To be or to consume? That is the question: Semiotics Analysis of Advertisements of largest Retail Supermarkets in Brazil

Abstract

The study of representations and images involved in advertising campaigns is a recurrent resource of marketing managers. Therefore, understanding and analyzing advertisements and their semiotics becomes an important source of research. In this context, the following research problem arises: what are the complementarity, contrariety and contradiction relations that carry the advertisements of supermarket retailers? Thus, the main objective is to analyze semiotic advertising of national supermarket chains through the constitution of a semiotic square. For that, the greimasian methodology (Greimas, 1973) was used, which sustains a generative path of meaning, where the relations existing between the signifiers produce signification. We investigated the advertisements of the largest retail supermarket brands in Brazil, by price, product and people variables. Thus, the semiotic square was created for the advertising of supermarket retailers in Brazil.