Media reinforces the national identity through daily broadcasts of the national symbols, rhetoric and rituals
KARACHI: National identity’s salience prominently impacts upon the attitude of consumers towards advertisements and the advertised products. Consumers respond positively to the media context, which shapes their national identity noticeably, resulting in a more favourable emotional response and constructive approach towards the media context. The national identity holds a remarkable level of emotional consequence for all members of the nation.
Buying behaviour has an element of patriotism in it, that certain types of consumption are patriotic or that patriotic emotions unrelated to potential purchases can stimulate consumer behaviour. The consumers are often biased in favour of home country products and accord higher evaluations to those products over the foreign alternatives.
Media reinforces the national identity through daily broadcasts of issues, which are directly related to the nation as well as by perpetuating the national symbols, rhetoric and rituals.
The use of advertising appeals characterised with patriotism based emotions, touching the respondents’ sensitive cord and exploiting public sentiment in a constructive mode, has gained prominence in recent years. Consumers’ patriotic emotions have significant effects on consumer choice between domestic and foreign products.
Thus, we can conclude that when an identity is activated, the respondent under influence of that identity salience shows heightened sensitivity towards the stimuli, which primed that particular identity. But without establishing the reasons which cause activation of a particular identity, examination of the impact of identity cues on persuasion remains a tall order.
Sana Imran
Published in The Express Tribune, June 22nd, 2017.
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