Student

Advertising has a natural link to the consumer, it is designs and implemented to cause the consumer to act based on the ideals put forth through the advertisement. This premise presumes that the consumer being targeted has the cognitive and social faculties to analyze and interpret the message being sent by the advertisement. Ethics begin to play a role when the consumer does not have these abilities to implement in their decision making process, children for example are extremely susceptible to advertising because of these very reasons and therefore advertising targeting children can be seen as unethical.
Children compared to adults are heavily influenced advertisements, and are more susceptible to them. Advertisers spend considerable amounts of money on, children advertising for instance; in 2005 $2.1 billion dollars were spent on children’s programming. With so much money being spent on children many companies hire assistances to implant there brands into media that is geared toward children. It is worth wondering what makes children more susceptible to advertising and one possibility is that this susceptibility comes from their inability to understand the difference between ads and the program (Hudson, Hudson, & Peloza, 2008). A point that supports this is that research has found that younger children, with less developed critical faculties,were more persuaded by advertising than older children. (Ambler, 2008) Because children are more vulnerable to advertising they are often targeted more aggressively by advertising companies. According to the Hudson, and Hudson, and Peloza study, which was a study that tested the effectiveness of advertising on children based on their preferences after watching a controlled series of advertisements and programs against a control group that was not exposed, that advertising greatly affected the choices that the children made, even on young children that might have been thought too young to be affected. When we consider these results it’s no wonder that advertisers spent $2.1 billion on children’s programming in 2005, just in the United States and that the amount spent annually is on the steady rise (Hudson, Hudson, & Peloza, 2008).
With so much money being spent on advertising toward children, Marketers like McDonalds, hire agencies to implant there brands within song lyrics and music videos (Hudson, Hudson, & Peloza, 2008). This brings up ethical issues as the consumer and, for advertising agencies as well. Knowing that children are more vulnerable to advertising, is it moral sound to exploit this vulnerability in the hope of selling an idea or product. There has been a lot of research done on ethical issues related to children. Studies have shown that many consumers believe that parents should decide what their children should see on TV. (Hudson, Hudson, & Peloza, 2008).
The major problem with advertising implemented towards children is that they are not able to understand the true intent of advertisements, what they see they believe to be true. Children have difficulty distinguishing what is true and false from advertising (Hudson, Hudson, & Peloza, 2008). With children having these issues many consumers believe that parents should decide what their children should see on TV. There have been increasing efforts to protect the public, specifically children, by regulating the content and the reach of advertising. Some examples have been the ban on TV tobacco advertising imposed in many countries and a total and complete ban on advertising to children under twelve; however it is important to note, that this was imposed only by the Swedish government. Spear heading these efforts are parents who are concerned about the impact of advertising on their children (Hudson, Hudson, & Peloza, 2008).
Laura also discussed about the meaning of unethical advertisement so she identified the unethical advertisement as:
Unethical advertising is a serious issue in today’s society; companies are exploiting everything from accepted social norms, to moral beliefs, to even children in an attempt to sell the products or ideas they are pushing. The fundamental goal of advertising is to stimulate desires and mislead consumers by influencing the values they hold, however the tactics used are often forceful or offensive and the message they attempt to send is often biased to the beliefs and ends of the person or company who is funding the advertisement. This paper will present information regarding unethical advertising by discussing what makes unethical advertising unethical, the effects of unethical advertising on the consumer, and the evolution and growth of unethical advertising. Along with these topics will be examples that demonstrate the effects of unethical advertising, and research based statistics and data that show the effects of unethical advertising.