L'Anti Publicité

Advertising is a profit-making mass communication technique aimed at transmitting a message in order to stimulate demand for a product. While empirical analyses of advertising are abundant, purely economic studies are rarer and there is no real economic theory of advertising, but rather sociological and philosophical reflections. Theoretical analyses of the effectiveness of advertising expenditure are generally based on standard market hypotheses, meeting the standards of neoclassical analysis of microeconomics, whereas empirical analyses, which are more numerous, question the effectiveness of this expenditure for companies. The meso-economic analysis seeks to study mass consumption, economies of scale, the conditions of competition with the construction of barriers to entry, the effects of company concentration, the incentive to innovation and the creation of new needs. Macroeconomic analyses of advertising tend to use qualitative methods. An original econometric model suggests an accelerating effect of advertising on short-term purchases and on GDP, but its expenditure is rather a brake on these aggregates in the longer term. It therefore leads to an anticipation of purchases and contributes to inflationary pressures. On other economic variables, its structural effects do not seem significant. Advertising enters the daily lives of consumers. Advertising seeks to define a social code, a representation through the purchase of products, which is often contested.