The most basic of human needs is the need for food, clothing and shelter. Special need for these necessities cannot be created with advertising. However there are certain other products that provide comfort in life and advertising aims to generate demand for these products. Advertising uses appeals as a way of persuading people to buy certain products. Advertising appeals are designed in a way so as to create a positive image of the individuals who use certain products. Advertising agencies and companies use different types of advertising appeals to influence the purchasing decisions of people. The most important types of advertising appeals include emotional and rational appeals. Emotional appeals are often effective for the youth while rational appeals work well for products directed towards the older generation.

· Emotional Appeals:

An emotional appeal is related to an individual’s psychological and social needs for purchasing certain products and services. Many consumers are emotionally motivated or driven to make certain purchases. Advertisers aim to cash in on the emotional appeal and this works particularly well where there is not much difference between multiple product brands and its offerings. Emotional appeal includes personal and social aspects.

· Personal Appeal

Some personal emotions that can drive individuals to purchase products include safety, fear, love, humor, joy, happiness, sentiment, stimulation, pride, self esteem, pleasure, comfort, ambition, nostalgia etc.

2. Social Appeal

3. Social factors cause people to make purchases and include such aspects as recognition, respect, involvement, affiliation, rejection, acceptance, status and approval.

5. Fear Appeal

6. Fear is also an important factor that can have incredible influence on individuals. Fear is often used to good effect in advertising and marketing campaigns of beauty and health products including insurance. Advertising experts indicate that using moderate levels of fear in advertising can prove to be effective.

Humor Appeal

Humor is an element that is used in around 30% of the advertisements. Humor can be an excellent tool to catch the viewer’s attention and help in achieving instant recall which can work well for the sale of the product. Humor can be used effectively when it is related to some benefit that the customer can derive without which the joke might overpower the message.

In advertising, a fear appraisal, or fear appeal, uses consumers' fears to motivate them to purchase a product or contribute to a cause. The consumer appraises the product in light of their fear of the consequences of not buying. For example, an ad campaign may appeal to people's fear of body odour to convince them to buy deodorant. Consumers who are afraid of sweat stains or odours are more likely to respond and buy the deodorant. Fear appeals can be used in convincing people to appraise and change their behaviour, such as quitting smoking or not drinking and driving. Some behaviour-change ads may feature photos of corpses or very strong wording, such as the anti-smoking ads showing terminal cancer patients and stating "Smoking Kills." These types of behavioural appraisal ads are also used in the non-profit sector, encouraging people to help save the environment or help eliminate poverty by giving money to charities. The ads encourage consumers to appraise and change their behaviour regarding charitable giving. Some fear appraisal ads focus on less well-defined fears, such as ads for plastic surgery or skin creams that focus on consumers' fears of looking old.

Fear appeals (sometimes called threat appeals) can be defined in terms of their content, or by the reaction they engender from the audience (O'Keefe, 1990). For example, fear appeals usually contain "gruesome content" in the form of vivid language (e.g. "thick purulent, choking secretions welled into the tracheotomy wound," Leventhal, 1965), personalistic language (e.g., "smokers like you ..."), or gory pictures (e.g., photographs of crash victims). Alternatively, fear appeals have been defined in terms of the amount of fear aroused and/or experienced by the audience (i.e., physiologically or psychologically). Reported or aroused fear is usually evaluated by a manipulation check, with a high fear appeal yielding significantly greater levels of reported or aroused fear than a low fear appeal.

Definition of Fear Appeal

“A fear appeal is a persuasive message that attempts to arouse fear in order to divert behavior through the threat of impending danger or harm.” A fear appeal presents a risk, presents the vulnerability to the risk, and then describes a suggested form of protective action”

“Advertising that attempts to create anxiety in the consumer on the basis of fear, so that the consumer is encouraged to resolve this fear by purchasing the product or service.”

An appeal is the motive to which an advertisement is directed. Its purpose is to move the audience toward a goal set by the advertiser. Fear appeals are commonly used in many types of marketing communications, e.g., the marketing of products, services, social causes, and ideas. The basic message is “if you don’t do this (buy, vote, believe, support, learn, etc.), some particular dire consequences will occur” (Glascoff, 2000, 35). That is, advertisers invoke fear by identifying the negative results of not using the product or the negative results of engaging in unsafe behaviour. In general, however, fear appeals are effective in increasing ad interest, involvement, recall, and persuasiveness (LaTour, Snipes, and Bliss, 1996). “Fear appeals are one of the most frequently used motivators to get people to help themselves” (Bagozzi and Moore, 1994, 56). In fact, fear appeals have grown in popularity because advertisers have found them to increase ad interest and persuasiveness (LaTour, Snipes, and Bliss, 1996). Evidence also suggests that individuals “better remember and more frequently recall ads that portray fear than they do warm or upbeat ads or ads with no emotional content” (Snipes, LaTour, and Bliss, 1999, 273).

