Content Analysis

A qualitative content analysis was applied as the first research tool for exploring the preponderance of male and female representations in alcohol brand promotions. Since the first research aim was to explore the overall trend and grouping of the themes of gender identity representation in TV alcohol advertising, and the advertising message strategies applied, such as appeals and executions, a qualitative content analysis was appropriate. Schwandt (2007) explained qualitative content analysis as ‘a generic name for a variety of means of textual analysis that involve comparing, contrasting, and categorising a corpus of data in order to test hypotheses. The analysis usually, but not always, relies on some statistical procedures for drawing samples and establishing inter coder reliability. The data to be coded may be cultural artefacts (texts of various kinds, documents, records, billboards, television shows, films, advertisements, etc.) or events’ (p.41). In relation to media content, Berger (1998) said that messages, in this case of TV alcohol drinks adverts, are a form of content that ‘manifests or reflects human behaviour, attitudes and culture values, and suggested content analysis as a

measure to investigate what happens in societies or cultures as a result of the media messages’ (Berger, 1998, p.23).

Gunter (2000) classified content analysis in media studies into two types: (i) a quantitative content analysis that significantly focuses on a directed or fixed meaning of the media content, using systematic (coding) procedures that can repeatedly prove its validity and correlations, which is a fundamental of quantitative methods; and (ii) a qualitative content analysis technique that concentrates on the latent meanings or the text capacity and can be interpreted or decoded in a variation of ways depending on media audiences. However, Gunter (2000) argued that the quantitative content analysis limits the insightful meaning of the media contents, and ‘tends to be purely descriptive accounts of the characteristics of media output and often make few inferences about the significance of the findings in the context of what it reveals about production ideologies or impact of media content on audiences’ (p.81). Wheras, the ‘qualitative content analysis is much more focused on latent content, however, and can better take into account subtleties of the structure of arguments and narratives not easily captured by quantitative summaries’ (Priest, 2010, p.108). Moreover, a qualitative content anaylysis has advantage for the topic as it ‘emphasises the capacity of texts to convey multiple meanings, depending upon the receiver’ (Gunter, 2000, p.82). Therefore, a qualitative content analysis is applied as the first research tool for exploration.

Qualitative content analysis is of significant benefit in exposing ‘the latent meanings of the media content, including its text, images, signs and semiotic meaning’ (Newbold et al., 2002, p. 249). In other words, the qualitative content analysis method enhances a holistic understanding of the issue, as well as the polysemic nature of the text, which is difficult to achieve using a quantitative approach. A qualitative content analysis significantly depends on the researcher who analyses or interprets such media text (Silverman, 1993; Hijmans, 1996; Gunter, 2000). The examples of the research that applied qualitative content analysis on branding such as the Alexander (2003) study, which explored the gender identities that were constructed in Men’s health magazines during the period December 1997-December 2001 in the USA. A study analysed from four parts of the magazine such as: front covers, stories and features, an advice column, and advertisements. Qualitative content analysis found not only that the form of masculinity was highly constructed in men’s health magazines, but it also allows a researcher to analyse the content or text in-depth, rather than reply on a fixed meaning as in quantitative approach. Alexander (2003) found that the men and masculinities are branded with men’s product promotions as a branded masculinity, representing a masculine image that

‘constructs muscles combined with a fashion sense and the appearance of financial success as the necessary characteristics for a real man’ (p.535). Therefore, a qualitative content anaysis is applied as the first research tool for an exploration.

