need to study or do homework every day.
Amy: No! I don’t like Wanwan. He is naked. But I think I would be happy if I
were Wanwan.
Tina: I am not his fan. But being Wanwan, I could escape all the worry and
pressure I have now. I can’t stand daily quizzes.
Untraditional plots in ads also amused some students. Four of 10 students mentioned that entertainment effects from untraditional plots helped them to escape from pressure. For example, Betty said:
This ad reminded me of another funny ad—a chocolate cookie ad. Its plot is
hilarious. A young girl was absent from school because everyone kneaded her
face like cookie dough, making it twice as big as before. Very funny!
In addition, fantastic scenes in the ads excited three students, helping them escape from everyday situations. Amy’s response was typical:
The racing cars are awesome! It’s so exciting to imagine being behind the wheel.
The ad combines a colorful sunset and futuristic background. I have never seen a
scene like this in real life. Speedy and fantastic! Real life is dull! All I do is study,
study, study, and study. My parents expect me to pass the entrance examination
for junior high school in June.
The foregoing student discussions reveal the heavy pressure of academic study. In comparison with 799 formal instruction hours per year for 15-year-old students in the
United States (Gewertz, 2008), the counterparts in Taiwan receive 960–1020 formal 134 instruction hours per year (Ministry of Education, R. O. C., 2009). In Confucian culture, education has long been cherished above all else. It is a prevailing belief that a person can aspire to enhance his or her socioeconomic status in society by earning academic credentials from a top prestigious university. The drive to compete for the limited spaces at prestigious universities percolates down through the entire educational system in
Taiwan, particularly for Taiwanese adolescents in grades 7 through 12 because a major mission was imposed upon them—to get excellent scores at the senior high school and college entrance examinations (Yi & Wu, 2004).
Although the participants in this study were only sixth graders, they surprisingly felt the intense pressure of academic study before seventh grade. During casual dialogue with them, I learned that 25 of the 32 students were asked by their parents to prepare for the entrance examination to a top private junior high school in Keelung City. To gain admission to a renowned university in the future, their parents expected them to study at that top private junior high school, which would provide strict guidance and discipline for students to become well prepared academically. The emphasis on studying hard reduced the students’ participation in family life, recreation, and social life. Thus, a typical day for the student participants found them at school, at various cram schools, and at home to continue study at night; they had little time to have fun. The entertainment effects in ads temporarily amused them, helping them relax and get away from the intense pressure they felt. 135
Second, four students recognized that humor and uniqueness in ads had another positive effect—to stimulate their creativity for doing art works or opera performances.
Mia and Mike’s interviews were typical. Mia said:
I like to draw Wanwan in different ways in my artwork. Doing so relaxes me, and
it’s fun. The simple design and humorous personality of Wanwan are inspirations
for my artwork. I created several figures similar to Wanwan and named them
Wanwan’s family. Each of them has unique characteristics.
Mike said:
Some of my friends in Opera Club liked to talk about creative and funny ads with
me. Sometimes, we combined funny characters or unique plots in ads with our
performances, not exactly imitating the ads but parodying them. Many people
liked our performances.
Various forms of visual culture typically expand students’ art-learning milieu beyond schools (Freedman, 1997). The findings show ads also serviced art-learning milieu for the student participants.
Third, humorous ads also served as popular topics during three students’ dialogues with others, facilitating interactions. For example, talking about funny ads with friends facilitated friendship for Betty. She said:
My friends and I like to chat about funny ads. You know, it is awkward when you
and your friends have no common topics. When we have nothing to talk about, we
just like to chat about funny ads. Sometimes, we also imitate the dialogue and
plots in ads. It is interesting! 136
Two students, one of whom was Emma, became e-friends on the blog of their favorite ad spokesperson. Emma said:
I knew Wanwan after seeing this ad. Later, I learned about his blogger from a
news program. On the blog, I found Wanwan’s information, comics, and coupons.
When I was free, I liked to chat with e-friends on the blog. We shared
conversation and the latest news about Wanwan.
Manifold (2009) conducted a questionnaire survey and found many forms of fan- based visual culture, such as Japanese manga and cosplay, had positive effects on the young adults ages 14 to 24. The fan-based visual culture helped those young adults to explore their identities, express themselves, balance their mundane realities and expressive fantasies, and develop their art skills. Similar to Manifold’s study, my findings also showed that students took positive advantage of ads in various ways.
However, some educators were concerned that activities related to ads could become “replay behaviors,” that is, “any type of action initiated by kids that repeat[s] or reconstruct[s] a commercial—or parts of a commercial—in some way” (Fox, 1996, p.
152). Students replay commercials, often directly imitating the original commercials with or without reshaping them. In other words, the information, activities, attitudes, and values that construct replay behavior connect mainly with products (Fox, 1996).
Fortunately, students took positive advantage of ads in noncommercial ways; however, when students lack sufficient cognitive ability to analyze the purposes and connotations of ads, their use of ads could become replay behaviors that increase the influence of ads on students. 137
Side Effects of the Entertainment Effects in Ads
Regarding the side effects of ads, the entertainment value or coolness of ads connects purchases with having fun or being cool. This connection made students react to ads emotionally and further increased the student participants’ brand loyalties to advertised products.
