Selling through product to selling through feeling: a psychoanalytic study on Bangladeshi consumers’ responses to Bangladeshi YouTube ads (2020-2025)

Abstract

This paper explores the transition of Bangladeshi video advertisements on YouTube from 2020 to 2025. This time frame saw a major shift in global advertising strategies, which eventually led to questions about how the international advertising strategies might have influenced the local practices and how much Bangladeshi advertising strategies began to imitate those advertising strategies. Moreover, by using the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, this paper tries to find out how these video advertisements on YouTube have transformed to capture consumers’ unconscious desires and emotional aspects. By employing Freud’s theoretical concepts of the id, ego, and superego, the paper tries to explore the underlying drives that affect consumer behavior. On the other hand, theories of Lacan, such as the “mirror stage” and the “symbolic order,” will help understand how these video ads build and represent the identities of consumers. This will help examine how Bangladeshi consumers create an ideal version of themselves by watching these ads by using the theory of the “mirror stage” and how the specific symbolic registers, such as social or cultural norms, classes, or family dynamics, influence these video ads by using the theory of the “symbolic order.” In addition, this paper will follow the AIDA model for selecting advertisements as research data. The full form of AIDA is Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Hence, the AIDA model follows those ads that represent brand awareness (attention), emotional involvement (interest and desires), and lastly, behavioral purposes (action). Thus, by employing both the psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks and the AIDA model, this study provides a deeper comprehension of the interplay of advertising, emotional aspects, and the unconscious desires in forming a new consumer culture in Bangladesh.