A Study on Semiotic Approach to Advertisement

Kim Jong-Mun(Graduate School of Business Administration, Seoul National University)

The purpose of this paper is to outline the emergenvce and principal perspectives of semiotics and then discuss its applications and implications to marketing and advertisements. Semiotics is commonly known as a asience of signs. These signs include meanings in general and these meanings are the core of communication in human society.

The consumer world is a web of meanings among consumers and marketers woven from signs and symbols ensconced in their cultural space and time. And marketing can be regarded as one of the exchange of meaning in society, too. Thus Semiotics can attribute to marketing in this respect by the meaning analysis structure of signifier and signified, denotation and connotation, paradigmatics and syntatics, and so forth.

If semiotics is introduced to marketing, marketer can understand the underlying meaning of consummers' consumption, analyze the general culture of consumer world, and extract the social and cultural function and meaning of product. And also marketer can properly identify the meaning which should be conveyed in marketing communication, execute effective advertising strategy through meaning analysis of advertisement which is the main tool of marketing communication between consumer and marketer.

In this study, I summerized the basic concepts which is necessary to understand the semiotic approach to marketing and advertizing in chapter 2, and reviewd the semiotic studies about conceptualization, marketing process, corporate culture and CI(corporate identity), communication, advertisement, symbolic consumption and the syntax of product which are parts of the studies to introduce semiotics to marketing in chapter 3. Then I summerized the semiotic structure and frame, signification process of advertising and studied the analysis methods of advertising in chapter 4. This methods are tested by cases in chapter 5.

This study have the implication not only to practiceby by stimulating the understanding the consumers' underlying meaning and the using proper signs to satisfy the consumers needs, but also to marketing academy by presenting new paradigm of qualitative, semiotic consumer world and testing the possibility of activation of semiotic marketing.

Key Words : Semiotics, Signs, Meanings, Semiotic Marketing, Semiotic Approach to Advertisement