EXPLORING AESTHETICS AS A TOOL FOR PASSIVE ADVERTISING IN MALLS IN KADUNA STATE

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EXPLORING AESTHETICS AS A TOOL FOR PASSIVE ADVERTISING IN MALLS IN KADUNA STATE

ABSTRACT

This study explores the role of aesthetics and advertising play in Nigeria especially in Kaduna state. The problem to be solved is the increase of patronage in malls by the building from. Malls should be able to attract people to the building for its beauty first then the activities. The research aims and objective is achieved through literature review and data through a survey with the use of questionnaires. Having them come as visitors first and leave as shoppers, have the building passively advertise itself. The responses gotten showed that people are more likely to visit a mall because of its looks and actually pay attention to them, having a mall that has an appealing shape that is complex and unusual with the appropriate mixed or blend of colours that shine will attract the people more. In conclusion having a building especially a mall that is aesthetically pleasing to people will increase the patronage people would want to visit the building just because it looks nice.

            Keywords: Aesthetics, Malls, Advertising, Passive advertising.

 

 

CHAPTER 1

1          INTRODUCTION

1.1         Background of the study

To say that an object is beautiful or ugly is seemingly to refer to a property of the object but it is also to express a positive or negative response to it, a set of aesthetic values and to suggest that others ought to respond on the same way (Alan H. Goldman, 1990). Such judgments are descriptive, expressive, and normative or prescriptive at once. These multiple features are captured well by humans that analyze the judgements as ascribing relational properties.

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think of the beauty. But when I’ve

finished , if the solution is not beautiful, I know it’s wrong”.

—— Buckminster Fuller.

When Baumgarten coined the word aesthetics, the subject matter was art objects. The interpretation of the aesthetic content of advertisements is mediated by knowledge of advertisement (ad) intentions it said that they are rarely considered beautiful. In this way, there is an obstruction to measuring the aesthetic qualities of an ad. However, based on how the word aesthetics is described, it may be said that there are stunning advertisements. Then one might ask questions such as: at what degree does an audience value the aesthetic content of an advertisement? Is there a form of elegance that appeals to convincing content? Kant’s judgment on taste, outlined by Carroll (2001), includes, amongst others, two requirements for judging beauty disinterest, where the viewer is arrested by feelings of pleasure, even though   she has had no pre-emptive need to feel this pleasure; and contemplation, when the subject matter is perceived only for the sake of perceiving it.

People are drawn to something that brightens them, fascinates them and they have such a fascination that in every respect they want to discover glamour (Janakiballav Mishra et al., 2020), one among them is shops, and marketplaces. The small and medium-sized brick and morter stores have been replaced by the shopping centres. A shopping mall is an immense complex of many stores that have been planned, developed, and managed as one property representing merchant operators with crossconnection pathways allowing visitors to walk from unit to unit, where customers have multiplexes for entertainment, such as clothing, cosmetics, foodstuffs, fruit and vegetables. A mall provides other activities other than just shopping, currently in Kaduna state there is no mall that is large enough to provide the kind of services required for a mall, most people within the surrounding area would rather go to open markets for their purchases. (The Importance of a Shopping Mall Archives |, n.d.)

The advantage of using aesthetics is that it is explored in a variety of visual domains, including visual communication and design. Alexander Baumgarten, a German philosopher of the eighteenth century, was the first to recognize elegance as the fundamental characteristic of aesthetics (Carroll 2001, Beardsley 1966, 1981). As a consequence of this relation, the historical study of European aesthetics appears to begin with early studies of beauty.

Passive advertising has been around for several centuries, dating back to the golden era to the silk road route, where items were placed along the travelled route to give subtle hints of its availability (Rajaguru and Matanda 2006). Silk Road routes included a large network of strategically located trading posts, markets and thoroughfares designed to streamline the transport, exchange, distribution and storage of goods, the East-West trading routes between Greece and China started to open in the first and second centuries B.C. The Roman Empire and the Kushan Empire (which controlled the territory of what is now northern India) also benefited from the trade produced by the Silk Road. Interestingly, for China the ancient Greek term “seres,” meaning “the country of silk,” literally, but, in spite of this apparent relation to the name, it is no more than 1877 that the name “Silk Road” was coined, when it first identified the trade routes by German geographer and historian Ferdinand von Richthofen. (silk road 2017). Empires were often adorned with their finest exports to give visitors a vague sense of their endowment. The features such as the appearance of a store, quality of service, comfortable parking, accessibility for customers to the shops are another significant aspect of drawing clients to the malls. This sometimes increases the customers patronage and also increases sales for the mall.

1.2         Problem Statement

Malls are known for entertainment, shopping and for social interaction. The use for aesthetics as a tool for advertising in malls is usually not recognized and used properly, the reduction of aesthetic value of malls has been linked to a decline in patronage and advertainment value. There’re no malls in Kaduna currently that attract people to the building for its beauty and also the activities it entails.

1.3         Aim

The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between advertising and aesthetics in malls.

1.4         Objectives

  1. To evaluate what aesthetics are in malls.
  2. To explore mall user’s perception of aesthetics in relation to advertising in malls.
  • To design a mall that is aesthetically pleasing and provides advertising.

1.5         Significance of Study

This study seeks to give aesthetics intrinsic value, bringing out aesthetics as a component of design, having it looked in terms of a long term impact so it has a way it attracting people to the building. As much as designers would consider different components the building (like the cost elements of the building). The importance of aesthetics should be quantified as an element of its own. also this study is seeking to help designers and the entire project team see the bigger picture of including aesthetics as one of the core design elements and tying its value to long term advertisement and income generating plan of the business. If a design is fragmented into structural elements, enclosing elements (façade) etc., we should also be able to look as aesthetic elements which would no longer be considered as a redounded part of a design, it would be looked at in terms of long term value for malls is important.

1.6         Scope of Study

The scope of the study will be limited to referenced documents (business journals), similar research interest and questionnaires. It will be based on aesthetics and advertising in malls and getting the perspectives of people in Kaduna.

1.7         Limitation of study

The study on this subject matter is constrained by certain factors both manmade and natural. By virtue of geographic location, covid-19 restrictions and financial constraints, I have been unable to visit the various sites personally hence I have resulted in making use of data from reliable authors and authorities and photograph images free of copyright from the internet. These limitations will however have no detriment to the authenticity of this project.

1.8         Definition of terms

Aesthetics: a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste with the creation and appreciation of beauty (Webster Dictionary, 2021).

Advertising: the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services (dictionary.com, 2021).

Passive advertising: Passive marketing is a form of marketing your products and services that does not inconvenience your customers. You place ads in locations where your customers are looking anyway. For example, passive marketing could involve putting a banner on the side of a website or paying for an ad in the newspaper. Your customers have the option of looking at your ad or looking at something else nearby. This type of advertising is traditional and expected from customers (Arthur, 2021).

Designer: a person who devises or executes designs, especially one who creates forms, structures, and patterns, as for works of art and machines (dictionary.com, 2021). Design: to prepare the preliminary sketch or the plans for (a work to be executed), especially to plan the form and structure of a thing or work (dictionary.com, 2021).

EXPLORING AESTHETICS AS A TOOL FOR PASSIVE ADVERTISING IN MALLS IN KADUNA STATE

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