3.3.1.1 Sampling for qualitative content analysis

The sampling of this study is purposively selected from the top ten alcohol brands of Thailand’s most admired brands 2013. These ten brands are kinds of ‘extreme case sampling, which are outstanding successes which could provide rich in information’ (Patton, 1990, p.169). Thailand’s most admired brands 2013 is a research survey exploring the brands that Thai people favoured in each product categories from people across the country by voting. This survey was made up from 1,024 samplings from 5 areas across Thailand. This included: 205 people from Bangkok and the midland, 208 people from the East area, 180 people from the South area, 186 people from the North- East area, and 245 people from the North region. The study consisted of 545 males and 479 females. This survey was conducted by the Brandage marketing magazine research team. This research into Thai favoured brands has been conducted for over ten years; additionally, it is widely accepted in the Thai business industry and by academic scholars. For this reason, Thailand’s most admired brands 2013 (Brandage Research Team, 2013, p. 137- 138) was used, since this is the most up-to-date and reliable social data for both marketing businesses and academia in Thai society. The ten most admired brand samplings of alcohol products were therefore selected from the top five brands of liquor and beer brands, from alcohol product categories. However, as the aim was to focus on brand advertising in the television media, brands that have no TV adverts were excluded.

As noted, in order to select the alcohol brands for content analysis sampling, Thailand’s most admired alcohol brands in 2013 were then checked to ascertain whether they had aired their advertisements on TV media using information from the media monitoring database tank in Thailand, the Mediawrap Company.4 It is the media monitoring company that most professional advertising agencies in Thailand use to track their adverts when broadcasting, in order to show evidence to their customers or the person/companies that commissioned them to make the advert. Therefore, those ten brands that were selected were applied to check whether they made the adverts airing on television or not, with the media monitoring database. The process

4 _{‘Mediawrap Company’ is the largest and most trustworthy company for media monitors that sells all advertising data in all}

provided an initial sample population of ten brands from the two categories. In terms of the time period for content analysis, the research focused on TV alcohol adverts aired in Thailand from 1st January 2009 to 31st July 2013. The chosen sample for the two categories are identified in table 3.1 and 3.2.

Table 3.1. The Thailand's the most Admired ‘Liquor’ Brands 2013

Table 3.1 demonstrates the top five popular brands from the liquor product category that created the adverts airing on television promoting their brands. Amongst them are: Johnnie Walker, Regency, Sang Som, 100pipers, and Blend285. For Chivas and Mae Kong, although these two ranked the third and fifth, the adverts were not found to have aired on television when checking with the media monitoring record. Thus, Chivas and Mae Kong brands were not selected. Table 3.2 shows the top five admired brands from the beer product category that had adverts airing on television. They are for example: Singha, Leo, Heineken, Chang, and Archa. Each top five brands from the liquor and beer category that had adverts airing on television are grouped as ten brands. These ten brands are therefore applied as the samples for content analysis.

Table 3.2 sets out the most admired beer brands selected for TV alcohol content analysis

The highlighted brands indicated in the above figures (1 and 2) represent the most popular in the liquor and beer category. For example, the top 5 beer brands are favoured by 90.5% of the people surveyed and the top 5 liquor brands by 71.78%. Noticeably, this implication of popularity shows that beer drinks brands tend to be more popular than liquors. Furthermore, Patton (1990) suggested that ‘the logic and power of purposeful sampling lies in selecting information-rich cases for study in depth. Information-rich cases are those from which one can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of the research, thus the term purposeful sampling (p.169)’. Importantly, the popularity of the top five brands of beer and liquor reveal its intensity, importance, and could provide in-depth information. Sampling these therefore could be regarded as the ‘intensity sampling that could provide rich-information, manifesting the phenomenon’ (ibid, p.169). Considering the intensity’s popularity of sampling, as Patton suggested in selecting for qualitative sampling, therefore these selected 10 alcohol brands are applied as a sampling, as the implications of their intensity’s popularities showed that they would provide detailed/rich information.

The ten brands that were selected as the samples can be seen in the information presented in table 3.3 that illustrate the number of unique TV advertisements that have been aired for each of the 10 brands selected for content analysis.

