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.
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.
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. These
kinds of ads are irrelevant to the actual product. But 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.