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

Primary Data was collected by showing advertisements to the viewers and collecting their responses through directed personal interview.

Sample:

A sample was collected through cluster sampling method of 30 viewers from different socio economic groups. Their discriptions are as follows:

· 5 students, Male, age 18-23

· 5 students, Female, age 18-23

· 5 Government employees, Male, age 35-45

· 5 Private sector employees, Female, age 30-40

· 5 Businessmen, Male, age 40-50

· 5 Housewives, Female age 35-45

METHODOLOGY:

Primary data was collected by showing each group 5 various types advertisements out of which 3 advertisements are classified in Humour appeal and Social appeal whereas remaining 2 advertisements are of purely Fear appeal.

Each group was shown all the 5 advertisements separately and then a directed personal interview was conducted and the questions were asked regarding the advertisements they were shown earlier.

Their responses were recorded and analyzes on the basis of the appeals. i.e the responses related to both fear appeal advertisements and other advertisements using discrete fear appeal were compared and the effectiveness of both the classifications were ascertained.

Advertisements:

Advertised Brand	Appeal Used in that Advertisement
Glycodine	Humour
The Hindu	Social Awareness
M-Seal	Humour
ICICI Prudential	Fear
Anti-Smoking Campaign	Fear

Questions for Interview

Q1: Did you like that advertisement? (Mentioning the specific brand) Yes/No

This question was asked to see if the advertiser had succeeded to connect with the viewer or not.

Q2: Which type of advertisement was it? Humourous/ Awaking / Fearful/ None

This question was asked to analyze whether the viewer is able to understand the tone of message or not.

Q3: Did you notice any kind of hidden threat in this advertisement? Yes/No

This question was asked only for the advertisements in which Fear appeal was not used directly.

Q4: What according to you was the threat?

This was an Open-Ended question only asked if the respondent responded positively for the 3^rd question to know if the viewer is recognizing the hidden threat.

Q5: Can this element of threat be an important factor in making your purchasing decision for that brand? Yes/No

This question was asked to all the respondents to see whether both the fear appeal and non-fear appeal advertisements has similar kind of effect.

Findings:

These are the findings which are calculated and tabulated on the basis of the viewers’ responses regarding each advertisement

Advertisement: Glycodine:

This is a funny advertisement which shows how coughing at a wrong moment can cause troubles. The responses were as follows:

Advertisement: The Hindu

This advertisement portrays the dreadful condition of youth’s knowledge about Indian constitution and heritage. The responses were as follows:

Advertisement: M-Seal

This Funny advertisement shows how even a droplet of water dripping unwontedly can change your life in an unfortunate way. The responses were as follows:

It was clearly seen that the respondents were able to recognize the hidden threat when asked. They also stated that they always used to skip this point but are surely able to recognize the threat after giving it some thought. A substantial percent of respondents think that this hidden threat plays an important role in their buying behaviour.

CONCLUSION:

The study gave enough indications that not only advertisers are using fear appeal as their strategic tool in direct representation of fear, but as well as indirect interpretation of fear also. This study also shows that the viewers have a good understanding of what they are watching and what the marketer is trying to show them. The respondents show that the hidden fear appeal might not visible normally, but surely seen if observed the advertisement properly and also if they give it some though. Though the direct use of Fear appeal surely creates an impact on the viewer, the discrete use of this appeal can also creates a substantial effect on the viewer and become 1 of the important factor in viewer’s purchase decision regarding that specific brand whose advertisement uses the fear appeal in one or the other way.

This study tried to show that even if the advertisement is not of the genre Fear, but if the fear appeal is used tactfully, it can create an impact on the viewer’s mind and can play an important factor in decision making.

REFERENCES:

Fear appeal theory, Kaylene C. Williams California State University, Stanislaus

Barron's Educational Series, c 2000, 1994, 1987

Fear appeals and persuasion: a review and update of the extended parallel process model Erin K. Maloney, Maria K. Lapinski and Kim Witte

Websites

www.youtube.com

www.wikipedia.com

www.allbusiness.com

Received on 27.01.2014 Modified on 05.02.2014

Asian J. Management 5(2): April-June, 2014 page 272-276