Table.3.3 The adverts airing on TV categorised by the alcohol brands and gender identities that are represented

A total of 387 TV adverts were aired by ten leading brands between 1st January 2009 and 31st July 2013, and all 387 were examined as part of this investigation. It was found that masculinities were represented in Singha, Chang, Leo, Sangsom, Archa, JW, Heineken, Blend285, and 100 Pipers, whereas femininity was found only in Regency. When considering the history of these two brands, as explained in the research background, they are both significantly related to the social change of alcohol consumption in Thai society. Thus, the brands Singha and Chang are applied as case studies exploring how the alcohol drinks brands apply masculinities to brand promotions in Thai society.

3.3.1.2 Data collection for content analysis

The data related to television alcohol advertisements was purchased from the ‘Mediawrap Company’. In order to organise and manage the large volumes of data the software package Microsoft Excel was used. The qualitative content analysis found that the Singha and Chang beer brands are the dominant and challenger brands, based on the evidence of the alcohol adverts aired on television during the period. Interestingly, the evidence also reveals there has been historical rivalry between the Singha and Chang brands and this thesis suggests that both have used brand masculinity images for promoting and selling their products.

Prior to coding, it was important to determine whether the advertisements were paid for. O'Guinn and Semenik (2012) argued‘the advertising is a paid communication, mass-mediated, and attempting to persuade’ (p.11). All 387 adverts met these three conditions. This was confirmed by the Mediawrap Company, the monitoring advertising database company selling all advertising recorded in Thailand, who noted all the adverts included in the database related to paid advertising. The Mediawrap Company recorded all programmes, adverts, and news that was broadcast on Thai television. The data were collected in a digital format. All records

showed the details of the data such as the companies or brands that aired the adverts, date, time, length, year, etc. The 387 adverts were bought and sent for research purposes in DVD format.

Coding qualitative data ‘organises and conceptualises the detailed components of data into patterns by use of symbols and labels for identification – and in the case of qualitative research, interpret elements that will feature in the analysis’ (Payne and Payne, 2004, p.37). The process of coding in looking for potential themes was a time consuming and recursive process, which consisted of several phase such as familiarizing with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, naming themes and producing the report (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p.87). Boyatzis (1998) argued that codes are ‘the most basic segment, or element, of the raw data or information that can be assessed in a meaningful way regarding the phenomenon’ (p. 63). Braun and Clarke (2006) suggested that ‘codes identify a feature of the data (semantic content or latent) that appears’(p.87&88), thus it is important to code interesting features of the data in a systematic fashion across the entire data set, collating data relevant to each code.

Therefore, at this stage, the researcher aimed to look for the predominance of the masculinity or femininity in the alcohol adverts, by considering from the symbolic meanings, configurations and cultural norms of men and women. For instance, to look for the configurations of men and masculinities were analysed from the significance of the patriarchy, authority, aggression, violence, strength, adventurous, autonomous manners and if the male body was represented in the adverts (Connell, 1987: 1995: 2005). While to search for the women and femininities were considered from the significance of being as the mother, softer, female body, submissiveness or being as a sex object (Van Zoonen, 1994; Anne Cranny-Francis et al., 2003; Carter and Steiner, 2004; Bradley, 2007). The key objective was to look for the predominance of the masculinity or femininity that represented on the TV alcohol advertisements. All adverts were grouped into the eight broad codes of ads’ fundamental information for an analysis, such as, (i) Basic qualifications (date, channels, that aired by each brand, type of product and brands, and target audiences of each brand), (ii) The ad functions differences/purposes, (iii) Ad appeals and executions used, (iv) Music used, (v) Announcers or voice over, (vi) Celebrity used, (vii) Types of event or sponsorship that were organised, and (viii) Male/female images.

