Advertising is a paid form of non-personal communication or presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor through use of mass or information-directed

media. It persuades consumers to act or behave in a way as advertisers wishes. The main objective of advertising is to sell things persuasively and creatively. The form and media chosen by advertiser depends upon the message to be conveyed and audience to be targeted. For instance, commercial firms may use it to sell products, politicians to attract voters, non-profit organizations to attract funds and solicit volunteers and government may use it to encourage or discourage activities like wearing seatbelt or say no to smoking. The word "advertise" originates from the Latin advertere, which means to turn toward or to take note of. The prime aim of advertising is to attract attention of viewers and stimulate them to act in favor of message portrayed. The pervasiveness and creativity in advertising cause viewers to take note of. Newspapers, magazines, televisions, pop ups on internet, billboards along freeways or subways, shopping malls, movie theatres, live events all showcase uncountable advertisements and draws attention of viewers. The most important function of advertising is identification function. It helps consumers identify a product, differentiate a product from others and create awareness about it. This helps to create a need for the product. Next function of advertising is to communicate information about the product. It provides consumer with features of the product and location of sale. The third and most important function of advertising is to persuade consumers. It influences viewers to act or behave in a certain way. It is the persuasive power of an advertisement that attracts consumers to a particular good or service and to suggest reuse of the product. Thus, advertising serves various purposes and must be tailored to emphasize those benefits that are important and meaningful for a particular type of customer or a particular use of the product. Although advertising has a long back history but its interconnection with consumer psychology began with research in twentieth century. Psychologists believed advertising as a form of communication and they related it with theories of psychology. Harlow Gale conducted an experiment to study the effect of advertisement to attract attention and persuade consumers to buy. Walter Scott in his book The Theory of Advertising built a theoretical understanding of advertising on principles of psychological science. Stanley Resor of the J. Walter Thompson Agency commissioned a study of the demographics and purchasing patterns of consumers to understand better both what motivated consumers to buy and how to persuade better those same consumers. The psychological theories help advertisers to identify the purchase pattern of consumers and how they interpret advertisements to make purchase decision. Another important aspect of psychological study is to know the need of consumer and the product is then designed and communicated according to the consumer need.

Advertising is useful only if it is able to attract attention of consumers and produce an effect. The message will have no effect until the consumer pays attention to it. The hierarchy of effects model identifies different stages of communication and through it the interrelations of various effects with one another. The foremost stage of advertising is getting attention. It involves two things. First, is to know where the communication should be placed, that is, the right type of media decision. The media should be decided carefully depending upon the target consumers. A key task for the advertiser is to identify those media to which relevant consumers regularly attend and develop a schedule of repetition for the advertisement that maximizes the number of consumers who will be exposed to the advertising message. This is done to avoid skip of advertisement by consumer. Mere exposure of advertisement does not necessitate consumers attention towards advertisement. Various characteristics of advertisement increase the likelihood that consumer will attend to it. Advertisements that include relevant information for the consumers as well as various creative devices like humor, a well-known celebrity or others usually attract attention of consumers. But these creative devices must be well integrated with the message and it should not dilute the prime objective of an advertisement. Second, challenging dimension of advertising revolves around balancing the repetition of an advertisement, which is intended to increase the probability of a consumer being exposed to it, with the likelihood the consumer will attend to the advertisement when exposed. Sometimes excessive repetition causes advertising wearout. So advertisers should use multiple advertisements that vary in terms of execution and presentation but carry similar message. The next stage is to process information. Advertising research has demonstrated that the message must be clear and meaningful to the consumer; if the consumer does not comprehend the message, it will not have the desired effect. Mere attention of consumer does not solve the purpose. While creating advertisement the entire focus should be on product and product message rather than creative clutter. The length of advertisement depends upon the cost as well as the amount of information to be displayed. Thus, the advertiser must understand how much information individual consumer desire and how much variability exists among consumers with respect to their willingness to process information. After processing, next step is to evaluate information. The consumers will need to determine how believable the information is and how relevant it is to their individual situation in life and to their behavior as consumers. Advertisers need to make their advertisement believable for which they can use devices like celebrities, product demonstration, endorsements and others. The next step is attitude formation. An important communication goal of an advertiser is to create a positive attitude toward their product. Attitudes are predispositions or tendencies to behave or react in a consistent way over time. Attitude influences future behavior. When a consumer goes to buy a particular product it is this positive attitude that influences choice of the product. Sometimes, the goal of advertising is to create negative attitude. For example, in various anti-drug or anti-smoke announcements the purpose is to reduce the usage of the products. Ultimately, the success of advertising rests on whether it influences behavior and intentions of the consumers. Product advertisers want consumers to buy their product; political advertisers want voters to vote for their candidate; and sponsors of public-service announcements related to the harmful effects of smoking want the rate of smoking to decline. While such effects are of

primary interest for understanding the influence of advertising, advertising is only one of many factors that influence such behaviors. It is for this reason that most advertising research focuses on other effects in the hierarchy of effects. Some writers believe that advertising can create needs and stimulate unconscious and deepseated motives. This view has led some critics of advertising to argue that advertising is a persuasive tool with the dangerous potential to create consumer needs. It is not able to create need that already did not exist. It only creates solution to need that already existed. Indeed, advertising is a relatively weak persuasive tool. Firstly, the failure rate of new products is very high. If advertisers could create needs, they should then be able to compel consumers to buy their products. Secondly, experts believe that advertising works best when it is working with the existing interests of the consumers rather than producing counter effect. Thus, advertising is a medium to create awareness, provide information and persuade consumers to act or behave in a desired manner. The success of advertising depends upon how well advertisers understand their target consumers and how target consumers respond to message.