Advertising: A Powerful And Persuasive Phenomenon In The Globalized World, Essay.

This unit’s milestone project involves the creation of an essay.Preparing a Topic Proposal for a Research Essay

Write down a tentative list of main ideas, based on your own ideas and the information and evidence provided by your sources.

The Purpose and Diversity of Advertising

Advertising is regarded as a form of communication aimed to inspire or induce an audience base such as viewers, readers or listeners in order to purchase or take some action upon certain products, information or services. The purpose of advertising are diverse, they tend to vary from establishing awareness for a new product to influencing repetitive goods and products (Spatt, 2010). However, in order to attain these objectives, several business enterprises not only focus the consistency of advertisements and promoting but also the way to promote their products. As a promotional strategy, advertising aims to serve as an essential tool in creating product knowledge and awareness in the mind of a potential consumer in order to take eventual purchase decision. Advertisements have been used to convey perceptions and ideas to the masses (Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). Important information persuading the advertising domain intends to captivate the imagination power of people.  However, in recent times the advertising sector has been encountering certain degree of criticisms for not honouring the rules of ethics pertaining both in the process of advertisement design and the way it influences public or the society as a whole. The thesis statement of this essay is “advertising is a persuasive and powerful phenomenon in the globalized world and influences the complex behaviour of the public.”

The globalization era, being infested with the mass media such as television, advertising, billboards, newspapers and internet, advertising among all the marketing weapons, has been recognized as an enduring influence on the viewer’s state of perception with its wide ranging exposure in the marketing domain. Thus, advertising through all mediums tend to influence public, whereby advertising being one of the most decisive medium of advertising and with its broad mass reach can influence not only the individual’s behavioural pattern, life style but tend to affect the society as a whole (Petty, 2018). Thus the fundamental aim of advertising is to create decisiveness on the factors related to buying behaviour, whereby such an influence of the brand is altered or further strengthened on a frequent basis in the minds and memories of people. With the primary focus of advertising sector is to seek profit making in order to increase the revenues and sales of the company, enhance the demand of the product of their brand and position their services and products at the epitome of the marketing domain in comparison to their competitors marketers often encounter challenges in creating sales in efficient manner and sustain moral ethics principles and values (Riquelme & Román, 2014). However, studies observed the ethical principles of advertising can be regarded as a set of moral principles which regulate both communication between the seller and the consumer and further the advertising business. From a moral perspective it has been noted that sincere or good advertising is regarded as an advertising which further seeks to determine the public to select and act in a realistic or sensible manner (Eisend, Plagemann & Sollwedel, 2014). While bad or unethical advertising tries to establish public to enact in unconstructive manner and influence them towards the critical actions and responses for the society. At this juncture, it is important to note that advertising sectors or marketers in recent days have been perceived in a negative or unconstructive manner by many a times being associated with acts of ruthlessness and brutality (Sheehan, 2013). It has been recognized as a form of persuasion which tends to exploit human limitations, negligence or lack of awareness and further utilizes the deficit of media, economic also civic cultural aspects. Ethics in advertising has been regarded as a critical oxymoron because of the inconsiderate criticism introduced to the sphere of advertising practices (Spatt, 2010). The primary concern of modern advertisers is to enhance the level of sales and benefit more number of customers. However, it has been identified that advertisements in recent times are immensely exaggerated and reveals the advertisers lack of awareness of ethical norms, values and principles. Such advertisers claim their products to possess unique qualities in comparison to the rivals, increased rate of efficiency and high rate of advantages. But the major proportion of these advertisements have been perceived to reveal false and artificial information, further misleading the consumer base and being highly unethical (Petty, 2018). The classic example of such unethical advertisements is the one which depicts evening snacks for kids and colouring in order to make create an impressive and attractive appearance of the products to the cliental base that view these advertisements and intend to purchase the products. Though it has been stated that advertising marketers aim to adhere to three major moral standards namely Truthfulness, Social Responsibility and Preserving Human Dignity, established business enterprises tend to follow these sets of principles to several regulating bodies but not in complete sense. Though they believe to conceal the whole truth in the advertisements however such advertisers reveal utmost incompetence to understand that revelation of adequate information and knowledge is essentially vital for this advertising sector to enhance the level of growth and development of the business (Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). Furthermore, according to the Framing Ethical Decisions In US Advertising Practice, the forms of ethical facets in the domain of advertising can be associated with factors of product itself, the content the advertisement message is carrying, its target base or other social consequences like endorsement and promotion of harmful products such as alcohol, cigarettes, visuals demonstrating sexist ideas and pornography, racism influencing the minds and perceptions of the public (Richards, 2013). It is important to note the way cigarette or smoking advertisements have been experiencing severe rate of criticisms for targeting the marginalized or minority section of the society.