When asked what kinds of ads they liked most, seven students’ responses displayed brand loyalty. For example all boys in the boys’ focus group displayed brand loyalty toward particular cars because of the coolness and humor in the ads.
Ben: I like car ads. Cool and exciting! [Other boys agreed with him by
nodding.]
Mike: Like this Audi car ad. It is very cool. [Mike showed his self-selected
ad.]
Andrew: So do I. It is an imported car. But I forget where this car is imported
from.
Mike: I also like Lamborghini. I saw it in a motor magazine. It is awesome!
Andrew and John: Me, too!
David: I like BMW and Mercedes-Benz. They are excellent cars.
John: I liked an ad for a foreign Toyota SUV. One of my friends sent it to me
via email. It is very funny!
Interviewer: Have you ever sat in any of the cars you just mentioned?
John: Only Toyota. My father has a standard-class car made by Toyota, but it
is not the same as the SUV I just mentioned. 138
Other four boys: No!
Interviewer: How do you know these brands and cars are good?
David: Watching TV advertising. [Other boys agreed with him by nodding.]
Mike: I read some car ads in newspapers. Sometimes I also read motor
magazines.
Further, all of the boys expressed willingness to purchase these cars when they were asked, “Would you want to buy the car if you were rich and could afford it?” Two boys’ discussion typified this idea.
Mike: I will buy an Audi car if I can afford it. If I am very, very rich, I would
like a Lamborghini car.
Ben: I think Lamborghini is too expensive. I would like to buy the essentials
first, such as a house. After that, if I am still rich, I will buy a Lamborghini car.
Why not?
John: Sure, if I can afford an expensive car, I will buy the best one. That is a
car made by Mercedes-Benz or BMW.
I find it is interesting that all of the boys were attracted to car ads even though they were unable to drive or buy them legally. They liked these imported cars not because of actual experiences with these cars but because of the cool or humorous car ads.
Children and adolescents are some of the most potential consumers in the estimation of advertisers. Targeting children and adolescents long before they can make informed decisions to buy products is an early branding tactic to ensure future sales.
Matthew Diamond, the chief executive of Alloy Media and Marketing explained this 139 tactic: “You are branding your product at a relevant time to the young person. You’re establishing that brand presence and positive association, since important buying decisions are forthcoming” (Bosman, 2006). In order to establish branding and brand loyalty, advertisers often create consumers’ desires by connecting their products with popular themes, such as humor, fun, and pleasure (Savage, 2006). In the process of psychological connection, the tangible products decrease in importance; buying the products, in effect, is buying desirable lifestyles (McGuire, 2004).
Although my findings cannot verify whether or not the ads mentioned by the boys have established brand loyalty in the boys (outside of the purposes of my study), the boys’ dialogue discloses their willingness to purchase the products for which they felt brand loyalty at early ages.
In addition, two boys whose self-selected ads were car ads stated that they participated in their parents’ decisions about car purchases.
Ben: At home, my father and I like to talk about car ads. The car ads provide
us with new information about cars. My father liked to ask for my advice when
buying a car.
Mike: I asked my father to take me to the car dealer with him last time. I know
about cars and could give my father some suggestions.
The two boys’ statements confirm that students have power to influence their parents’ purchasing decisions. Children and adolescents not only spend enormous amounts of money but also have considerable influence over their parents’ purchases
(Calvert, 2008). Therefore, advertisers attempt to stimulate every child’s unimaginable 140 desires for products through emotional connections (Giroux, 2009). In the process of emotional connection, manipulative imagery and specific ideology can influence not only people’s views of consumption but also their values, beliefs, and identities (McGuire,
2004).
Students’ Positive and Passive Interaction with Ads
Students’ interaction with ads was not completely passive. Some students were also capable of finding tactics or connotations in ads. In addition, many of them learned from their past purchasing experiences and developed some ways to make purchases more rationally; however, a few students did not learn from their past unsatisfying purchases, and they seemed to have a deep emotional connection with ads as well as the products endorsed in them.
Students’ Understanding of Tactics Used in Ads
When discussing an insecticide ad, some girls found the advertisers used sex as a tactic to sell the products unrelated to sex. For example, girls’ discussions about an insecticide ad support this idea.
Interviewer: What do you see in this ad?
Mia: Insecticide and a couple.
Amy: It’s sexual. The text used the word “Chun-Yao” (aphrodisiac in
Mandarin). [All girls laughed loudly.]
Emma: The young couple and Chun-Yao are totally unrelated to the theme of
the ad. [Other girls agreed by nodding.]
Tina: They used the implication of sexuality to draw attention. 141
Betty: Yes, so does the pretty woman. She is also used to attract men’s
attention. Men are always attracted by pretty girls. [All girls laughed.]
Very often advertisers make use of sex appeal to promote products unrelated to sex (Savage, 2006). Appeals to the subconscious mind are more effective than appeals to practical products to promote sales. Other than sex appeal, sensual and intuitive elements, such as humor, fun, success, self-worth, reward, and pleasure, are also used to draw customers’ attention and create desire (McGuire, 2004). Clearly, advertisers sell not only specific products but also the fulfillment of basic human needs and desires.
