Portrayal of women in media and its impact on young generation: a perception analysis

Media can play a useful role in propagation of information about products to the general public, this powerful tool is used for creating proper awareness, imparting education and prevention of various health diseases therefore media plays an important role in community development. Advertisements have always been an important marketing strategy. In modern times, advertising has become the lifeline of the business economy. In the present scenario advertising messages are preoccupied with grabbling attention and sustaining interest, rather than transferring persuasion messages. This has largely been due to a perception that advertising needs to stand out and perform a creative, educative and entertaining function in order to be received by customers. The agencies that produce these kinds of commercials argue that because there is so little product difference advertisers need to highlight the difference through advertising not the product. At the same time, advertisements should not hamper the ethical and moral value of the society. To make the advertisement more attractive, these agencies use lot of tools and modern techniques and one among them is women. The objective of the study is to understand the perception of young generation about the portrayal of women in advertisement and its impact on the young generation. To fulfill this research objective, the study has carried in Mysore city considering the sample size of 100 which includes college students, women and men by adopting simple random sampling technique. Mean is used as a statistical tool to analyze and interpret the data. The study found that most of the respondents were the opinion that the use of erotic images of women in advertisements was offensive and they were also of the opinion that this kind of advertisements attracts the customer's immediate attention and they last long in the minds of the people but people remember only the erotic image of women in advertisement but not the product advertised.