The Influence of Advertising on Public Behavior

Forms of stereotyping has been found to be considerably persuasive whereby it reveals that the portrayals of women in advertisements in various ways tend to conform to the major proportions of the advertising stereotypical portrayals of women (Simon & Hoyt, 2013). Furthermore, researches have demonstrated that stereotypes have the potentialities to pose unconstructive or negative impact on women. It has been noted that women can perceive the ‘satisfied and contented housewives ‘stereotype often depicted on advertisements as a cultural directives which may further result to segregate them from their own desires, wishes concerning career and personal life and further replace them with the ‘ideal’ presentation through the means of popular cultural aspects (Grau & Zotos, 2016).  It has been revealed by several observations of public being offended because of the strong and persuasive reaction they get from few adverts which demonstrate negative impact on other individuals or women in particular or groups in society. Furthermore, such advertisements have been considered as detrimental or offensive thus challenging the personal ideologies and sentiments and perceptions (Solomon et al., 2014). However, such situations trigger with the critical gender portrayals which further promoted their emotions as unacceptable attitudes or idealistic or unfeasible aspirations regarding the factors related to appearance and behaviour (Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). Representations of women with perfect shaped body are further viewed as a potential area of causing detrimental circumstances. While public has often been engaging discourses on subjects related to the rate of impact these visuals could have on the minds of young people who are aiming to establish their own identities and focusing on their appearance and personality (Eisend, Plagemann & Sollwedel, 2014). Modern day young women are condemning the stereotypical adverts shown on television advertisements whereby several advertisements tend to demonstrate young mothers as immensely healthy and fit rather than depicting the real scenario of a new mother (Mitchell, 2013). They believe that such advertisements need to draw their concentration towards women who had recent motherhood experiences and must reflect the situations they encounter related to post-natal depression and various other thoughts which has been persisting their minds (Asemah, E. S., Edegoh, L. O., & Ojih, 2013). The content of the messages provided by several advertisements promoting anti aging products or weight loss capsules which make certain groups develop the sense of inadequacies or failure thus enhancing the rate of hostility and aggression within the groups. The feeling of public or consumers associated with advertisements has been regarded as immensely significant whereby their attitudes related to the direction of the advertisers (Spatt, 2010). However a stable stereotypical presentation or falsification of advertisements are regarded as deceptive advertisements which aim towards the consumer base regarding the qualities of the endorsed product along with the anticipated effectiveness and benefit from retaining the products. Furthermore, public or the consumers integrated to the goods or are convinced to buy the products being endorsed are especially being probable to the alleged deceptive forms of advertising, along with the numerous competition authorities further encompassing the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which impose legal actions considering the misleading portrayal of the advertisements. Furthermore, the US FTC Act has stated that “unfair methods of competition or deceptive acts of representation in advertisements have been recognized an unlawful acts (Moriarty et al., 2014).  However the deceptive habitual acts of modern marketers are probable to have the crucial detrimental outcomes on the level of customer satisfaction as well as loyalty intentions whereby the degree to which deceptive habits comprise of detrimental acts has been regarded as convoluted issue (Attas, 1999). Furthermore, significant observations have been focusing on behaviour and attitudes regarding advertising whereby the major proportion of these studies have recovered the detrimental or negative behaviour and perceptions concerning the US public (Malik et al., 2013). Certain researches have revealed the behavioural patterns and attitudes in association to deceptive advertising and scientifically discover the consumers’ behaviour and perceptions in the direction of advertising deception .