A little surprising to me, although these girls were just sixth graders, they were able to detect this tactic of sex appeal through their communication with one another. The girls’ converstations about the ad seemed to stimulate one another’s thoughts about it.
Finally, together they concluded that sex appeal was used as a tactic in the ad.
This discussion was not only informatvie but also interesting for the girls. Their homeroom teacher told me that the girls expressed their positive feelings about discussing the ad in their journals. For example, Betty who chose the insecticide ad, wrote in her journal: “Interviews are fun. I liked to talk about ads with my classmates. I never noticed using a couple and an aphrodisiac as a way to draw attention before.”
Tina also wrote: “I like discussing ads because I can say what I truly think. When my classmates mentioned the aphrodisiac, I worried that the interviewer would get mad.
But she did not. I think the interview is interesting because I can share my true thoughts.”
The student participants’ statements illustrated that converstations with an open, 142 respectful, and supportive atmosphere are helpful for the girls in developing their ability to see ads critically.
Students’ Understanding of Connotations in Ads
Three students were able to detect some connotations and persuasive tactics in ads. First, some were able to understand connotations of pictures in ads. For example,
Amy understood the connotation of a picture in a sports drink ad. She said:
Wanwan [a cartoon character] and this fan on his hand are just used to attract people. They did not work to make this drink taste better. You know, after working out, people sweat and feel hot, just like this sweaty spokesperson. This fan implies drinking this sport drink can make you feel cool after working out.
Amy’s analysis shows she was quite aware of the connotations of the picture. She noted that a sweating person implied a person who just worked out, and a fan implied the feeling of coolness. Both pictures were placed in the ad for more than decorative purposes; they bore some implications to promote this product.
Like Amy, Emma also noted the connotation of a logo in the same sports drink ad. Emma said: “This is the logo. It looks like a running female athlete. It suggests that it is good for you to drink after working out.” Emma noted the design of the logo related to the product. She also knew this logo suggested people who work out to the consumer of the product.
David who analyzed an illustration about a forest in a condominium ad provided another example. He said: 143
The illustration in this ad is about nature, including a lot of trees, flowers, and
blue sky. It is not a photo, so it is not real. I think this illustration is telling us that
living in this condominium is just like having a vacation in a natural forest.
David understood that the illustration was not a real scene or environment around the condominium; it was merely used to suggest that living in this condominium is relaxing and enjoyable.
Roland Barthes (1977), a French semiotician and literary critic, asserted that a picture not only carries denotation, that is, what we literally see in the picture itself, but also connotation, that is, what the things and words imply or suggest by what they show and how they show it. Images with which we live often carry connotations to reinforce attitudes and confirm or deny beliefs and values. If these connotations are not interpreted, people may be unconsciously affected by them in various ways (Barrett, 2003). Barrett suggested that the interpretive strategy provided by Barthes can provide readers of all age levels the opportunity to dip into semiotic concepts. In one case he taught some preschoolers to explore connotations of pictures on cereal boxes. Without knowing about these theoretical terms, the preschoolers identified which cereals were for which people based on the pictures on the boxes. The pictures of cartoon-like tigers and cute bears suggested products meant for children; and the pictures of a couple and fresh fruit indicated products meant for adults.
In my findings few students were able to see the ads beyond their denotation, but some found connotations in the ads. Although they had neither questions during the interviews nor any classes about strategy in art criticism before the interviews to guide 144 them to explore connotations, most of the student participants’ discussions about the ads showed little understanding of connotation. If students can learn more about connotation, they would be more sensitive to and aware of the meaning behind ads.
Students’ Positive Interaction with Ads
Some students learned from their past purchasing experiences and developed some ways to see ads more critically and make purchases more rationally. When I asked the student participants to tell me about a time when they had bought a product because of an ad, only two students, Emma and David responded that they had not had such an experience; but 8 of the 10 students shared their experience. Most of which involved purchases of affordable food products, especially snacks and drinks. Among these eight students, only one boy, John felt satisfied with his previous purchase of orange juice, the other seven students were dissatisfied with their purchases because they thought the products were not as good as described by the ads. For example, Amy said: “One time, I bought a can of pineapple immediately after I saw its ad. The ad looked so delicious, and it said the pineapple was super sweet. But it was not true; the pineapple tasted bad.”
Another student, Ben shared his dissatisfaction with his purchase of an MP3 player: “I saw an MP3 on a website. The ad looked good, but when I got it, it didn’t function well at all. It was not worth the money.”
Learning from past dissatisfaction with purchases, five of the seven students developed some ways to see ads more skeptically and make purchases more rationally.
For example, Amy and Andrew suggested not buying a product just because of an ad. 145
Andrew responded: “Don’t buy products just because of its ads. Many ads are exaggerated. You can make your decisions after seeing or trying the actual products.”
