Advertising Should Be Restricted
In today’s world advertisements play a major role in influencing our societies thought process, opinions and perceptions towards their everyday “necessities”. In our busy, hectic and over scheduled lives, technology has advanced in a way that people believe that their daily routines are the easiest and most convenient way to live, however our perception of convenience is often cloaked with societies idea of “necessities”, which one could conclude are not very necessary at all. It is said “every coin has two sides”, with its benefits, unrestricted advertising has negative impacts. These negative impacts affect the economy, society and people in a very influential way.
Unrestricted advertising has various effects on the Economy. Advertising may be beneficial for the economy to a certain extent however the actual burden of payments and dues fall on the consumers. We know that an organization has to a spend a large amount of money on advertising further more, to meet this expenditure, the price of the product has to be raised. No manufacturer does his or her own advertisement, thus leading to the manufacturer having to hire someone to do it for them. Advertising, therefore, leads to unnecessary rises in prices. Sometimes a large business may spend millions and billions on advertising campaigns and carry out the high costs of the advertisements by charging the customers and consumers buying the product. In this reference it is said that advertising costs are passed on to the consumers in the form of high prices. For example, if the factory cost of Apple iPhone 16gb costs 600$, due to the advertising costs the market value of the iPhone comes up to 800$. The burden of these 200$ is put on the cons...
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...an evil”. No doubt that certain restrictions benefit the society in the long run more than letting loose the limits of advertisements. A restriction in advertising industry equally balances the weight of importance of society, economy and ethics. people have a clean insight on the things that are beneficial for them as they would not be mislead towards buying an inferior product. Moreover keeping the society and ethics hand in hand, ethics are very important to introduce a clean society in front of the world. Restricting the advertisements would empower ethics and would maintain the culture intact and would benefit everyone. Advertisements should indeed be restricted to make the world and society work more efficiently and more ethically.
“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Sut Jhally, a professor at the university of Massachusetts of whom won the distinguished teacher award, wrote in his essay “ Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse” that : 20th century advertising - the most powerful propaganda in human history - will destroy the world as we know it. The survival of the human race will depend upon our ability to minimize the harmful effects of Advertising. These effects will have lasting impacts on our culture, joy, and future.
In order to get insights into the consumer perception about the role of advertising we have reviewed a number of articles and conducted four in-depth interviews. A number of research papers reach opposed conclusions. These vary from the ones stating that "the ethicality of a firm's behavior is an important consideration during the purchase decision" and that consumers "will reward ethical behavior by a willingness to pay higher prices for that firm's product" (Creyer and Ross Jr.
Advertising is designed to foster a desire to purchase goods and services, yet it is much deeper than that—advertising is a system of effective manipulation that twists the mentalities of those subjected to it. It shapes people’s views of the world and warps their connections to each other. Therefore, advertising not only shapes their personal values but also distorts them until their principles no longer come from within them. Thus, in my opinion, advertising, unless deeply rooted in high ethical standards, destroys any concept of community, common morality or deep bonding.
“In the twentieth century, advertising evolved into a form of persuasive social discourse intended primarily to influence how we perceive the buying and consumption of goods,” (Danesi 179).
Many consumers and experts have mixed feelings on what the true effects are of an advertisement on the population. Real questions that many experts have are, "does
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
Looking through the eyes of an adolescent, many things are seemingly a necessity. From clothes to materialistic things, advertising has brainwashed the American society and has stripped them of their better judgement. Although there are many perks to advertising like awareness, promotion, and entertainment, the advertising world is harmful to society.
Advertising in its purest form has been an essential part of the business world for centuries. The purpose of advertising is to inform society of a certain product and/or service that has become available. Advertising is used as a method of communication between a consumer and the company in which the product is from, because it persuades the consumers to take action. According to Lindsay in “The Case of Print Media Advertising in the Internet Age” the individuals who are above the age of 18 and reside in America, spend a total of 9 hours, and 35 minutes using media per day (2007). In figure 1 it shows that non-print advertisements represent the majority of the time spent utilizing this media. The pie-chart showed that certain individuals spent 44.5% of their time watching television, 27.8% listening to the radio, and 5.3% on the internet meanwhile newspapers, music, magazines and books resulted in a total of 16.5% combined (The Case of Print, 2007, pg. 7). We are exposed to several hundreds of advertisements every day; some of these advertisements include direct phone calls from telemarketers, billboards, and commercials. While print advertisements aren’t at the high end of the typical consumers view scale, they are the most effective due to the consistency in which they appear. The use of print advertisements in marketing is posing a great danger to all members of society, because they put a damper on both men and women’s self-worth, encourage the use alcohol in minors, and is causing obesity rates to increase. (should be and causes obesity rates to increase, the way you have it is not parallel)
Ads are seen everyday, on every channel. We see a variety of things. We see commercials for food, clothing, furnature, you name it. Good or bad they target everyone, including children. The affect on children come into play of course, which is understandble. I believe we should take a step back and realize what banning of advertisment would do to children.
Phillip Nelson argues that regulating advertising is not efficient because it creates deception. Some object to this agreement by saying that government regulations should not be limited because advertising and exaggeration mislead customer and without regulations advertising would become useless. My aim in this paper is to defend Nelson’s view on limiting government regulation by showing this objection can be met.
In 2006 391 billion US dollars were spent worldwide for advertising. In Germany, for example, the advertising industry contributes 1.5% of the gross national income; the figures for other developed countries are similar. Thus, advertising and growth are directly and causally linked. As far as a growth based economy can be blamed for the harmful human lifestyle (affluent society) advertising has to be considered in this aspect concerning its negative impact, because its main purpose is to raise consumption. “The industry is accused of being one of the engines powering a convoluted economic mass production system which promotes consumption.”Attention and attentiveness have become a new commodity for which a market developed. “The amount of attention that is absorbed by the media and redistributed in the competition for quotas and reach is not identical with the amount of attention, that is available in society. The total amount circulating in society is made up of the attention exchanged among the people themselves and the attention given to media
Nowadays, advertising is a very big business. Very often is the major means of competing among firms. Furthermore, supporters of advertising claim that it brings specific benefits for consumers.
...maintain that advertising exists primarily to create demand among consumers. People have certain types of wants and needs, and they are perfectly capable to discover it for themselves. People today just need food, clothing and shelter everything else is superfluous and additional stuff. Advertising are able to create demand that would not exist just by manipulating people’s min and emotions. Advertising is master in manipulate reality and fantasy, by creating “magic show.” It is true that advertising has been a powerful mechanism that distorts our whole society’s values and priorities. On the other hand, advertising educate people about several issues. In political terms, it moves mass of people and persuade them to vote for a candidate. And, of course, in terms of economy, contributes in the development through the consumption of the costumer.
To sum up, Advertisement is one of the important ways to help the marketers as well as consumers. It is good for the companies as they can attract more consumers and as a result increase the profit of the company. It also has many benefits for the consumers as they can raise their knowledge and awareness and accordingly improve their lifestyle. Conversely, it may have negative effects on consumer behavior by creating unhealthy behavior such as alcohol consumption and lowering self-confidence by beauty advertisement. According to what has been written above, obviously, advertisement may have both positive and negative effects on consumer behavior. However, the positives are more noticeable than negative effects. Consequently, advertisement may be one of the best tools to distribute information to public.
Similarly, numerous advertisements on mass media has also created adverse impacts on society. Critics substantiate this fact by giving argument that advertising of expensive products cause sense of depravity in the poor people. In addition, daily thousands of advertisements are destined to an individual through different mind process of a person.