DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2017.780
title: A study of moves, linguistic features, and advertising strategies in women's and men's online skincare product advertisements

description: This study investigated the moves, linguistic features, and advertising strategies used in women’s and men’s online skincare product advertisements. The data comprised 100 online skincare product advertisements of 50 women’s advertisements and 50 men’s advertisements taken from the official English language websites of five leading brands: Olay, Nivea, Dove, Garnier, and L’Oréal from May to July 2016.  Based on the adapted frameworks drawn from the pilot study and previous findings of moves (Bhatia, 2004), linguistic features (Bhatia 2004; Cook, 2001; Myer, 1994), and advertising strategies (Cheong and Kaur, 2015; Kaur, Arumugam and Yunus, 2013), the data in Women corpus and Men corpus were first analyzed for moves, and the results were assessed for intercoder reliability. Then, the linguistic features and the advertising strategies used in each move were examined. The findings from the moves analysis of Women corpus and Men corpus revealed that there were two obligatory moves: Move 1 Headlines and Move 5 Detailing the products. The differences between two corpora were identified in terms of the move presence and move status. With regard to the move presence, the results showed that Women corpus consisted of seven moves, and Men corpus consisted of six moves. The findings indicated the same six moves in the two corpora except that Move 4 Establishing credentials was absent in Men corpus. Regarding the move status, the results highlighted that Move 5 Step 8 Indicating how to use the products was an obligatory step in Women corpus whereas it was an optional step in Men corpus. The findings from the linguistic features at the syntactic level showed a difference between the two datasets in Move 1 Headlines and Move 5 Detailing the products. The results of the women’s advertisements demonstrated the preference of Incomplete sentences in Move 1 (Headlines) and Statements in Move 5 (Detailing the products). However, the results of the men’s advertisements indicated the frequent use of Statements in Move 1 (Headlines) and Incomplete sentences in Move 5 (Detailing the products). In addition, the findings from the linguistic features at the lexical level also marked the difference between the two corpora in Move 1 Headlines, Move 3 Justifying the products, Move 5 Detailing the products, and Move 7 Urging actions. The results revealed that Binomial Expressions and Adjectives were the prominent choices in Women corpus whereas Conjunction and Nominal expressions were the salient lexical features in Men corpus. The findings from the advertising strategies demonstrated that online skincare products advertisements in the two corpora employed certain advertising strategies including Manufacturing consent through implication, Highlighting exclusiveness, and Dermatologist endorsement and Claiming scientific evidence in order to make the skincare products desirable. The study also found a noticeable difference between Women corpus and Men corpus in the use of advertising strategies in Move 3 (Justifying the products). The results showed that Invoking inadequacies were frequently employed in women’s online skincare product advertisements whereas Highlighting the importance of skincare practice were commonly adopted in men’s online skincare product advertisements. This present study suggested that writers tended to use some different communicative purposes, linguistic features, and strategies in women’s and men’s online skincare product advertisements for the purchase motivation of skincare products. It is hoped that the results of this study would serve as a guideline for learning and teaching of writing online skincare product advertisements.