A Content Analysis of Advertisements in Women?s Fashion Magazines in China

Since Elle entered China in 1988, women?s fashion magazine market in China has grown enormously. Compared with their Western counterparts, Chinese female consumers spend much more of their salary on fashion magazines and the products advertised in them. The advertisements in women?s fashion magazines have been used as a major information source when Chinese female consumers make purchase decisions of fashion/luxury products. To understand the elements used in women?s fashion advertising and their effectiveness, the current research specifically investigates advertisements in four women?s fashion magazines ? Rayli Fashion & Beauty, ViVi, mina, and Beauty ? in China. Four hundred and twenty-one advertisements were content-analyzed. For each advertisement, its product category, size of the advertisement, size and proportion of image and advertising copy, and model type were examined. The results indicate that 1) the homogeneity of advertising tactics has been identified among the four women?s fashion magazines, and 2) the sizes, the proportions of image and advertising copy, and the types of models vary across the advertisements of different product categories. The current research sheds lights on the design of effective advertisements featured in women?s fashion magazines in China.ACKNOWLEDGMENTThis research is supported by research grants by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71202089), the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (No.S2013010012249), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No.12wkpy49), and Roger Williams University Provost?s Foundation to Promote Scholarship and Teaching.