Persuasive strategies of the United States military television recruitment advertising during the all-volunteer force era

This dissertation examined the persuasive strategies of U.S. military recruitment television advertising with a multi-service branches and multi-generation approaches in the all volunteers force (AVF) era. The analytical framework of this dissertation included the television advertisements that are published by the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) four service branches, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines from 1973 to 2010. Quantitative content analysis is applied in this dissertation. The researcher explored the persuasive strategy patterns, executional cue, and storytelling typologies contain in the U.S. military recruitment advertising for the past four decades within variety of persuasive related theories, including Hierarchy of Needs and Theory of Planned Behavior to demonstrate the trajectory of the DoD’s recruiting strategies. Also, PEST analysis is used after content analysis to provide the possible explanations toward the persuasive strategies changes overtime in a multi-external factors dimensions, including political, economical, social, and technological factor. The research findings concluded that three determinants of successful military recruiting mission for the U.S. DoD were recognized, including quantitative analysis for understanding the relationship between incentives and enlistment behavior, government sector adjudging recruiting incentives and policies appropriately, and communicating DoD’s service features with public continuously. The U.S DoD also needs to seek balance between its external and internal incentives in recruitment advertising. For the external incentive cue message usually refer to educational opportunities, monetary compensation, and family care. The internal incentive cues usually refer to messages trigger its target audiences’ love belong needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization need level. This dissertation contributed the theoretical and practice knowledge of persuasive message strategies in the recruitment television advertising and provides a persuasive strategic suggestion for the effectiveness recruitment advertising.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communications

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Fu, Wen Cheng

Contributors dc:contributor

• Berry, William E.
• Nerone, John C.
• Duff, Brittany
• Wong, Cara J.

• Persuasive Strategies
• Military
• Advertising
• Recruiting
• All Volunteer Force

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2013 Wen Cheng Fu.

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/44396

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/44396