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advertising ethical theory
advertising ethical theory
advertising ethical theory
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Intrusive Advertising and Privacy Concerns
The concept of consumer privacy encompasses a consumers ability to limit the collection and usage of certain types of data relating to a specific transaction (Sheehan & Gleason, 2001). Today marketers and advertisers have engaged in what I feel to be somewhat questionable behavior in regards to consumers privacy. As technology becomes more sophisticated marketing becomes is a bit more complicated and more intrusive to its customers. In our highly competitive world, it is vital for a successful marketer to conduct a significant amount of research. It used to be however, that advertisers would choose their target audience, research the demographic, and create a campaign that appealed to that target audience. Marketing efforts today are going to great lengths to obtain private information about consumers. From an advertising standpoint it is important to know your customer and to target them accordingly, but how much should advertisers know? Do consumers have any right to privacy? The following will discuss intrusive tactics marketers are using to advertise and obtain consumer information as well as how advertisements themselves are invading our privacy.
Television has traditionally been the most popular medium for advertising however with new satellite television products like TiVo; advertising to consumers has been increasingly difficult. OpenTV Corp., a San Francisco-based technology company is one step ahead with trying to combat the affects of TiVo with interactive TV software. The software will be sold to cable companies such as Comcast and satellite companies such as EchoStar. This software will allow cable companies to conduct "telescoped advertising," which would allow them to target TV ads to individual households based on viewing and buying habits. Although “telescoped advertising” has created a buzz in advertising centers, privacy advocates has raised concerns. With Interactive TV applications companies could track viewing habits and possibly build elaborate consumer profiles. Companies would use their database systems, third party vendors, and public records to see who were past purchasers or owners of their product. The company would then contract with cable and satellite companies to send their advertisement only to those ...
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... doing their job aren’t they? I think it really boils down to ethics and what some companies are willing to do while others are not. Advertisers are doing a phenomenal job getting their messages displayed but at the same time they’re neglecting the feelings of the average consumer. Consumer privacy and advertisement intrusiveness are two themes consumers are concerned about. Consumers are beginning to dislike advertising and marketing efforts because they feel it’s everywhere they go and tracking everything they do. As they say, too much of a good thing could kill. Advertisers need to be aware of the consumer’s feelings because in the end it’s the consumers they need to respect and impress.
Works Cited
Ambient Advertising. (2002). WGSN.com.
“Claria Assembles Team of Privacy Experts to help Develop New Behavior link Advertising Network Model” (2005, February 23). LexisNexis
De Marco Donna. (2003, January 21). Commercials Steal Show at Movie Theaters. The Washington Times.
Hairong, Li, Edwards, Steven, Lee Joo-Hyun. (2002) Measuring the intrusiveness of advertisements: Scale development and validation. Journal of Advertising.
Joseph Turow’s The Daily You shows us the in depth look of behind the scenes of the advertising industry and its impact on individuals in the consumer society we live in. Every time you click a link, fill out a form or visit a website, advertisers are working to collect personal information about you, says Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Then they target ads to you based on that information they collected. This tracking is ubiquitous across the Internet, from search engines to online retailers and even greeting card companies.
Is advertising the ultimate means to inform and help us in our everyday decision-making or is it just an excessively powerful form of mass deception used by companies to persuade their prospects and customers to buy products and services they do not need? Consumers in the global village are exposed to increasing number of advertisement messages and spending for advertisements is increasing accordingly.
The nature vs. nurture controversy is an age old question in the scientific and psychological world with both camps having evidence to support their theories. The controversy lies in which is more influential in the development of human beings. While there is no definitive answer for this, it is interesting to look at each of them separately.
If big business’s past is any indication of its future, it proves that businesses cannot be trusted to act ethically towards the masses. There must be laws in place that protect the consumer and outline the extent an advertiser can reach before divulging into privacy violations. An opt-out or do not track option before behavioral advertisement occurs will sufficiently address the ethical and privacy concerns posed by behavioral advertisement. The line must be drawn in order to empower consumers with free will and to restrict the severity of big business surveillance.
Are advertising companies out of control now a days? Do they play on the average Americans fears about certain events in life to sell their products? Do they try to attack events that are one and a million to sell us useless things? Advertising companies use all of those tactics to sell things to the average everyday concerned American. This is especially evident in security systems, new cars, and also in equipment. This aspect of advertising is also apparent in commercials trying to stop Americans from buying things such as cigarettes and drugs. These advertising companies have been very successful in using this tactic to sell their goods.
Marshall, Patrick. "Advertising Overload." CQ Press 2014: n. pag. CQ Researcher Online. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. .
