Controversial And Religious Symbols In Advertising: Grounded Theory Approach

Abstract

This article investigates the motivations for the use of religious symbols in response to offensive advertisements—where brands and/or marketing experts are attempting to sell a contradictory or shocking aspect of Christian religion and use its symbols as an expression of religion and culture. The author investigates Christian Millennials’ perceptions through a series of posted advertisements, individual interviews, diary entries, and laddered coding procedures (grounded theory methodology). Marketing experts still have an unanswered question: how to predict buying trends and what influences them within a moral context. The presence of war made us think about the moral value and lasting value of goods. An educated, digitally connected, traveling Christian demographic in Lithuania that grasped the influence of religious symbolism in advertisements was found in this study to define offense as provocative, sexist, or annoying advertisements where the message or theme neglects their intelligence. Additionally, mothers are distracted by controversial advertising and the product’s influence on their children. Finally, an environmental paradox exists where restricted living conditions, juxtaposed in parallel with the escapism offered by social-media consumption, lead millennials to be more accepting of advertising that could be classified as offensive. This study benefits of its value to professionals in the fields of advertising, research, consumer behaviour observation, marketing communications, and economics. The originality appears in a new grounded theory model that is based on consumers’ faith and belonging to religious groups (millennials) and their consumer practices. The theoretical model is designed to explain the stepwise process of Christians’ opinion-forming, behaviour, and consumption based on controversial advertisements.