The today society is criticized as being a society of consumerism. People are exposed and implored by marketing everyday through diverse tactics. One of the most known is advertising which is considered also as the most influential channel of marketing. This leads to strong social criticism, in this thesis we focus on Albania.
Since marketing is an unavoidlable perspective of people’s daily life, the purpose of our thesis is to demonstrate how advertising is impacting on customer’s behaviour. In order to understand how advertising is processing, the research wil aim to go through different theoretical concepts. Starting by defining influence and manipulation, I detail the customer through his/her needs, wants, demands, and the influencing factors. Then the role of advertising is explained which leads to buying decision process. As the aim of this thesis is to understand a contemporary social process, a qualitative research method combined with case studies design is chosen as the methodology. In that regards, four focus groups have been conducted, and six in depth interviews are contacted. The findings of the thesis are presented in the empirical material chapter, which brings to a cross-case synthesis between the two industries and four companies as case studies (Yin, R. K. 2009). chosen to answer our purpose: i) telecommunication industry (Vodafone and Telecom) and FMCG industry i) Coca-Cola and Pepsi. In addition, the focus groups participants’ perception of TV advertising is analyzed. It appears that marketing is negatively percei
ved even though the participants of the focus groups are actually impacted by it. In fact, they criticize the products presented but in the same time they find them interesting in some aspects. In conclusion, the possibility to influence or manipulate a customer depends on the ability of the marketer to use the right tools and his/her ethical considerations. Noticing that the main difference between influence and manipulation is the intention behind.