This story takes place in the south during the civil rights movement when people were trying to eliminate poverty and racism from the society that they lived in. There are four important characters in this story, and the two main ones are Julian and his mother. Julian is a recent college graduate who lives with his mother but knows “some day [he’ll] start making money” (Mays 448). Julian sees the world as ever changing during the civil rights movement and does not like or condone racism. Although this is true he subconsciously is small minded and petty just like his mother. His mother often makes racist remarks and will not find herself sitting next to a black African American adult. She often would bring up the topic of race to Julian “every few days like a train on an open track” (Mays 449). She also makes her son ride the bus with her to the YMCA because of the new changes due to the civil rights movement and in some ways this makes Julian mad. As they begin to board the bus Julian and his mother argue but quickly board. Shortly later a black woman and her son named Carver board. Carver sits next to Julian’s mother, she does not mind, and Carver’s mother sits next to Julian. Carver’s mother is an impatient woman who ironically wears the same hat as Julian’s mother. The hat in many ways is a symbol of the ever changing south during the civil rights movement. It symbolizes the social equality between
The United States has come to a point where a person cannot go for very long without being greeted with some sort of advertisement. Advertisements are everywhere, no matter how secluded of a life someone may live. They appear on most web pages of the Internet, show up on cellphones during applications, and are plastered along roadways. It has become second nature for most people to tune out the advertisements that are thrown in their faces at practically every turn. Our country is especially ridden with advertisements compared to others, as it has become a multi-billion industry for the country. Fueled by a materialistic frame of mind, the population’s desire for the latest product keeps the advertising field thriving.
Commercials are designed to attract consumers through flashy forms of vision and audio. Usually commercials are evaluated in two ways, recognition measures and preference measures. Recognition is usually measured using surveys involving specific commercials viewed at home. Preference is a measure of personal liking, often measured by recorders installed in TV receivers (Nathan & Wallace, 1965).
Advertisers and corporations are liable for using modern and sophisticated forms of mind control to the extent level of brainwashing consumers, in order to manipulate their choices and their spending habits. Our society is being negatively impacted, by becoming a consumer driven society constantly distracted by overwhelming persuasive advertisements, as opposed to ideal informative advertisements. The most vulnerable and negatively impacted targets of persuasive advertising are the younger, less mature, and/or less knowledgeable and self-directed consumers. Ironically, it was once said “An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15% commission” (Allen). It is quite clear that social benefits are not part of this equation. The harm and severe social related costs far outweigh any economic growth and benefits deemed necessary for advertising and marketing companies.
In today’s difficult economy who can afford to spend their hard-earned money carelessly? Americans want good quality and low prices, and businesses that advertise their product make saving money possible. Advertising was created for one reason, so businesses could make known their product (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles). Some consumers may argue that advertising is not informative, but that it is manipulative because some advertisements make false claims. Fortunately, there are regulations and consumer rights that promote truth in advertising. Consumers must embrace their rights to keep advertising the way it is meant to be. Advertising is meant to be informative and not manipulative, and consumers play a great role in promoting truth in advertising.
Advertising has been round for centuries; starting with print ads, then evolving into radio and TV adverts. Each form of advertisement requires several different strategies in order to make the advertisement effective and appealing to the consumer. With the ever popular rising of the usage of the internet, online advertisements have also become more popular. According to Dr. David Evans, who received his Ph.D. in Economics, e-commerce, or sales processed online, were equal to 34 billion dollars as of 2008. (Evans, 2) This amount has only grown and will continue to grow as the usage of the internet becomes more and more popular. The heart around this monumental sum of revenue is online advertising. Advertising agencies optimize their online
Advertising is designed to get information from the companies to the consumers. With that being said, there are several ways in which companies will go about this to ensure that their information is relayed to the consumers effectively and efficiently. According to George N. Root, from Demand Media, “advertising uses misguided promises of desired results to convince customers to purchase a product.” Nancy Day expresses in her book, when there are many of the same products, companies need to convince the public that their product is superior. Which results in an increase in the demand for advertising (7-8). This is when informative advertising turns into manipulative advertising. Root goes on to explain that advertising agencies use manipulative techniques such as “expert” opinion, attractiveness, lifestyle, and fear to control their audience.
Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, persuasive, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Its impacts created on the society throughout the years has been amazing, especially in this technology age. Influencing people’s habits, creating false needs, distorting the values and priorities of our society with sexism and feminism, advertising has become a poison snake ready to hunt his prey. However, on the other hand, advertising has had a positive effect as a help of the economy and society.
By being a consumer in a world of diverse products and services, it has given us a wide range of choices. A product may be produced by different companies and has the same function, but it is presented to the consumers in different forms. In order to differ from each other, companies use the help of advertising to present its product in a better way than their competitors’. However, advertising the product is becoming more crucial than the product itself. Companies are focusing more on making the brand more popular, rather than actually improving the product that they offer. By turning the advertisement competition into a war between companies, they mislead buyers by hyperbolizing their products positive features, thus hiding the negative ones. Companies forget about the effect they have on the consumers. Consumers should be aware of the manipulative tricks that advertising uses like subliminal messages and brain seduction in order to not be misled into buying something that they do not really require. By knowing how to manipulate the audience and consumers’ brain, companies use tactical methods in order to persuade specific customers to buy specific products or services. Other examples of techniques they use are techniques like puffery which are suggestive claims about a product, using subliminal messages and transferring information indirectly, as well as by targeting a specific group of people, creating a slogan or a mascot and by using sexy models with perfect bodies, advertising tries to manipulate and persuade consumers into buying the product they are offering.