The process of encoding to decoding
The encoding/decoding model of communication was first proposed by Stuart Hall in 1973 in the article “Encoding and Decoding Television Discourse”, in which he showed that any information needs to be “encoded” before it can enter the field of mass communication.
Firstly, the sender encodes the message in the form of words, symbols, images, etc., and then sends the message through the medium. However, information is not unimpeded in the media, because the media is likely to be filled with a variety of other complex information distractions (e.g., TV commercials) at the same time. The receiver receives the information and then decodes it. Finally, the receiver responds to the information stimulus and gives feedback to the sender (Brill, 2021).
Catalog design from IKEA
In the Internet era, it is difficult for traditional ways to sell goods to attract the new generation of consumers, and only by changing marketing thinking and bringing consumers a refreshing experience can they stir their nerves.
Good brand marketing can reshape value and subvert consumer habits. IKEA has recently broken the conventional marketing through the “IKEA Dollar Catalogue”, designing the product price into a page number, and you can directly see the product and its price every time you open the page, which creating a new model of catalog design.
The reason for this design is that IKEA has an insight that as many as 70% of consumers in Taiwan have the stereotype that “imported brand products must be expensive”. But in fact, IKEA’s catalog is so rich that even low-income people can buy good goods at a low price. The biggest highlight of this design is that consumers don’t have to deliberately check the price of the product, because from 1 to 200, the price of the product is directly made into a page number, through this low-price catalog, consumers can intuitively feel that there are so many low-cost good things in IKEA (WARC, 2022).
The simple and direct publicity method of “IKEA Dollar Catalogue” has changed the order in which consumers receive information, no longer guided by product functions, but price-oriented, attracting consumers to have a deeper understanding of their products and stimulating their shopping desires through the strategy of low-price promotion.
Communication is the process of encoding and decoding symbols, which can be in the form of words, words, and symbols. Effective communication consists in employing targeted coding that accurately communicates the sender’s intent and captures the audience’s attention through expressive means, which in turn prompts them to generate the expected response and action.
People’s behaviors and needs change with the environment, and a brand’s strategy should change with people’s needs. When brands are decoding in their design, they must fully grasp the psychological needs of consumers in order to hit the nail on the head and then motivate consumers to buy their products.
Reference list
Zhenglan L (2021). A Response to Stuart Hall: Towards a Creative Decoding. Available from: https://brill.com/view/journals/sime/2/1-2/article-p23_2.xml
Viviani, I (2017) Stuart Hall, The Father of Communication and Cultural Studies. Available from: https://medium.com/brixenlabs/stuart-hall-7f75ce66a847
Mambrol, N (2020). Analysis of Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding. Available from: https://literariness.org/2020/11/07/analysis-of-stuart-halls-encoding-decoding/amp/
Fei Wen, C (2022). Ikea Taiwan: Dollar Catalogue. Available from: https://www.warc.com/content/article/warc-awards-asia/ikea-taiwan-ikea-dollar-catalogue/148289
The video of IKEA Dollar Catalogue. Available from: https://clios.com/awards/winner/design/ikea/dollar-catalogue-110218
Your blog analyses it from a business vs. decoding perspective, which is really a novel topic for me. By refreshing the users’ inherent perception of goods through coding, it promotes the growth of the industry, but everything happens with two sides, and I feel that correct coding and correct decoding are the main factors for an industry to operate in a lasting way.
The case of IKEA is very relevant, by innovating the coding process, it has somewhat subverted the stereotypical influence of consumers and other stereotypes, and at the same time, it has led to a shift in the consumer’s position. While there is no necessary congruence between encoding and decoding, the encoding process has the effect of constructing certain boundaries and parameters, and the decoding process necessarily plays a role in these boundaries and parameters.
It was a new idea, and I realized that decoding and coding could be related to business marketing. By changing people’s decoding order, it can affect customers shopping desire. The price level is indeed easy to affect the first choice of consumers, which can also save time and achieve efficient consumption.