As a result, the findings revealed that the masculine theme was highly represented across the alcohol advertising airing on television, especially by the Singha and Chang brands. Whereas, the female theme was only found on the Regency brand. After that, the researcher returned to focusing on grouping the ad contents to look for the potential themes of masculinities that

represented on the alcohol advertisements. Several codes emerged and were then grouped during this stage, before development of the potential themes, which are the following:

(i) The Monarchy Loyalty theme emerged from the codes that related with the forms of men who were being respect and loyal to the king and royal family, men who are willing to do anything for the king and queen as they are regarded as the father and mother of the nation, men who are loyal to the crown prince and princesses, and men who are loyal to others royal family members . Interestingly, these codes were mainly represented by Singha. Finally, these codes into the royal men category, later was developed to be the Monarchy Loyalty theme, as the key ideas was about being loyal to the monarchy.

(ii) The Thai Nationalism theme emerged from the codes that involved with the forms of men who are proud of national identity and citizenship, men who are proud of being as Thai people, the pride of the nationalism, and proud of history/longevity. This theme was mostly present in promotions by Chang. Then, these national citizenship codes were later developed to be the Thai Nationalism theme, as the overall implication seemed involving with the nationalism. However, although this theme is related with the notion of Thainess, the key focus was about the significance of the loving of nation. Whereas, the Monarchy Loyalty was also relied on the Thainess notion but its key focus was about the loving of the king and royal family. (iii) The Inspirational Capitalist men theme emerged from the masculine codes that related with the capitalist men who worked hard for achievements in their lives, and at the same time they also kindly wanted to inspire other people to achieve their goals in life like them. The codes that emerged in this theme are such as, working hard men, successful men who think of helping other people (marginalized, disability, poor/rural/hill tribe people, etc.), society, and environments. These working hard men’s codes were grouped and then developed to be the

Inspirational Capitalist men theme, as the overall implication seemed to rely on the working

hard men in the capitalism world. Importantly, this theme can mostly be seen in Singha and some in Johnnie Walker. The key focus of this theme was about the working hard and successful young professional to middle age men who nicely think of how to inspire others to achieve the dreams like them. At some points, this Inspirational Capitalist theme seems to partly involve with the Thainess-Buddhism values (i.e. helping and caring others), as the implication seems to show that successful/working hard men are think of caring for other people, as well as the nation, in terms of to be successful like them.

(iv) The Cosmopolitanism theme emerged from the codes that involved with the forms of modern, young, multicultural men who enjoyed living their lives, graduated from Western countries’ universities, have interesting lifestyles (i.e. extreme sports, rock music, and

Electronic Dance Music (EDM)). This can be seen from a crucial emergence of Western sports and music sponsorship promotions to appealing young generations. Since the codes were mostly represented by Chang beer, the implication seemed to reveal that it was built to compete the forms of Singha Capitalist men, which involved with the executive middle aged men. So that, the codes that related with the Cosmopolitan men tended to be the forms of modern, young, multicultural men, as can be seen a huge emergence of extreme sports, rock music, and Electronic Dance Music (EDM) sponsorship advertisements.

(v) The Friendship theme emerged from the codes that involved with the significance of men’s friendship, such as men’s best friends are the ones who always be there when facing difficult times. These codes have later developed to be as the Friendship theme, and can mostly be seen in 100 pipers and Blend 285 brands.

(vi) The Responsible drinking theme emerged from the codes that related with the significance of men who are being aware of responsible drinking, such as men should not drive after drink. These codes were then developed to be the Responsible drinking theme, and can mostly be seen in Heineken adverts.

(vii) The Social Responsibility theme emerged from the codes that involved with the forms of men and women who were being aware of social responsibility are such as, men/women being concern and preserve Thai culture, Buddhism, the Thai nation, folk wisdom, and the rituals of the Thai royal family. These codes were later developed to be as the Social

Responsibility theme, since it most represented the caring of culture, society and environments.

Interestingly, this theme was found to represent both gender identities; for example, the masculine image was found mainly with Singha and Chang brand, whereas femininity was represented only by the Regency brand. However, since it has found that the masculinity was the predominance that represented in the overall alcohol advertisements. Therefore, the focus the Social Responsibility theme was the Singha and Chang brands, as they are the two key players in this theme.