The Political-Legal Environment Analysis

The Political-Legal Environment consists of laws and their interpretations that require firms to operate under competitive conditions and to protect consumer rights for example, Health and Safety and Consumer Protection. Government regulations are the forces that combat unfair business practices and serve as a guideline to avoid such discrepancies. There are four historical phases the government regulations falls into:
• Antimonopoly period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
• Protecting competitors during the Great Depression of the 1930s
• The third phase focused on consumer protection
• Industry deregulation began in the late 1970s and continues to the present
These phases have led to the formation of bodies known as ‘Agencies’. These agencies are responsible for formulating, implementing and enforcing these policies put in place to monitor businesses. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the broadest regulatory powers within the boundaries of global marketing. Its duties are to enforce laws regulating unfair business practices and stops false and deceptive advertising. In order to enforce these laws, the FTC utilizes Consent order and Cease-and-desist orders. Other federal regulatory agencies include:
• Consumer Product Safety Commission
• Federal Power Commission
• Environmental Protection Agency
• Food and Drug Administration
They also require greater transparency and disclosure of the sponsored nature of content from all advertisements. L. Goldstein (2015) also mentioned in her article that with current data showing that consumers are five times more likely to click on a native advertisement compared to a traditional advertisement. As a result, marketers will be persistently challenged to preserve the organic nature of the content, while at the same time satisfying regulators’ requirements for greater