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.