Proceedings of 9th Asian Business Research Conference
20-21 December, 2013, BIAM Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh ISBN: 978-1-922069-39-9
Generation Y Urban Consumers’ Perception about the Deception
Used in Bangladeshi Advertisements
Rafsan Elahi* and Tasmia Ekram Tushi**
This study aims to identify the young urban consumers’ perception about the
deceptive Bangladeshi advertisements. A cross gender comparison has
been done to understand whether gender plays any significant role in
identification of the deceptive elements. There is a school of thought that
considers emotional attachment as more influential in important decision
making when compared to logic or reasoning. (Trope and Libreman, 2003).
On the other hand, there exists a different school of thought which examines
emotional attachment different than reason based attachment. According to
Shiv and Fedorikhin (1999), emotion comes in a visceral way. Researchers
in various experiments have identified affect or emotional appeal as short
term liking, visceral experience impairing or in a narrow sense (Zajonc, 1980,
Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999). Previous research and evidence shows that
using humor in advertising is effective however Shabbir and Thwaites
(2007), argues that humor can be used in advertising as a tool of deception.
The humor in the advertising works as a mask and in most of the cases
consumers are unable to separate the mask and thus mislead by the
deceptive claim. The two fold study’s primary purpose is to find whether
generation Y urban population (Born between 1977 to 1994) can identify the
deception used in advertisements under the cover of humor mask. Those
who can identify they have been interviewed in focus group to identify
whether they find it ethical or unethical. The study result showed significant
difference of the opinion among the male and female consumers. Emerging
future research scope could be a detailed examination of the correlation
among the sense of ethics across gender in terms of advertisement appeal.
*Rafsan Elahi, Lecturer, School of Business, North South University, Bangladesh. Email: rafsan@northsouth.edu,
**Tasmia Ekram Tushi, Lecture, School of Business, North South University, Bangladesh. Email:
tasmia@northsouth.edu,