Surrogate Advertising: The Awareness and Does It Helps to Promote Core Product Itself in Indian Context

Abstract

Advertising has been considered as a means of information about brands which confuses consumer and often misguides (Littlechild, 1982).Ads for controversial products, which cause a negative reaction, and thereby offence, can result in negative publicity, complaints to advertising regulatory bodies, falling sales, and product boycotts. Now-a-days, society is more open-minded to advertisements for unmentionables (Fahy,1995).Surrogate advertising is a form of advertising which is used to promote banned products, like tobacco, cigarettes and alcohol, in the disguise of another product. The purpose of this paper is to study, review the concept of surrogate advertising and also to know its application in Indian business organisations. The main objectives of this research paper is to explore the awareness of surrogate advertising and to know whether surrogate advertising will helps to promote the core product or not.The primary data was collected by using a well-structured questionnaire from 59 respondents and are entered into the sub-tables by using the simple percentage analysis. Convenient data sampling method is used to collect data and Chi-Square Analysis was used for analysis and inference. The secondary data was collected through journals, magazines, edited volumes, articles and various websites. The paper concludes that, although the original products have not been advertised on the television, still these brands enjoy a higher sales volume each and every year even after the abolition of the advertisements of their original products.

Keywords: Brand Awareness, Customer Satisfaction, OlaCabs