Advertising Psychology

Throughout the years, many companies and individuals have tried to apply the science of psychology to advertising. The purpose of this work was to determine what kind of advertising did the best job of convincing people to purchase a product or service. Advertisement psychology, these people felt, would help increase sales and improve business.

The main purpose of psychology in advertising is to help companies sell products. Unlike other branches of psychology that work to understand the makeup and function of the human mind, or to help heal those with psychological problems, the psychology of advertising is focused solely on convincing consumers that they should buy a specific company's products.

> History of Psychology in Advertising

John B. Watson, one of the founders of behavioralism, was the first psychologist to seriously pursue use of psychology in advertising. He felt that it was a way to prove the practical benefits of psychology as a science. In advertisements he wrote for Johnson & Johnson, he used emotions such as the anxiety and insecurity of new mothers to present products as the best way a mother could care for her children.

Later experiments with advertising used subliminal messages and pictures within ads to attempt to make people want the products. These often had a sexual element of some kind. Whether these subliminal advertising methods actually worked has been the subject of much debate. Other approaches to using psychology in advertising have included consumer psychology, which seeks to determine motivations and perceptions of certain groups of potential customers to products.

> Advertising Psychology Today

Today's approach to consumer psychology makes use of several aspects of advertising psychology. Consumer psychologists work to determine how specific individuals or groups of people might respond to a particular product, and how to produce advertising that will appeal to these individuals' needs and natural inclinations. They study behavior patterns of various groups of consumers, then apply these patterns to market products to those they believe will be most likely to buy them. Many companies use these approaches in order to increase sales and improve market share.