Mike and Mia thought it would be better to ask for other people’s opinions about the products. For example, Mike said: “When I want to buy expensive products, I ask for the advice of others, especially those who have ever owned the products. Some ads don’t tell you the truth.”
Ben suggested buying products when they are on sale. He said:
Now, I tend to buy an expensive product when it is on sale. The latest products
are usually expensive, but they will become cheaper after a while. You know,
some ads are not trustworthy. If you buy a discounted product, you will not waste
too much money if you don’t like it.
It is apparent that these five students found that ads did not always tell the truth.
They also learned from their past purchasing experiences, becoming more skeptical of ads and making purchases more rationally.
Students’ Passive Interaction with Ads
However, two students, Tina and Betty learned from their past dissatisfaction with purchases and still tended to trust ads for the same brands or for products endorsed by the same celebrities. Tina’s discussion about a clothing ad showed the effect of brand loyalty on her.
Tina complained about a product she bought because of its ad, featuring a famous celebrity: 146
I bought a famous brand-name skirt from a website. It looked really pretty in the
ad. When I received it, I found it was not as good as shown in the ad. The swing
and material of that skirt was bad. I was disappointed with it. The ad was too
exaggerated.
When I asked her whether she would buy the products of the same brand
or endorsed by the same celebrity, she replied: “Yes, because this brand is very
famous. My good friends also loved and bought clothing of this brand. I will give
it another chance.”
Literature has suggested that branding is one of most effective techniques to establish connections with customers (Bosman, 2006). Young people often have very strong connections with their favorite brands, which reflect how they think of themselves and how they want to be seen. About 70% of American adolescents believe that brand names are important (Freedman & Schuler, 2002). They often use brands to stand out in the crowd and express their personalities (McChesney & Foster, 2003).
In my findings Tina still favored the branded products despite her past dissatisfaction. Tina and her friends may have had a strong connection with that brand.
For her and her friends, that brand may represent who they were. It may be a way to differentiate themselves from other peer groups.
Similarly, Betty’s discussion about an ad for a bag also revealed the effect of celebrity endorsement and brand loyalty on her. She said: “One time, I saw a bag ad and bought the bag online. The members of S.H.E. [a famous musical girl group] carried the bags in that ad. But I did not like that bag much because it was not comfortable.” When I 147 asked her whether she would buy a bag of the same brand or endorsed by the same celebrities, she said:
Sure, I will. I want to own the same things as S.H.E. I am their fan. Actually, the
brand is also famous. I think not all of the bags of this brand are bad. I will buy a
different bag of this brand when I have enough money.
In the previous sections student interviews have illustrated the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement on their willingness to purchase the products they never bought.
Here, Betty’s statements further show stronger effectiveness of celebrity endorsement.
Betty still tended to trust celebrity endorsement even though she had been dissatisfied with the purchase of a product endorsed by that celebrity. This lack of change shows that
Betty already may have had a deep emotional connection with the celebrities as well as the brand endorsed by them.
In addition, the celebrity may have represented a distinctive brand for her.
Celebrity endorsement is often recognized as a potentially powerful tool in ad communication (Carroll, 2008). As a brand’s spokesperson, celebrities transfer their positive qualities, such as their reputation, likeability, talent, and personality, to a brand as well as its products. That is why advertisers attempt to verbalize the qualities of specific celebrities in relation to their brands (Carroll, 2008). The association of Michael
Jordan with the Nike brand is an example of the way a celebrity becomes synonymous with a brand (Lear, Runyan, & Whitaker, 2009). Here, Betty’s favorite singing group
S.H.E. may have associations with the brand endorsed by them. 148
Summary
This chapter has presented the results of interviews, including students’ perceptions of gender, students’ perspectives on spokespersons, cultural influences on students’ willingness to be spokespersons, and entertainment effects in ads, and students’ positive and passive interaction with ads. The next chapter addresses conclusion, implications, and suggestions for future research. 149
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS
Conclusion
Thinking back to the beginning of the journey, I recalled the question asked by my student four years earlier: “Why are you, Teacher, also wearing Nike shoes?” Four years ago, I missed a valuable opportunity; however, the power of the question did not dissipate. Instead, it showed me that if people do not have the appropriate education to develop critical and conscious thinking to use when looking at ads, the capitalist pedagogy at work in ads can unconsciously affect people from childhood to adulthood.
Furthermore, the question motivated my search for an understanding of the interaction between students and ads, which could be helpful in designing the appropriate curricula to develop their critical thinking.
The student participants in this study have indicated in their own words their ad preferences and have identified the purposes of the ads and interpreted them in complex and various ways. Ads permeated their daily lives, and students interacted with them.
They found pleasure in ads to balance their stressful lives, used aesthetic elements and ideas in ads as inspiration for their art-making, and discussed ads with others to facilitate their social networking, learned social roles, and behaviors.
In global capitalism, ads are the official art of the modern capitalist society
(Williams as cited in Tavin, 2003a). Youth have been defined by the corporate world as the key to the future of capitalism instead of as future citizens in a democratic society
(Giroux, 2009). John Dewey (1916) believed that education aims to develop free-thinking 150 individuals who contribute to a strong, democratic society. Whereas the purpose of education is to develop a rational and thoughtful individual who makes sound judgments, the purpose of ads is to develop an uncritical and easily manipulated consumer who reacts to ads emotionally.
