A Model Of Consumer Behavior Enhancement Through Vague Language In Advertising

With the appearance of modern vagueness and the development of vague linguistics, the vagueness in language is on its way to be valued. Interest in the use of vagueness in advertising has arisen in recent years.It is believed that the basic percepts of good advertising writing are simplicity, brevity, accuracy and precision, and that vagueness, ambiguity and imprecision should be avoided. However, the use of vague terms in advertising plays the significant roles: Conveying meanings efficiently, enhancing the flexibility of linguistic communication, improving appropriateness, and making advertisement impressive and persuasive.Jef Verschueren considers the language use as a process of making linguistic choices. Advertising language is the main medium between advertiser and consumer, so the advertiser always tries to adapt to the consumer's psychology through making linguistic choices (employing vague terms in advertising production) to satisfy his own communication needs---to enhance the consumer behavior. Consumer behavior is a complicated process being influenced and one of the effective means of analyzing it is to analyze the consumer's psychology. Generally speaking, there are four major psychological elements to influence consumer behavior: Motivation, perception, attitude and memory.Based on the previous research, by adopting Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, this thesis analyzes the adaptation of vagueness in advertising to the consumer's psychology and its influence on consumer behavior centering on the following four research questions:1: What are the channels through which vague language in advertising adapt to the consumer's psychology?2: What are the major elements to influence consumer behavior from consumer psychological point of view?3: What are the channels through which vague language in advertising can influence and enhance consumer behavior? 4: What is the theoretical foundation for the model of consumer behavior enhancement through vague language in advertising?In specific, bridging vague language, consumer psychology with consumer behavior, this thesis analyzes the four channels through which vagueness in advertising adapts to consumer's psychology to influence and enhance the consumer behavior. Four channels are: Inducing the consumers' motivation by adapting to their needs and desires to enhance consumer behavior; Stirring consumers' purchase desire through adapting to their perception to enhance consumer behavior; Adapting to or changing the consumers' attitude to some extent to enhance consumer behavior; Inspiring the consumers' imagination and emotional experience through adapting to their memory characters to enhance consumer behavior. At last, the present writer proposes a theoretical model: A model of consumer behavior enhancement through vague language in advertising. This thesis intends to conduct the study on both theoretical and practical employment of vague language in advertising.