Social and Economical Aspects of Advertising

“Every coin has two sides”

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.