What ads teach students is that consumption can solve any problem (Linn, 2004), making people happy, cool, smart, beautiful, and worry-free. Inevitably, people must consume to survive, and consumption per se is not harmful; however, in a market-driven consumer society, commercials are created within global capitalism to promote market- defined values and limitless consumption, which becomes a never-ending cycle of acquisition, disposability, and waste (Giroux, 2009). Both limitless consumption and unchecked market-defined values are harmful to students and society. When students enjoy and use ads in various ways, they also need critical thinking to examine biased messages, negative representations of social roles, and market-defined values in ads.
The results in this study, on one hand, reveal that some students immersed themselves in attractive ads without sufficient ability to see them critically, and their interpretations further reveal that their purchasing decisions and identity formation were affected by ads. The results suggest how VCAE may help students to go beyond negative interaction with ads. On the other hand, the results also show some students have learned their own ways to uncover connotations and tactics in ads. They enjoyed interview discussions about ads because they liked to share their thoughts and wanted to learn more ways to negotiate the meanings of ads. The results suggest that the pedagogy of critical 151 thinking in art education entails building on the abilities students already possess and may help them to learn more.
By incorporating ads into the art curriculum, students could not only uncover the various influences of ads on them but also discuss larger issues of politics, economics, gender, race, and class. When critical seeds are planted in students’ minds, they may grow to engage students with many other visual cultures and ideologies usually taken for granted. Ultimately, I believe this kind of curriculum can contribute to the healthy development of the individual as well as the democratic society as a whole.
Implications
The journey I have taken during the course of this study not only reopened my eyes to looking at ads but also reopened my ears to hearing students’ voices in a fresh way. The student participants’ voices provided me with valuable ideas for my future teaching and research. In this section, I have shared possible implications for my teaching in art education and suggestions for future research. I hope they can provide art educators in Taiwan with some points of reference.
Curriculum Structure and Pedagogy
After the education reforms of 2001, teachers in Taiwan were increasingly encouraged to design curricula based on learners’ needs and social contexts. In response to ads as a milieu in which students construct knowledge about art and worldviews, I may include ads in my art curriculum and will help my students to take advantage of ads in their art-learning as well as to develop their critical thinking. 152
The structure of such a curriculum may consist of at least three parts, including exploring aesthetics in ads, learning about creativity in ads, and developing critical thinking through the discussion of ads. In terms of aesthetics and creativity in ads, as shown in the results of this study, students have derived inspiration from ads for their own artwork and performances. They are no different from Pop and Dada artists who created their collages and montages by borrowing images and artifacts from their daily lives (Kan, 2008). Art teachers need to praise students’ positive use of ads and further encourage them to develop their personal styles by combining what they learn from ads, from art classes, and from their life experiences.
Regarding the development of critical thinking, art teachers could open curricular space and design pleasurable curricula to guide students to think about ads. As shown in review of literature, they could use Barthes’ (1977) interpretive strategy to analyze linguistic messages, denotative images, and connotative images, to guide students to improving their understanding of ads. In addition, existing art criticism in art education can be also useful to unpack ads. For example, the art criticism developed by Anderson and Milbrandt (2005) included four steps: reaction, description, interpretation, and evaluation. Teachers could guide students to make use of these four steps to think about ads.
When teachers try to engage their students in critical cultural inquiry of ads, it is important to go beyond completely serious critiques of ads and recognize the pleasures inherent in them as well as students’ emotional investment in them. Students’ favorite ads provided them with entertainment to escape from pressures and reflect aspects of their 153 identities; that is why students usually develop deep emotional connections with ads.
Duncum (2009), however, asserted that pleasure provided by popular culture, including ads, seems to have been ignored or denied in recent art classes addressing students’ popular culture. Without an acknowledgment of the connection between popular culture and students, “attention only to serious critique is unlikely to engage students in the deeply emotional way required for transformation” (Duncum, 2009, p. 238).
Instead of a serious critique of ads, open dialogue could better facilitate the sharing of students’ voices. During this kind of dialogue, teachers can recognize the pleasure inherent in ads and respect students’ use of ads to balance their stressful lives.
Teachers can let their students know that it is fine to like ads and further guide them to think about why they have emotional connections with ads. For example, a student could think about questions like the following: Why do I like the ad? Which part of the ad attracts my attention most? How does the ad provide me pleasure? What are these pleasures? Are the pleasures related to the quality of the advertised products? Does the purchase of the product offer me happiness or solve my problems?
Some educators have suggested playful methods to balance the development of student’s critical thinking and their pleasure in popular culture. These methods could also be better used to help our students to reflect, reexamine, and renegotiate with ads. One example is the elementary bubble project, in which students are equipped with blank speech bubbles to create their own media messages and talk back to ads (Gainer, Valdes-
Gainer, & Kinard, 2009). The bubble activity is not a new idea in the art classroom and has been previously employed to interpret fine art work in art classes. It is also useful for 154 students to negotiate with ads. In the elementary bubble project, teachers encouraged their fourth-grade students to look at ads carefully and think about what they convey, such as beauty, gender, and happiness. And then they provided each student with print ads, blank speech bubbles, glue sticks, and pencils to write down what they wanted to say to the ads. They found that many students talked back to ads in a critical but humorous way.
