Persuasion In Financial Advertisements

Chinese financial market has become ever thriving and active since the admission of QFII. Attracted by the glamour of financial market, an increasingly large number of people embark on the voyage of investment to manage their wealth. Under such background, the financial advertisement, once a remote idea, is gaining popularity among potential investors as well as financial institutions.Publicized by large banks, the personal financing product instructions may be the most commonly used form of financial advertisements.This thesis attempts to explore the persuasive effect of financial advertisements by studying the specific cases of personal financing product instructions. The thesis believes that it is the interaction between copywriters and advertisement audiences that contributes to the persuasion of the advertisements. Since it has been proved that people have bounded rationality when making decisions because of their intrinsic psychological heuristics, which may be the reason why they are easy to be persuaded; the main focus of the thesis is to demonstrate how copywriters employ different devices to utilize those psychological heuristics and to make the financial advertisements more persuasive.Researches of the thesis are carried out on the belief that financial advertisements usually attempt to trigger profit-related associations and avoid or downplay risk-related associations to maximize their persuasive power. Through samples analyses, the use of fuzzy words and terminologies in sample advertisements are examined separately. Together with the analysis of framing effect of the text structure organization, an interpretation of the persuasive effect of Chinese financial advertisement on its audiences is developed.Then, upon the completion of the analyses, further discussions on issues of the disadvantageous position of the advertisement audience and the deception implied in some of the sample advertisements is touched upon.