Audience response to style in print media advertising: a study of millennial female youth in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

The traditional realistic image frequently used in the print media may not be as effective in promulgating denotative and connotative messages as assumed. From a qualitative perspective, the research question sought to compare the scope of messages(s) between and within different socio-economic groupings in response to the images communicated by different art genre in print media advertisements and to determine the scope of messages(s) communicated by different art styles. From a quantitative viewpoint, the study’s hypotheses’ sought to prove if there was a significant difference between art style used in print media and its’ perceptions when the respondents were classified according to social class, age, and level of education. The mixed methods study, informed by pragmatic philosophical paradigm employed stratified, purposive sampling in the qualitative section and Simple Random Sampling employing two-stage cluster sampling in the quantitative section. The sample frame comprised millennial women aged between 20 to 34 years who were consumers of lifestyle women’s magazines, and were drawn from eight zones covering Nairobi. The sample size comprised 44 respondents in the qualitative section and 216 in the quantitative section. Focus Group Discussions were used in the Qualitative section of the study and Questionnaires in the Quantitative section. Thematic coding was used in the qualitative part of the study to establish degree of divergence of message perception, whereas MANOVA used in the quantitative part to establish significance between variables. Divergent views were seen without the socio economic groups and unexpectedly, within the cohort group members. The within cohort results dilute the efficacy of the without cohort results and research needs to be carried out to investigate them. The more complex cartoon art genre generated the highest degree of elaboration, and the less complex photograph elicited the lowest amount of elaboration and generating the least amount of themes. In the MANOVA tests conducted, the null hypothesis was accepted throughout upholding the tenets of the Rhetorical Theory and Information Processing Theory as elucidated by the use of Schemata. Demographics did not create a significant difference in the respondents’ perception of the images. There is need to test other disparate demographic and/or psychographic factors that may affect image perception to attain more perspicacious results. The study is significant to advertisers in that results show that though stylised images were able to generate diverse messages to the respondents, they varied widely and as such may not be of use.