Advertisement has always been a primary tool to market different products of different companies. It has strong influence on the buying behavior of consumers. With many types of benefits, it also brought significant negative changes in the society. This study has tested the impact of ethical advertising on consumer behavior.
Impact of Ethical Advertising on Basic Needs
Foods and Drink
Food is a basic need for human being. When a balanced diet is consumed, body gets the nutrients that fuel the body to energies to do a work. The body, actually, needs minerals to produce hormones, build bones, and generate heartbeats that pump bloods to function the whole body correctly. The body gets all these things done by consuming the right foods and drinks or balanced diet. But when advertising takes place, human decisions are heavily influenced by those and they become irrational.
Different research have provided the evidence that the advertisements or TV commercial and food consuming behavior are strongly related. A research by Frederick J Zimmerman & Sandhya V Shimoga showed that the food advertising has strong effects on individual food choice [1]. Another experiment demonstrated the power of food advertising to prime automatic eating behaviors [2].
It triggers unwanted weight gains.
Children are exposed to high amounts of food advertisements which affect young children’s poor food consumption [5].
The concerning thing is, many television commercials are produced to make us think that we need the product or service which is not actually true [3].
Actually, the true needs do not require advertising. Ethically this is not correct.
Informative and ethical advertising can educate the consumers to develop and improve good food and drink behavior.
Clothing and Fashion
Clothing is used to cover our body. It’s a very basic human need which we require to survive. In the diagram of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the very bottom occupies food, clothing, and shelter which are the most essentials. But advertisements make these “needs” to be “want”. When people get in excess of the basic needs in exchange of large amount of earned money, it becomes “want”. It serves more than the primary reason which is a basic need.
As a result, people starts acquiring unnecessary clothing that is actually a waste.
Based on an analysis conducted Shadman Shakib, it can be concluded that advertisement has significant impact on consumer buying behavior [4].
Studies show that people are dissatisfied with their own appearance after watching television commercials featuring exceptionally slim and beautiful people. The same applies to reading fashion magazines. Experiments show that magazine photographs of super-thin models produce depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity and body-dissatisfaction [5]. It is trapping young people in particular, into unhealthy obsessions about their own bodies. The fashion industry works in this way by using adverts that imply that by purchasing the brand the consumer will be buying the social esteem and image of model.
Models from all type of body shapes, personality types, and different communities will bring huge positive impact to the society.
Shelters
Shelter falls under the basic needs because it can protect us from the sun, wind, rain, and hot or cold temperatures. It can give us a feeling of well-being.
As Shadman Shakib’s research concluded that advertisement has significant impact on consumer buying behavior [4], the want for having own accommodation will always be at ease. The want of having luxurious accommodation will even be higher than that non-adverting time.
There will be price war. Also, the prices will always be high.
It will lead to the demand of excessive long term financial debt that may lead to bad debts as well. This may result in an economic crisis. Such an event took place in the year 2008 that resulted from subprime mortgage market [6].
Aggressive advertisement should be avoided to remove buying competition from the market. The article explained the impact of ethical advertising on basic needs.
Reference:
1. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-14-342
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2743554/
3. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advertisements-create-needs-23244.html
4. https://www.abacademies.org/articles/a-study-on-the-influences-of-advertisement-on-consumer-buying-behavior-7177.html
5. https://www.thedailystar.net/rising/2007/09/02/special.htm
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008
Sheikh Faizul Haque is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of The Strategy Watch; Graduated from North South University with a double major in Accounting & Finance in Bangladesh.
With a strong interest in developing and improving Business Strategy and to Conduct Business Analysis.