Advertising Ethics

Advertising is a form of communication for marketing. It is used to encourage and motivate the people to attract them to that particular thing. Advertising is the best way to persuade people to use that thing. It can change minds of the people and people can have both positive and negative changes. As advertising is now used in every type of business so its use has been vast. Many things are used for advertisement like radio, posters, television, social sites and other things. Commercial advertisers market their products by branding. Advertisements are a form of promotion of the products through electronic and print media. It is the non personal communication of information which is persuasive in nature about some products.

Ethics in advertising

            There are several things which are brought into consideration when we talk about ethics in advertising and promotion. The content of the advertisement is the main issue in ethics. Sometimes the content is not ethical like in the 1940s an d1950 tobacco was advertised as a  symbol of health. This is now finished but now many other things that are immoral and illegal are shown in the advertisements.

            Another issue that is most discussed in advertisement is deceptive advertisement. According to the study conducted by Hassib Shabbir and Des Thwaites 73.5% ads were deceptive and they were using deceptive marketing practices. That’s why we should also conduct our own research before buying any product as the marketing is not reliable and they often mislead us. The ethic is a very important feature in the advertisement industry. It is a set of principles which administer the ways of communication taking place between the consumers and the sellers. An ethical advertisement is the one which conveys complete facts without the use of any lie or false statements. They should be present in a state of simplicity and decency. Ethical advertisements also depend upon the beliefs of the people if the peoples' beliefs are in accordance with the ads than the advertisement is said to be ethical and presents a positive result. Ethics should be presented in the advertisement, this makes an ad effective. (MSG)

Unethical pricing tactics

            There are many ways of pricing a product and many companies use unethical ways of pricing. These ways of pricing practices are variable pricing, bid rigging, dumping, price fixing, price war, price skimming, predatory pricing and price discrimination.