Conclusion

This study is conducted to investigate the use of advertising appeals within luxury watches print ads and analyze luxury watches in those print ads are being portrayed and embodied, transformed into different symbols which may consciously or subconsciously affect how readers’ recall and responses to those print ads after exposed to the stimuli. As what the researcher has mentioned before, the motivation for probing into the effectiveness of luxury watches print ads was that the massive market involved, both sales volume and advertising expense in the luxury watches print ads were tremendous and enormous and the value of market can only be higher and greater due to global economic growth year by year. Unlike other high-end commodities, luxury watch is a specific item that is closely depending on the channel of print ads in newspaper or magazines to convey the messages toward their potential customers. Luxury watches usually are pretty rare or hard to access because of their high price; therefore, their target groups are quite prominent and are able to provide more insightful ideas toward the stimuli they received. The study covered an array of dimensions including the analysis of each commonly used advertising appeal and consumers’ perspectives based on their various range of past experiences and living backgrounds. The researcher employed three kinds of methodology, content analysis, textual analysis as well as in-depth interview to reach the purpose of study and correspond to the research questions that had been purposed beforehand.

Each Advertising Appeal Represents Different Symbols of Watches to Increase Recall

91

and Attitude Change

The first stage is to analyze the content of selected stimuli and look into the differences among each dimensions of advertising appeal. Through the textual analysis, the result demonstrated Luxurious appeal is the most frequent used among advertising appeal and there are substantial different elements put in the print ads including the use of models, their appearances, the background illustration, page layout. Take luxurious appeal as an illustration. There’s no model appearing in

luxurious appeal print ads since this advertising appeal highlights the value of watches themselves in both material, gold, diamond and etc., and limited numbers of

productions. Celebrity endorsement, however, is the tactic for almost every product and it can recall viewers memory easily especially for female figures. As for

background, status appeal has a vivid feature and takes full advantage of background illustration to project wealthy, royal lifestyles so that readers or target groups are capable of associating themselves with those luxury watches’ brand images and produce positive feelings for them. One intriguing finding during the coding process is that functional appeal, standing out their unique features via various expressions or words is only harnessed in the context of male luxury print ads. In addition, the researcher also found out there is package, brand preference, for luxury watch manufactures to use advertising appeals. Some specific brands would consider carrying on their use of advertising appeal based on the consistency of images on readers’ minds to also increase ads recall. For instance, the researcher coded that there are eleven times for the use of warmth appeals but there are all belonging to the brand PATEK PHILIPPE_ GENEVE. Besides, advertising appeals were harnessed to arouse readers’ feeling with the aid of symbols and tokens embedded in print ads. Warmth appeal, PATEK PHILIPPE_ GENEVE, sees the watch as the heritage for the family

92

and the intimate connection for parenthood. Sex appeal regards the watches as the sexual symbols that lure emotions through wearing them. While aesthetic experience considers watches to be pieces of artistic crafts rather than just commodities.

Advertising Appeal is Not the Only Factor Influencing Readers’ Recall and Attitude

Even though the researcher employs textual analysis to comprehend the advertising appeals used in the luxury watch print ad. However, this study also attempts to

discover more insightful information and messages from the dimension of consumers.

Accordingly, the third stage is conducted to know the readers or target groups’ recall and attitude after they are exposed to presented stimuli. According to the prior studies, a person’s different degrees of recall and attitude toward contents can not only be attributed to contents themselves but also to individual differences (Johar, 1993). In this study, individual differences are clearly defined on the basis of gender, prior experiences and social economic status. The result of this study showed that the variables, the use of advertising appeal and individual differences, influence the aspect of recall and attitude to luxury watch print ads. For example, the female subjects are highly influenced by the symbols of watches and could not recall male luxury watch print ads unless it is used in celebrity endorsement. The male subjects could mostly recall ads with functional appeal but not sex appeal or aesthetic

experience. Prior experience matters as well since some subjects (such as Wu Yu-Tien) claimed that they could recall and easily have positive attitude to the brands they have possessed. Without surprise, it may attribute this phenomenon to Mere Exposure Theory (Zojanc, 1969) or Self-Affirmation Theory. The more times people exposed themselves to the stimuli, the less time they need to process information, the more likely they would show preference to that particular content. Besides, people tend to

93

reconfirm as well as reaffirm their behavior they made before. Therefore, it would be the best to make full use of that advantage and turn those past buyers into loyalty Moreover, through the intensive interview, some advertising appeals used in the luxury watch print ads have high recall but it does not necessarily lead to positive attitude such as sex appeal and luxurious appeal. Nonetheless, other advertising appeals, such as warmth appeal, have great success in recalling and producing

positive attitude. Most importantly, advertising appeals that reflect the value of target groups or match readers’ perception toward luxury watches are more likely to receive positive attitude from customers.