Draft 1.Essay.Shantanu

Topic: Advertising should be an important consideration of ethical business.


We are totally surrounded with advertisements. Now if we can see in an advertisement that someone is drinking some kind of energy drink and doing crazy things all day with a lot of energy then what will be the impact on consumers? The impact will be if any one drinks that energy drink then that person would be able to be that much energetic. But in the real life is it true? May be or maybe not. But the question is showing this kind of advert is how ethical? Now a day’s ethics had being a big issue in the business world. Everybody is talking about doing ethical business. Business ethics means what is right and wrong in the business. Though it has been still a vague definition of business ethics that what is right or wrong but it is vey much clear to all that no one can show wrong, puffed up or unclear information in their advertisement. If any one does so then it would be nothing but a deceitful doing with the consumers. Now people are talking about environment friendly product, donation or other kind of social welfare jobs by the companies as the ethical business. But advertising is the most common and efficient way to communicate with the consumers. Advertisements represent a company. So that should be the most ethical part of the business. But still we don’t relate advertisements and ethics together. In the essay it will be discussed both for and against arguments of that how important is this to take advertisements under consideration of doing ethical business.

There are a lot of arguments for not making ethics an issue in advertisements. Some of the main arguments are discussed below:
In business there are four steps of consumer’s perception before buy anything. These four steps actually help business to understand about the factors that influences consumers or it helps businesses to understand consumer’s psychological thinking steps before buy any product or services. The first step is,
Problem/Need Recognition:
Before buying anything consumer first has to have the need or problem of the product or service. If anyone is very happy with what he/she has got then buying desire will never come to his or her mind. So for the first step consumer need to feel the need of the product. For example: one has got a cell phone and accidently it has been broken. Then the owner of the cell phone will feel to buy another cell phone. This is called problem/need recognition.
Information Search:
After recognizing the problem or need to buy new product, consumer will begin to search about the information’s about the product or service. From the previous example that person will search in the market that what kind of cell phones are available and what he/she actually needs. He/she will search information about the product to make the decision of buying.
Evaluation of Different Purchase Options:
After searching the information consumer will try to evaluate the purchase options or alternatives. May be he/she can think about getting the old one fixed rather than buying a new one. In this step consumers try to find the best combination of price, quality and features. Brand image also effects consumer’s evaluation.
Purchase Decision:
After the evaluation stage consumers make the final decision to purchase the product. In this step consumer think about what will be the way of buying, what will be the way payment and after sales service.
Generally consumers go through these four steps before their purchasing decision. So business people say that it is not easy to change their decision just with the advertisements. Consumers make their own decision. No business can survive without having the quality in their product or service. And if any company shows advertisements for their quality products or services then there is nothing wrong with that.
Another argument is that there are rules and regulations by the governments for making advertisements in every country. So there cannot be any unethical advertisements because every advertisement has to obey the rules, which are provided by the government and get the permission before facing the consumers. For example, CAP is UK. CAP means committee of advertising policy. They maintain the code of conduct of the advertisements, which are shown in UK. Even anyone can complain about any advertisements in their website or contact them and they will recheck again that the accused advert is in the right track or not. They always keep updating the rules and regulations to protect the consumers.
Some business people say that if they want to pay too much attention on the ethics of advertisements then showing advertisements will not be cost effective. Moreover they would not be able to transfer the proper message about their product to the consumers accurately. This will not just affect the profit only, this will affect consumers to get the right product or services as well.
Now we are going to talk about the real picture and role of advertisements in the society and our life. We can divide the harms of unethical advertisements in four categories as the arguments for. Those are:
Advertisements can mislead consumers by misrepresent or hiding the fact about the product. Not only this, advertisements can convince people to buy instead of persuade or motivate. Companies are focusing on the other factors in their product like brand image, not the quality. So basically by doing all these advertisements are making needs those are not natural. It harms the basic balance of the economy. It affects the poorer and weaker members of the society and the market as well.
To reach more audiences advertisers often ignore the basic social needs of the consumers and they target very young, very old or poor people of the society who don’t even fulfill the demographic market segmentation. By doing so advertisers take the moral responsibility to a lower position. Moreover sometimes advertisements can be a cross-cultural issue. All advertisements can’t be acceptable by all cultures.
To make advertisements it needs a lot of money. Naturally wealthier candidate remains in the advantage position. But it doesn’t mean that, that candidate is the perfect choice. So it harms the democracy in a country. Moreover advertising one political body often can be offensive to other one. That is not also ethical.
Sometimes advertisements can be offensive from a religious view. Moreover advertisers sometimes use religious body to sell products, which is also not ethical.

Advertisements are the most efficient and prominent way to communicate with the consumers. A company can be represented by the advertisements. So if misrepresentation, unethical matters remain in this most efficient communication media then consumer right will be hampered. Though there are rules and regulations to make adverts but still some of them can bypass the real truth. One positive sign is that people are getting careful and that is why business ethics has been a big issue now days. But communication media is not that much included. We should be more careful about including advertisements into an important consideration of business ethics and protect the consumer’s rights.

Ref:
Phillip V. Lewis, October, 1985, Journal of Business Ethics, Defining ‘business ethics’: Like nailing jello to a wall
http://www.springerlink.com/content/9604533j32rl1n5m/
http://hubpages.com/hub/Mass-Media-Influence-on-Society 
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_pccs_doc_22021997_ethics-in-ad_en.html 
http://www.learnmarketing.net/consumer.htm