Empirical research on the functions of audiovisual advertising from the perspective of recipients — students of the Journalism and Social Communication Faculty at the University of Łódź

Abstract

In current research on the subject, three dominant functions of advertising can be pointed out. These are: to inform, to persuade or to remind a recipient about the product. However, watching modern commercials in the media evokes a question about this typology being sufficient enough to cover the full spectrum of the commercial industry. The main goal of the article is to test the attitudes towards commercials in students in their junior year of the Journalism and Social Communication degree at the University of Łodź. This probe is exceptionally valuable, since many of these people in years to come will become involved in creating this type of broadcast by graduating with a “Advertising, Design and Visual Communication” major at our university. The experiment has been divided into three tiers, showing different types of TV spots in two of them. Doing this has enabled us to answer the question if watching these types of broadcasts can influence the attitude towards commercials and its functions on viewers.