The theoretical frame I utilized to support my research was the analysis of consumerism. I have gained a better understanding of consumerism and how it plays a role in the advertisements I have watched and coded throughout the duration of my research. Consumerism looks to promote the interests consumers have, by marketing certain goods and necessities towards those looking to consume products that they need. Advertisers understand how to market their product to appeal to their consumers’ interests. The more ways in which consumers can relate to the products being advertised, the more likely they are to purchase and consume those products based on their presentation throughout the advertisements.
Consumerism is the ultimate reason for why companie go above and beyond to attempt to persuade audiences and convince them that their product is the best and should be consumed by those they are advertising towards, specifically those represented best within the advertisements. When analyzing the advertisements to gather the data for the research, I was able to see how organizing different codes when analyzing specific content, which can allow for me to apply codes that best represent the content being analyzed. Content analysis allowed for me to identify different themes and patterns which were represented throughout the advertisements, in which these patterns in the advertisements had shown consistency amongst the themes represented throughout the numerous advertisements.
When looking at what Bergman had stated with regard to the government’s thoughts on corporate America’s push on consumerism, “Federal regulations support the television industry with the never-ending quest for more and more profit.” (Bergman, 161) This helps explain why corporate companies decide to advertise towards specific audiences in order to reach max profits, targeting different types of people one at a time. Consumerism and its involvement with drug advertisements leads to the pharmaceutical companies caring more about the profits they make from the sales of their products, rather than the safety, well-being, and effectiveness of their on the consumers. The data sources which were used to organize and retrieve the content that was needed to be analyzed, from the use of a database which included a numerous variety of medical advertisements ranging from different illness/drug type which was being promoted. When taking samples and understanding the framework behind how to approach the research questions being presented, I had split up the different categories which had represented different illness/drug type, paying close attention to the ways in which the portrayal of happiness in the advertisements is displayed or represented in a variety of ways which was organized through the coding sheets. It was necessary to gather qualitative and quantitative data, in order to distribute the different representations of each different coding category used throughout each medical advertisements that has been thoroughly advertised.