Investigating needs in banks’ newspaper advertisements on The Sunday Times of Malta in 2002 and 2012

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to identify which needs based on Dr. Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation are frequently depicted in local and foreign banks’ print advertisements in relation to their verbal and visual contents. The research centres on the banks’ print advertisements found in The Sunday Times of Malta of the two respective years 2002 and 2012. The reason for using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in this study is that marketers find Maslow’s theory useful in creating ideas for their advertising messages (Rice, 1997). The research method used is content analysis. In order to facilitate the research process, and to have a less complex explanation of results, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is categorised as follows. The first basic needs of physiology, security and safety are represented by ‘survival’. The needs of belongingness and social are represented by ‘social’. Meanwhile ‘achievement’ represents the growth needs of self-esteem and self-actualisation. The coding units in this study were constructed in order to carry out the analysis on advertisements’ needs. The construction of the coding units builds on the verbal and the visual dominant elements present in the advertisements. Both verbal and visual coding units’ definitions are found by the use of an online graphical dictionary. Each coding unit’s meaning is coded numerically in the coding frame with their definitions associated to survival, social and achievement. The findings demonstrate that there is not a change in both the verbal and the visual contents of the banks’ print advertisements in 2002 and in 2012, given that the concept of achievement that represents self-esteem and self-actualisation needs have the highest amount both verbally and visually for both years compared to survival and social.