The other example entails students working in teams to produce a parody of popular culture, including ads (Duncum, 2009). Students may produce parodies in many visual forms, such as short video, art making, photography, and the like. As in the elementary bubble project, students create their media messages and talked back to ads by parodying them. “Parody offers students a safe place in which flirting with what students know to be politically incorrect is sanctioned” (Duncum, 2009, p. 237). The process of creating students’ own media messages in both examples, on one hand, can help them to understand how mass media acts as a frame that intentionally presents some messages and omits other messages while appearing as a neutral and clear window
(Goodman, 2003); on the other hand, it can empower students to express their voices and concerns. Teachers may apply or adapt these methods for their students according to their needs, interests, and contexts. In addition, they can also devise more playful methods to engage students in critical cultural inquiry.
Curriculum Material Selection
When selecting materials for the curriculum, teachers may start with ads that are the most relevant to and favored by students. Their self-selected ads are one kind of ads. 155
During the interviews, the student participants showed special interest in discussing their self-selected ads. The use of self-selected ads may motivate students to take part in discussion, facilitate sharing experiences, and encourage thought about the most relevant issues arising in discussion. Because those self-selected ads represent a part of their identities, extra caution must be exercised during the discussion of their self-selected ads.
When those ads are criticized, aspects of students’ identities are also criticized. A warm and accepting atmosphere is important for this kind of discussion.
Other than students’ self-selected ads, art teachers can also choose ads for the curriculum based on the unit objectives and learners’ interests. Since boys’ and girls’ ad preferences differ, the selection of ads could include both genders’ preferred ads to increase their interest in learning. For example, in this study, many boys preferred ads for fast food chains and cars while many girls preferred ads for healthy food and groceries. The teacher’s selection of ads could include all of these.
Moreover, teachers could guide their students to think about how ads represent gender and allow many gender issues to emerge in discussion. For example, teachers can encourage students to think about their opinions about gender differences in ad preferences. What ads do boys and girls prefer? What gendered attributes do they use to judge ads as masculine, feminine, or neutral? How do the gendered attributes relate to traditional gender stereotypes? How do gendered attributes relate to the quality of products? Do the gendered characteristics influence their purchasing decisions or gender formation? In addition, we may also encourage our students to compare their own gender 156 identities, the gender role expectations from significant others, and gender stereotypes represented in ads.
Adjust Art Teachers’ Roles and Attitudes
Teachers’ roles and attitudes are vital in the open dialogue approach. The role of the teacher should be that of an open-minded coworker who wants to open curricular space for students to share their thoughts and facilitate their discussions (Freedman,
2003). If teachers view students’ popular culture only as the enemy and want to rescue students from the evil impact of popular culture or act as moral judges who expect students to match teachers’ right answers, students may perceive the teacher as a rigid authoritarian (Duncum, 2009) and feel further alienated from open dialogue. Like students, when teachers were young and even at present, sometimes they have been attracted to and influenced by ads with regard to purchasing and other decisions.
Teachers could let their students know that they share similar experiences with them and enjoy examining ads with them.
If teachers act as students’ coworkers, students may be more likely to share their authentic perspectives and interpretations of ads. Some interpretations may sound ridiculous or superficial, but all of them deserve respect and careful attention. Students bring their own interests, beliefs, and experiences to their interpretations of visual culture
(Tavin, 2006), and therefore their interpretations of ads are the results of their meaningful interactions with their daily visual experiences. Interpretations of ads by students provide teachers with direct information about their worldviews, the various sociocultural contexts in which they live, and the numerous problems and issues they face. If teachers 157 carefully listen to their interpretations and try to find out the hidden meanings behind their interpretations, teachers may better understand their students. Consequently, this understanding could facilitate better relationships between teachers and their students.
When teachers engage their students in open dialogue or take a playful approach to their popular visual culture, including ads, they may be uncertain about their role and attitude. A difficult question for teachers is how to balance the pleasures students obtain from popular culture and the development of their critical thinking (Gainer, Valdes-
Gainer, & Kinard, 2009). Sometimes, teachers may worry that they apply excessive pressure on students to be critical and thus decrease their pleasure in their favorite
Teachers may also wonder at times whether they challenge their students to be critical when they express their fondness for ads.
Perhaps no simple and standard answer to this question exists; each teacher may need to find out his or her own answer by continuous exploring, learning, and reflecting upon their teaching. I think each art teacher is a creative individual who has had different experiences with various forms of visual culture or has seen visual culture from different theoretical perspectives. Each art teacher works with different students in different contexts. Teachers could find out the answer based on their professional knowledge of art education, comprehensive understanding of their students, and sharp observation of society.
Implications for General Education and Parents
The student participants’ voices in this study motivated me to identify some issues and problems they face. Their voices provided me with some thoughts that may improve 158 my future teaching. I also want to share these thoughts with educators and parents in
Taiwan.
