The perception of the concept "beauty" in different groups of advertising communication participants

The authors of this research analyze the concept "beauty" in advertising communication. The material of the research is commercial advertising in national and local mass media and data of a survey of some specialists and consumers. The research was done in two stages. At the first stage, in the course of content analysis there were determined the most frequent elements of the concept "beauty" such as appearance, fashion, health, care, naturalness, success, harmony, singularity, brand, individuality, style, brightness, life-style, aesthetics, design, youth, image, charm, packaging and high cost. The analysis of the concept "beauty" shows that the meanings of this concept can be realized in different ways for different groups of goods. It can point at an advertising object, at a consumer an advertising text is addressed to, or at the aesthetic pleasure a consumer feels when getting this product. According to the analysis, the authors can distinguish subject-to-subject and subject-to-object evaluation used in advertising. The resources analysis shows that the conception "inner beauty" is not typical for an advertising text. At the second stage, the research included the elicitation of the semantic content of this concept that native speakers have. To reach this goal, a survey was done and its results were processed by means of cluster analysis. This method helps to form the association field of representatives of different groups (male and female) who are active consumers, to establish semantic similarity and difference in their perception of this concept. To estimate the importance of all these parameters the authors introduced a factor of subjective consumer value. As a result, it was determined that the constructs appearance, success, style and design were common for male and female audiences in the context of subject-to-object evaluation. This fact shows the similarity of the semantic content of the cluster core. The combination of these conceptions evidences that consumers choose a product with beautiful appearance, with a special design decision that marks style and symbolizes success. The same can be said about the periphery as it has similarities with the categories of other clusters, e.g. in the second cluster they are health, care and harmony; in the third one it is brand. Besides, according to men, it is able to mark individuality and, according to women, it is aesthetics. In the course of the study of subject-to-subject evaluation, constructs appearance, success, individuality, style and attraction were determined; they are common for male and female consumer audiences. The realization of the concept beauty as applied to a consumer shows more common things determining the behavior of target audience than the beautiful product itself. Advertisers need to consider the following: men value outward evaluation that is constant and realized in the concept image; women value outward evaluation characterized by continuous changing and represented by the construct fashion.

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