Semiotics of Digital Marketing: A Critical Analysis of Loan Commercialization of Selected Pakistani Banking Websites

Abstract

Semiotics is one of many discourses that progressively create and maintain the realities we live in. Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) offers a systematic framework for the critical and skeptical interrogation of how discourses frame and construct meaning. For discourse to have a greater impact, it must question some of its theoretical distinctions. This research aims to conduct a critical semiotic analysis of selective digital loan commercialization. It utilizes Machin and Mayr's (2018) Multi-modal Critical Discourse Analysis approach. It examines how different banks use different semiotic expressions in digital loan commercialization depending upon the nature of the loans. The research uses the MCDA framework to analyze digital banking advertisements that include secured loans, unsecured loans, and other loans in search of ideologies presented in these commercials. This research sheds light upon different sorts of semiotics used by financing organizations to grab viewers’ attention and emotional intellect. Overcoming the limited exploration of semiotic expressions used in loan commercialization, specifically in the Pakistani context, it aims at informing and persuading consumers about awareness of loans, services, and ideas. It illustrates how certain lexical choices attract the audience’s attention and facilitate their perception in the context of loan advertisement. Thus, the result of the study helps to expand already existing knowledge of digital loan commercialization and its effect on the audience/viewers. Lastly, this research emphasizes the importance of raising consumer awareness to prevent any false or misguiding marketing techniques or ideologies.