First, the stress and academic loads placed upon Taiwanese students need to be decreased. Studying hard is one of the important factors in success, but understanding the value of knowledge and maintaining enthusiasm for knowledge are also important.
Overemphasis on the pursuit of excellent grades and admission to top prestigious schools may make students misunderstand them as the ultimate goal of studying and make students neglect the genuine value of knowledge. In addition, excessive stress may also stifle students’ curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Teachers and parents could encourage students to engage in a variety of beneficial extracurricular activities, and schools could provide them with these opportunities. On one hand, it could help to decrease the time students devote to mass media; on the other hand, it may help students to explore their potential and develop their special skills.
Second, educators and parents could provide students with more opportunities to find out and further pursue their personal goals. The emphasis on and value of academic achievement contribute to many valuable advantages for both individuals and society as a whole; however, achievement in academic domains is not the only goal for all students; many paths to success lie before students. Parents are correct to expect children to succeed, but success differs for each child and can be defined by an individual based on holistic understanding of his or her strengths and preferences. Parents’ forcing children into a mold of what is considered successful in the Asian community may be 159 problematic. Parents could take more time to understand their children’s personal potential and goals and then help them learn how to achieve them.
Suggestions for Future Research
During the process of writing this thesis, some unexpected and provocative themes emerged and still remain unclear, including gender interpretations in ads, the relationship between ads and students’ art learning, and ways to balance students’ pleasure in ads and their critical cultural inquiry. Those points serve as a guide for my further research and are presented below. Finally, some suggestions for a future study like this one are also provided.
First, with regard to gender interpretations in ads, many questions were left unexplored in this study and are worthy of further research. For example, I may want to explore how students interpret gender representations in ads. What factors influence their interpretations of gender representations in ads? Is there any relationship between students’ gender and their interpretations of gender representations in ads? Is there any relationship between their perceptions of gender representations in ads and their perceptions about art careers? What are the similarities and differences between
Taiwanese students and American students in their interpretations about gender representations in ads?
Second, regarding the relationship between students’ art learning and ads, I may want to explore the following questions: How do students use ads in art learning and art making? What are the differences between students’ learning from ads and learning from art education inside the schools? 160
Third, in terms of the ways to balance the pleasure in ads and critical cultural inquiry, I could research what kinds of art curriculum structure, pedagogy, teacher roles, and even teacher development may facilitate this balance.
Finally, I offer some suggestions for a future study similar to this one. This study included only a small sample from an urban school in northern Taiwan. Future researchers may study other students in rural areas or different geographical areas in
Taiwan. In addition, this study did not include a content analysis of students’ self- selected ads. Future researchers could do so to improve understanding of students’ ad preferences. Moreover, I found the combination of one-to-one interviews and focus group interviews a useful method to collect data about social influences (peers’ influences) on students. In this study, I conducted only two same-sex focus group interviews. Future researchers could conduct more focus group interviews, which include both genders, and then compare students’ responses in different interview contexts.
The final chapter has presented the conclusion, implications, and suggestions for further research. I hope my thesis will make some contributions to art education in
Taiwan and other countries. 161
APPENDIX A
CONSENT FORM
KSU School of Art
(Parent/ Guardian)
A Study of Taiwanese Sixth Grade Students’ Responses
To Self-Selected Advertisements
Dear Parent or Guardian:
I want to do research on Taiwanese sixth-grade students’ responses to their self-selected advertisements. I want to do this to understand students’ preferences on and responses to self-selected advertisements. I would like to invite your child to take part in this project. If you decide to do this, your child will be asked to answer three questionnaires, find one self-selected advertisement, and possibly take part in two interviews within the next 14 days.
The student and his or her school will not be identified in any way. I will assign codes to your child, his or her self-selected advertisements, and the content of questionnaires and interviews. All the data will be kept anonymous and confidential.
By taking part in this project, your child could provide art teachers with better information about their responses to advertisements, and then the teachers can design appropriate art curricula for them in the future. Taking part in this project is entirely up to you, and no one will hold it against you or your child if you decide not to do it. If your child does take part, he or she may stop at any time.
If you want to know more about this research project, please call me at (0952.982.101) (Taiwan).
You may also call my adviser Dr. Koon-Hwee Kan at (330.672.9508). The project has been approved by
Kent State University. If you have questions about Kent State University's rules for research, please call Dr.
John West, Vice President of Research, Division of Research and Graduate Studies (Tel. 330.672.2704).
You will get a copy of this consent form.
Sincerely,
Yen-Ping Lee, graduate student, School of Art 162
CONSENT FORM
KSU School of Art
(Parent/ Guardian)
A Study of Taiwanese Sixth Grade Students’ Responses
To Self-Selected Advertisements
I agree to let my child take part in this project.
I know what he/she will have to do and that he/she can stop at anytime.
