PERCEPTION OF COMMERCIAL AND SOCIAL ADVERTISING BY GENERATION Y IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Abstract

Advertising as the dominant tool of marketing management and marketing communication has become an inextricable part of culture and society. Its influence significantly affects its immediate surroundings. The current period, characterized by a communication boom, allows for a more aggressive application of advertising in public contexts as well as in managerial solutions. Advertising thus penetrates all aspects of life and its setup can be found in both commercial and non-commercial spheres. Thanks to perception, advertising becomes an incentive that stimulates purchase of products, services, but also ideas. Perception reflects reality through the sense organs, and each instance of perception is complemented by subjective factors, a process linked to past experiences. The study presents partial results of research that examined perception of commercial and social advertising by the Generation Y customer segment in the Czech Republic. The research used the method of data collection by questionnaire with implementation of the semantic differential method with a seven-point rating scale to find out what denotative and connotative meanings Generation Y respondents attach to the terms commercial and social advertising. The research data were processed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The resulting findings are related to perception of the terms commercial and social advertising by the examined Generation Y group in their semantic space. The findings show that the concept of commercial advertising is perceived in predominantly negative connotations for the entire research group, and to absence of distinction on their part between the terms commercial and social advertising.