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Abstract
The advertising industry has always used innovative ways to attract consumers to the product or service being peddled. Consumer behavior is an important issue and vital subject in the brand design and marketing process. Marketers and advertisers experts always seek for innovative methods and smart tools, to attract the consumer. Subliminal messages can do a vital role in attracting the consumer in the world of brands. To help consumers to become smart shoppers, this paper helps consumer to critically examine advertisements and identify the underlying messages they convey. While there is some marginal evidence that subliminal stimuli may influence affective reactions, the marketing relevance of this finding remains to be documented. The research is considered as one of the few academic researches which deal with this topic.
Keywords: Advertising, Sublime messages, Consumer
Just why we are no longer content to leave our experiences in the subliminal state and why many people have begun to get very conscious about the unconscious, is a question well worth investigating.
-Marshall Mcluhan
Introduction
According to the Skeptic's Dictionary, subliminal refers to anything truly below the level of detectable sensation. The subliminal is generally said to be below the threshold of conscious perception. Thus, it is believed that one can influence behavior by surreptitiously appealing to the subconscious mind with words, sounds and images. It has been scientifically proven that visual subliminal messages can be perceived by the human brain, without consciously being aware of them. The debate arises when it comes to exploring to what extent messages, which are received below the conscious level implicitly affect behavior. The popular belief in subliminal advertising has remained robust in spite of the fact that advertising professionals almost universally discount it as a practical technique (Saegert, 1987). The birth of subliminal advertising as we know it dates to 1957 when a market researcher named James Vicary inserted the words "Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" into a movie. The words appeared for a single frame, allegedly long enough for the subconscious to pick up, but too short for the viewer to be aware of it. The subliminal ads supposedly created an 18.1% increase in Coke sales and a 57.8% increase in popcorn sales (Love, 2011).
Exposure times were so short...