Ethics in Advertising

Abstract

Advertising has a strong impact on people's daily lives as they are bombarded with different types and varieties of advertisements on everyday basis, may it be television, radio, print media or internet. This increase in exposure and frequency of advertisements has given rise to the ideology of ethic in advertising and taking care of people's right by not affecting their attitude and beliefs through deceptive advertising and communication based upon false information for materialistic reason such as promotion of their products and increased profitability without caring for the rights of general public or consumers.

Ethics in Advertising

Introduction

Making decisions and choosing between right and wrong is a part of our daily lives. We are faced with such situations on every day basis thinking if it's moral or immoral, ethical or unethical as per our perceptions and viewpoints. Moral has been defined as beliefs of people with regards to what is right and wrong and are helpful when they make decisions in their personal and professional lives. Another very important terms attached to the concept of morals is ethics. Ethics have been referred to as principles that are the guiding principles and direct that actions of both individuals and organization. They help in defining and creating boundaries with regards to what is acceptable or unacceptable under normal circumstances due to which they have a direct relationship with morals as ethical behaviors are related to moral feelings and emotions of what is right and wrong in a given situation ( El Hat tab, 2008). Advertising is one field where marketer's mode of communication and marketing/advertising techniques has created lot of issue with regards to ethical advertising. Researchers suggest that advertising has a deep impact on how people perceive themselves and the surrounding world affecting their actions and behaviors (Foley1999). Due to this direct involvement and affect on people's live and attitude, issue with regards to morality or immorality in advertising is very important since marketing and advertising is related to identifying, predicting and satisfying the requirement of the customer in a profitable manner (Carrigan et al, 2005).

Discussion

Advertising is once such field which has been receiving a lot of criticism from general public and experts and unlimited no. of research studies have been conducted to understand the impact of unethical advertising on consumers. These researches have proved that general public believes that advertising has often crossed the line and violates the ethical boundaries and norms (Nooh). Deception has been related to the concept of advertising and points towards the misleading and untruthful claims made by advertisers and marketers. Few researchers have suggested that deception consist of three important elements that are namely belief, falsity and relevance . Therefore any such advertisements that encourages wrong or mistaken act on the part of consumer as a result of viewing that advertisement then that advertisement can be referred to as deceptive. An advertisement can be deemed as deceptive or unethical only when the person getting exposed to act will start believing in those false ...