Register Login

Journal of Promotional Communications

Search
PDF

Published

2014-08-31

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2014)

Section

Articles

License

Policy for Journals That Offer Open Access


Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

    1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

    1. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

  1. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Lethal Consumption: An Exploration into the Use of Death Anxiety within Advertising Communications

Jen Gale

Bournemouth University

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of death anxiety within advertising communications. The paper focuses specifically on whether advertising has the discrete capability to instigate death anxiety amongst subjects and how this might manifest and it additionally looks to discover whether a group’s materialistic tendencies can act as a variable in determining their susceptibility to death anxiety invoked by advertising. Before and after projective techniques were utilised and results identified that an increase in death anxiety did occur post stimuli, most pervasively amongst subjects deemed to be highly materialistic. Discomfort and confusion were recognized as initial reactions to death within advertising which could look to act as potential predictive measures of death anxiety and the emergence of five themes that indicated the prevalence of death anxiety occurred. These were: Fear; Worry; Catastrophization; Desire for Self Esteem; Blame and Stereotyping.