______
Signature Date 163
APPENDIX B
Recruiting Script
A Study of Taiwanese Sixth Grade Students’ Responses
To Self-Selected Advertisements
Hi, class
My name is Yen-Ping Lee. I am trying to learn more about how you see advertisements. I would like you to find one advertisement, answer three questionnaires, and possibly take part in two interviews within the next 14 days. Taking part in this project is completely up to you, and no one will hold it against you if you decide not to do it. Would you like to take part in this project? If you are willing to take part in this project, please sign your name on the assent form. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me at any time. If you want to stop taking part in this project at any time, just tell me. 164
APPENDIX C
ASSENT FORM
KSU School of Art
(Child)
A Study of Taiwanese Sixth Grade Students’ Responses
To Self-Selected Advertisements
I agree to take part in this project.
I know I can stop at any time.
______
Signature Date 165
APPENDIX D
AUDIO CONSENT FORM
KSU School of Art
(Parent/ Guardian)
A Study of Taiwanese Sixth Grade Students’ Responses
To Self-Selected Advertisements
Dear Parent or Guardian:
I would like your permission to interview your child because his or her responses will be beneficial to my study. If you grant your permission, your child will take part in two audio-taped, half-hour interviews at
Dung-Dung Elementary School (pseudonym) during his or her recess.
In the interview I will ask questions related to his or her perspectives and preferences on self-selected advertisements. I will ask no private, sensitive, or harmful questions that might make your child feel uncomfortable. Your child’s answers will be completely acceptable; they will not affect his or her art grades or any other academic performances. I will do my best to respect your child and protect him or her from any discomfort. He or she has the right to stop answering the questions at any time during the interview.
Your child’s interview will not be identified in any way. I will assign codes to your child and the content of his or her interview. The tapes will be used only to improve understanding of students’ preferences and perspectives on the advertisements in this research project. You and your child have the right to hear the audiotapes before they are used. All the tapes will be kept anonymous and confidential and will be erased after this research project is finished.
You will get a copy of this audio consent form.
Sincerely,
Yen-Ping Lee, graduate student, School of Art 166
AUDIO CONSENT FORM
KSU School of Art
(Parent/ Guardian)
A Study of Taiwanese Sixth Grade Students’ Responses
To Self-Selected Advertisements
I agree to let my child be audiotaped at Dung-Dung Elementary School (pseudonym)
during a half-hour interview.
______
Signature Date
I understand that I have the right to hear the audiotapes before they are used. I have decided that I:
____Want to hear the tapes ____Do not want to hear the tapes
Sign now below if you do not want to hear the tapes.
If you want to hear the tapes, you will be asked to sign after hearing them.
______
Signature Date 167
APPENDIX E
AUDIO ASSENT FORM
KSU School of Art
(Child)
A Study of Taiwanese Sixth Grade Students’ Responses
To Self-Selected Advertisements
I agree to be audiotaped at Dung-Dung Elementary School (pseudonym) during two half-hour interviews.
______
Signature Date
I understand that I have the right to hear the audiotapes before they are used. I have decided that I:
____Want to hear the tapes ____Do not want to hear the tapes
Sign now below if you do not want to hear the tapes.
If you want to hear the tapes, you will be asked to sign after hearing them.
______
Signature Date 168
APPENDIX F
Media Assessment Form
Gender: Code:
Do you know how much time you are exposed to various kinds of media? Which media are you most often exposed to? The form can help you to answer these questions. It is not an exam and will not influence your art grades or academic performances. Please fill it out completely. Thank you so much!
Time TV Radio Movie Internet Magazine Newspapers (Minutes)
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesda
y
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Average
time 169 APPENDIX G
Print Advertisement Media Questionnaire
Gender: Code:
1. Which forms of print media do you notice most often? Please mark them in numerical order. (1 is
the most often, and 9 is least often)
Com Com merci merci Billb al News al oards Inter Maga Book Billb Poste Produ paper flyers on net zines s oards rs ct s / Vehi Packa Store cles ging ads
Order
2. Which forms of print media do you notice most often? Why?
3. Which forms of print media do you notice least often? Why?
170 4. Please draw three logos with which you are most familiar, and indicate each commodity.
Commo
dity
Logos
5. Please write three slogans with which you are most familiar, and indicate each commodity.
Commo
dity
Slogans 171 APPENDIX H
Critical Inquiry into Advertisements
Gender: Code:
1. Please describe the pictures you actually see in this advertisement.
2. Please describe the text you actually 3. What do you think the pictures and text in
see in this advertisement. this advertisement suggest?
4. How do you feel the text and images go 6.Which part of this advertisement attracts
together? Successfully or not? you the most?
Why or Why not? Why?
5. What do you feel when looking at this
advertisement?
Why?
172 Advertisement Critical Inquiry
Gender: Code:
7. Who is speaking in this advertisement? 8. Who do you think this advertisement targets?
Is that person worthy of trust? What is the purpose of this advertisement?
Why?
9. What does this advertisement remind you of? (Please write down everything you
think of.)
10. Have you ever purchased the products 11. If you have enough money, do you want to purchase
that are shown on this ad? the products or do the things suggested by this
advertisement?
Were you satisfied with the product?
Why and Why not? 12. Who gains the most benefits by this advertisement?
Why?
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