Ethics in Advertising

At this juncture, it is significant to note the varying perceptions and arguments some theorists have revealed stating the effective and enhancing impact recent day advertisements have been depicting which is thus considered as a effective communication procedure. Modern theorists along with significant marketing analysts have perceived advertising from the functional perspectives, thus has been referred as a paid, non-personal form of communication through the means of several media by business enterprises, non-profit organizations to aid to establish a fundamental knowledge and awareness of the product or service in mind of the potential consumer base in order to establish knowledge related to the product (Miller, Eagly & Linn, 2015). Furthermore advertising as a promotional strategy aims to provide a fundamental mechanism in establishing effective product awareness and condition the mind of a potential consumer in order take final purchase decision (Spatt, 2010). The primary mission of modern advertisers lies on the attainment of prospective customers and further influence their level of awareness, knowledge and purchase behaviour of the public. They intend to comprehend the understanding of potential customers and the way they would like to see their products. Advertising sector in recent time has been effectively contributing to the brand choice and preferences among the consumer base (Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). It is also to be noted that ethics in the domain of advertising sector is directly associated to the purpose and nature of the advertising whereby a considerable degree of exaggeration in the advertisements becomes essential to prove the competitive advantages of the product. For instance the advertisements for social causes are regarded as ethical and are widely being accepted by the large domain of public (Spatt, 2010). Though endorsements of contraceptive pills are regarded to have been losing certain degree of morality and decency at certain areas, these advertisements must not to be constrained as they aim to enhance the level of awareness among people and further educate them in these areas (Spatt, 2010).  

Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that advertising is perceived as immensely pervasive and crucial phenomena in the globalized era, a significant force which influences the level of perception and behaviour of public. The content or visuals of advertising has been persistently been influencing the public both in the way they perceive and the way in it considers the relationships with others. However, advertisers in order to mitigate the increasing rate of unethical acts must execute their businesses in a more ethical manner and further implement improved moral principles associated with sincerity, reliability, human dignity as well as social accountability. Modern advertisers must keep in consideration the importance and vitality of the advertising sector to the public and thus execute their business operations guided by ethical morals and standards.

References

Asemah, E. S., Edegoh, L. O., & Ojih, E. U. (2013). Audience perception of the portrayal of women in television advertising. Afrrev Laligens: An International Journal of Language, Literature and Gender Studies, 2(1), 21-37.

Attas, D. (1999). What's wrong with" deceptive" advertising?. Journal of Business Ethics, 21(1), 49-59.

Bart, Y., Stephen, A. T., & Sarvary, M. (2014). Which products are best suited to mobile advertising? A field study of mobile display advertising effects on consumer attitudes and intentions. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(3), 270-285.

Eisend, M., Plagemann, J., & Sollwedel, J. (2014). Gender roles and humor in advertising: The occurrence of stereotyping in humorous and nonhumorous advertising and its consequences for advertising effectiveness. Journal of advertising, 43(3), 256-273.

Eisend, M., Plagemann, J., & Sollwedel, J. (2014). Gender roles and humor in advertising: The occurrence of stereotyping in humorous and nonhumorous advertising and its consequences for advertising effectiveness. Journal of advertising, 43(3), 256-273.

Grau, S. L., & Zotos, Y. C. (2016). Gender stereotypes in advertising: a review of current research. International Journal of Advertising, 35(5), 761-770.

Malik, M. E., Ghafoor, M. M., Iqbal, H. K., Ali, Q., Hunbal, H., Noman, M., & Ahmad, B. (2013). Impact of brand image and advertisement on consumer buying behavior. World Applied Sciences Journal, 23(1), 117-122.

Miller, D. I., Eagly, A. H., & Linn, M. C. (2015). Women’s representation in science predicts national gender-science stereotypes: Evidence from 66 nations. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(3), 631.

Mitchell, A. A. (Ed.). (2013). Advertising exposure, memory and choice. Psychology Press.

Moriarty, S., Mitchell, N. D., Wells, W. D., Crawford, R., Brennan, L., & Spence-Stone, R. (2014). Advertising: Principles and practice. Pearson Australia.

Petty, R. E. (2018). Attitudes and persuasion: Classic and contemporary approaches. Routledge.

Richards, J. (2013). Deceptive advertising: Behavioral study of a legal concept. Routledge.

Riquelme, I. P., & Román, S. (2014). The influence of consumers’ cognitive and psychographic traits on perceived deception: a comparison between online and offline retailing contexts. Journal of business ethics, 119(3), 405-422.

Sheehan, K. B. (2013). Controversies in contemporary advertising. Sage Publications.

Simon, S., & Hoyt, C. L. (2013). Exploring the effect of media images on women’s leadership self-perceptions and aspirations. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 16(2), 232-245.

Solomon, M. R., Dahl, D. W., White, K., Zaichkowsky, J. L., & Polegato, R. (2014). Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). Pearson.

Spatt, B. (2010). Writing from sources. Macmillan.