The Beauty Ads Impact Towards Women: A Case Study in Penang

Abstract: The power of advertisements in media towards public is clearly visible when the trend that is conveyed in ads that appear in media are welcomed by the public. Advertisement that shown constantly in the media have the power to persuade the viewers (persuasive power), which able to influence the individual and societal preferences. In adjacent to that, a research was conducted in the city of Penang to study the influence of beauty ads towards the career-oriented woman. In the study, three hundred and eighty four (384) respondents were selected using convenient sampling and purposive sampling. The data were analyzed using the IBM Statistic Package of Social Science and content analysis. This study found that social media is the most influential advertising medium on these women, and they declared that they are vastly influenced or affected by cosmetics and skincare ads featured in the media. The beauty ideas featured in beauty ads define women’ aspirations of the standard of beauty that they should have. There are many ads shown that men are attracted to more beautiful women, and women who were influenced by the ads are under pressure to seek the ideal of beauty. This study contributes to the theme of humanity in the field of geography.

Key words: beauty ads, influence, women, media, Penang, Malaysia

JEL codes: M