FASHION ETHICS

Honest Advertising in the Fashion Industry

Honest Advertising in the Fashion Industry

Introduction

Good business practices focus on honesty in business advertising. Deceiving or misleading the consumers/customers can tarnish business reputation and cause losses to the firm's financial bottom-line. Advertising has become one of the most important cultural phenomena of the century. While it serves as an integral component of marketing a firm's products and exposing its unique selling points before the consumers; it also poses a challenge to the marketers to deal with ethical concerns of advertising. The issues of ethical in advertising for fashion industry has become an alarming point of consideration since the recent years witness a number of dilemmas associated to advertisement projected for fashion industries across the world (MacInnis, Stayman, 1993, 51-66).

The most common way to communicate the truth about the products and services is through advertising. Advertising can be defined as: “... the science of communication through which it advertises or promotes to a receiving audience, consumer or potential user, the characteristics of a product and / or service or diffuses the image of these, an institution or a situation determined, using it primarily for the media of social communication”. This definition includes all the means which are commonly used in advertising, such as audiovisuals, posters and advertising copy. It covers what is said in advertisements and the way they are presented.

With regards to ethical principles in fashion advertising, it is highly essential to communicate the truth in due course, to potential buyers. Advertisements that are misleading to the general public are not an acceptable strategy in any marketing field; particularly in fashion and apparels industry. While it is permissible to promote a product through advertising, helping the public to realize that they need not accept the use of advertising to create artificial needs, is an ethical practice indeed (Miller, 2006, 49). In this case, it is pertinent to question one's team:

When, how and where to appear this information?

What information should be provided through advertising?

The moment when this question is answered, potential buyer should be informed whether the information should be given to them, depending on a practical judgment. To make this judgment, marketers can distinguish three stages in the advertising campaign: at the time when a potential customer looks for information regarding the product, when he seeks assistance of the seller in connection to his information search, and at the time when he buys the product itself. Usually different types of advertising are used in each of these three moments. In the domain of professional ethics, there are not always uniform standards present in practical trials. There are different opinions existing in the market about how to market or promote a typical fashion product. These discrepancies cannot be resolved in the abstract. Hence, different ethics are applicable in different situations; depending about how much is ethics regarded in those companies (Macchiette, 1994, 55).

I am undertaking an attempt to conduct a research-based study on the implications, importance and incorporation of honesty in the ...