Advertising is praised but also
criticized by critics in their own ways. Advertising has many positive
impacts along with its negative pictures. As the President of American
Association of Advertising Agencies, John O’ Toole has described advertise is
something else. It is not related to studies, but it educates. It is not a
journalist but gives all information. And it is not an entertaining device
but entertains everyone.
Now let’s go through the
economic and social aspects of advertising.
Economic role of Advertising
Value of Products:
The advertised products are not
always the best products in the market. There are some unadvertised products
also present which are good enough. But advertising helps increase value for
the products by showing the positive image of the product which in turn helps
convincing customers to buy it. Advertising educates consumers about the uses
of the products hence increasing its value in minds of the consumers. For
e.g. mobile phones were first considered as necessity but nowadays the cell
phones come with number of features which makes them mode of convenience for
consumers.
|
Effect
on Prices:
Some
advertised products do cost more than unadvertised products but the vice versa
is also true. But if there is more competition in the market for those
products, the prices have to come down, for e.g., canned juices from various
brands. Thus some professional like chartered accountants and doctors are not
allowed to advertise.
But some
products do not advertise much, and they don’t need much of it and even their
prices are high but they are still the leaders in market as they have their
brand name. e.g., Porsche cars
Effect
on consumer demand and choices:
Even if
the product is heavily advertised, it does not mean that the demand or say
consumption rates will also increase. The product has to be different with
better quality, and more variety than others. For E.g., Kellogg’s cornflakes
have variety of flavors with different ranges to offer for different age groups
and now also for people who want to loose weight thus giving consumers
different choices to select from.
Effect
on business cycle:
Advertising
no doubt helps in employing more number of people. It increases the pay rolls
of people working in this field. It helps collecting more revenues for sellers
which they use for betterment of product and services. But there are some bad
effects of advertisements on business cycle also. Sometimes, consumer may find
the foreign product better than going for the national brand. This will
definitely effect the production which may in turn affect the GDP of the
country.
The
economic aspects are supported by the Abundance Principle which says producing
more products and services than the consumption rate which helps firstly
keeping consumers informed about the options they have and secondly helps
sellers for playing in healthy and competitive atmosphere with their self
interest.
Social
role of Advertising:
There are
some positive and some negative aspects of advertising on the social ground.
They are as follows.
Deception
in Advertising:
The
relation between the buyers and sellers is maintained if the buyers are
satisfied with what they saw in advertise and what they got after buying that
product. If seller shows a false or deceptive image and an exaggerated image of
the product in the advertisement, then the relation between the seller and
buyers can’t be healthy. These problems can be overcome if the seller keep
their ads clean and displays right image of the product.
The
Subliminal Advertising:
Capturing
the Minds of the consumers is the main intention of these ads. The ads are made
in such a way that the consumers don’t even realizes that the ad has made an
impact on their minds and this results in buying the product which they don’t
even need. But “All ads don’t impress all consumers at all times”, because
majority of consumers buy products on basis of the price and needs.
Effect
on Our Value System:
The
advertisers use puffing tactics, endorsements from celebrities, and play
emotionally, which makes ads so powerful that the consumers like helpless preys
buy those products.
These ads
make poor people buy products which they can’t afford, people picking up bad
habits like smoking and drinking, and buy products just because their favorite
actor endorsed that product. This affects in increased the cost of whole
society and loss of values of our own selves.
Offensiveness:
Some ads
are so offensive that they are not acceptable by the buyers. For example, the
ads of denim jeans showed girls wearing very less clothes and making a sex
appeal. These kinds of ads are irrelevant to the actual product. Btu then there
is some ads which are educative also and now accepted by people. Earlier ads
giving information about birth control pills was considered offensive but now
the same ads are considered educative and important.
But at the
last, there are some great positive aspects which help
- Development
of society and growth of technologies
- Employment
- Gives
choices to buyers with self interest
- Welcomes
healthy competition
- Improving
standard of living.
- Give
information on social, economical and health issues.
No comments:
Post a Comment