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. 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: advertising helps increase value for the products by showing the positive image of the product which in turn helps convincing customers to buy it. 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 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. E.g., Kellogg’s cornflakes have variety of flavours with different ranges for different age groups thus giving consumers different choices to select from.
- Effect on business cycle: 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 affect the production which may in turn affect the GDP of the country.
Economic Aspect Objection
- It does not produce any tangible goods so it is not productive
- It increases cost of goods
- It multiple the needs of the consumer
- It creates Monopoly
- People are forced to purchase those advertised goods which they do not need at all so it encourages waste
Social role of Advertising
- 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.
- The Subliminal Advertising: 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 just because their favourite 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 are 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, economic and health issues
Social Aspect Objection
- Misrepresentation of facts – Most of advertises contain tall claims in favour of their products simply to tempt people to purchase the same.
- Press in influence by the advertiser – It influence the newspaper and journals as it provides the major source of revenue to them. They print and publish whatever the advertiser demands and not at their own will.
- Wastage of natural resource – It is responsible for frequent change in the system, fashions and habits of people and consequently it destroys the utility of the goods much before their normal use. It leads to rejection of old models and adoption of new ones.
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