Persuasion Strategy In Pharmaceutical Advertising

With the approaching of the commodity economy age, advertising tends to be more and more segmental and specific. And as one of the practical applications of language persuasion function, advertising language, which has been approached from a wide range of disciplines, such as marketing, psychology, sociology, aesthetics, anthropology, etc, is attracting the attentions of more and more scholars. However, researches on persuasion strategy used in advertising are still comparatively limited, especially in pharmaceutical advertising. In fact, as a special kind of commodity, medicine is closely connected with our lives. And pharmaceutical advertising is generally on the top of advertising revenues among all the other types. In China, medicine is classified into traditional Chinese medicine (TCM for short) and western medicine (WM for short) according to their places of origin. Researches on the comparison between TCM and WM have been done from various angles, expect that from advertising. That’s why the author attempts to make a comparison between TCM and WM from the angle of persuasion strategy application, under the background of Chinese pharmaceutical advertising.On the theoretical basis of pragmatics, communication, and psychology, this paper researches and compares TCM and WM advertisements from the angles of rational persuasion strategy and emotional persuasion strategy. It turns out that their similarities and differences are as follow:i. Similarities:from the perspective of rational persuasion strategy, both TCM and WM advertisements share the strategies like emphasis directly on the benefits of the medicine, using problem-solving persuasive way, and emphasis on the uniqueness of the medicine. From the perspective of emotional persuasion strategy, they both share the strategies of love appeal, sympathy appeal, fear appeal, aesthetic style of the advertising language, and adding extra value. ii. Differences:from the perspective of rational persuasion strategy, the words and numerals used by TCM advertisements are often associated with the history and ancient China, while WM advertisements focus more on "efficiency" and "profession". Their differences are also shown by the using of pharmaceutical terminology. From the perspective of emotional persuasion strategy, differences appear in the attempt of love appealing and the shaping of the brand image by advertising slogans, which is to say, TCM advertisements sometimes have their own certain kind of target consumers-children, elders and mothers.This comparison will not only help people have a deeper understanding on persuasion strategy used in pharmaceutical advertising, but also offer a brand new and practical angle of TCM&WM comparison to the scholars. Besides, with the increasing problems found in pharmaceutical advertising nowadays, advertisers can improve the qualities of their advertisements by means of persuasion strategy, and produce more advertisements of uniqueness, high efficiency, and value.