Comparative Advertising: Pros And Cons Of Comparative Advertising

The term ‘comparative advertising’ refers to that form of advertising in which the advertiser attempts to favorably compare the attributes and features of his product, service or brand with those of his competitor’s. Comparative advertising, in one form or another, has been around for over a hundred years. Since time immemorial, traders have looked to sway consumer opinion in their favor by portraying their products in positive light while comparing them with rivals’. However, given the contentious nature of the topic, there was little, if any, research interest in the subject until the early 1970s when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States (U.S.). started encouraging comparative advertising in a bid to boost competitiveness

One of the key issues that was identified was that advertisers had the ability to misguide consumers through misidentification of brands named in the advertisements. Such unscrupulous activities could tarnish the image of the advertising industry in general, putting the credibility and future of advertising at stake. Critics also argued that this would lead to competitive brands coming out with comparative advertisements of their own, thereby producing a ‘boomerang’ effect. Many of them could take the legal route to pull competitor advertisements off the screen, leading to long and protracted public

As far as winning trust is concerned, comparative advertisement is a live minefield. It is not possible to draw a definitive conclusion pertaining to comparative advertisement’s effects on consumer behavior without considering a lot of other variables. One of the exogenous variables that has a significant effect over determining consumer behavior is the relative position of the firm in market share. It has been shown that the believability of a comparative advertisement increases significantly with the market power of the firm. The more dominance the firm has over the market, the more is the possibility that customer believes the advertisement. This finding is in addition to the result in expected lines that generally, named comparative advertisement would eventually lead to a significant loss in credibility of the advertisement itself, indicating that if not used sparingly and carefully, this could be a major source of monetary loss [31]. But the fact remains that the effect is less pronounced when the advert uses politically correct terms like “market leader” when referring to its competition. The argument is that customer need not always have information about the exact market structure. Even less pronounced are the effects when the advert uses terms like “ordinary brands” or quite simply “other brands”. Essentially the requirement is to strike a correct balance between being cautious and being adventurous. In