The Impact of Advertising on Public Perception and Behaviour

This essay discusses the impact of advertising on public perception and behaviour, including the ethical concerns associated with advertising practices. It also explores the functional perspectives of advertising and the importance of executing business operations guided by ethical morals and standards.

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WRITING FROM SOURCES
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Advertising is regarded as a form of communication aimed to inspire or induce an
audience base such as viewers, readers or listeners in order to purchase or take some action upon
certain products, information or services. The purpose of advertising are diverse, they tend to
vary from establishing awareness for a new product to influencing repetitive goods and products
(Spatt, 2010). However, in order to attain these objectives, several business enterprises not only
focus the consistency of advertisements and promoting but also the way to promote their
products. As a promotional strategy, advertising aims to serve as an essential tool in creating
product knowledge and awareness in the mind of a potential consumer in order to take eventual
purchase decision. Advertisements have been used to convey perceptions and ideas to the masses
(Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). Important information persuading the advertising domain
intends to captivate the imagination power of people. However, in recent times the advertising
sector has been encountering certain degree of criticisms for not honouring the rules of ethics
pertaining both in the process of advertisement design and the way it influences public or the
society as a whole. The thesis statement of this essay is “advertising is a persuasive and powerful
phenomenon in the globalized world and influences the complex behaviour of the public.”
The globalization era, being infested with the mass media such as television, advertising,
billboards, newspapers and internet, advertising among all the marketing weapons, has been
recognized as an enduring influence on the viewer’s state of perception with its wide ranging
exposure in the marketing domain. Thus, advertising through all mediums tend to influence
public, whereby advertising being one of the most decisive medium of advertising and with its
broad mass reach can influence not only the individual’s behavioural pattern, life style but tend
to affect the society as a whole (Petty, 2018). Thus the fundamental aim of advertising is to
create decisiveness on the factors related to buying behaviour, whereby such an influence of the

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brand is altered or further strengthened on a frequent basis in the minds and memories of people.
With the primary focus of advertising sector is to seek profit making in order to increase the
revenues and sales of the company, enhance the demand of the product of their brand and
position their services and products at the epitome of the marketing domain in comparison to
their competitors marketers often encounter challenges in creating sales in efficient manner and
sustain moral ethics principles and values (Riquelme & Román, 2014). However, studies
observed the ethical principles of advertising can be regarded as a set of moral principles which
regulate both communication between the seller and the consumer and further the advertising
business. From a moral perspective it has been noted that sincere or good advertising is regarded
as an advertising which further seeks to determine the public to select and act in a realistic or
sensible manner (Eisend, Plagemann & Sollwedel, 2014). While bad or unethical advertising
tries to establish public to enact in unconstructive manner and influence them towards the critical
actions and responses for the society. At this juncture, it is important to note that advertising
sectors or marketers in recent days have been perceived in a negative or unconstructive manner
by many a times being associated with acts of ruthlessness and brutality (Sheehan, 2013). It has
been recognized as a form of persuasion which tends to exploit human limitations, negligence or
lack of awareness and further utilizes the deficit of media, economic also civic cultural aspects.
Ethics in advertising has been regarded as a critical oxymoron because of the inconsiderate
criticism introduced to the sphere of advertising practices (Spatt, 2010). The primary concern of
modern advertisers is to enhance the level of sales and benefit more number of customers.
However, it has been identified that advertisements in recent times are immensely exaggerated
and reveals the advertisers lack of awareness of ethical norms, values and principles. Such
advertisers claim their products to possess unique qualities in comparison to the rivals, increased

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rate of efficiency and high rate of advantages. But the major proportion of these advertisements
have been perceived to reveal false and artificial information, further misleading the consumer
base and being highly unethical (Petty, 2018). The classic example of such unethical
advertisements is the one which depicts evening snacks for kids and colouring in order to make
create an impressive and attractive appearance of the products to the cliental base that view these
advertisements and intend to purchase the products. Though it has been stated that advertising
marketers aim to adhere to three major moral standards namely Truthfulness, Social
Responsibility and Preserving Human Dignity, established business enterprises tend to follow
these sets of principles to several regulating bodies but not in complete sense. Though they
believe to conceal the whole truth in the advertisements however such advertisers reveal utmost
incompetence to understand that revelation of adequate information and knowledge is essentially
vital for this advertising sector to enhance the level of growth and development of the business
(Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). Furthermore, according to the Framing Ethical Decisions In US
Advertising Practice, the forms of ethical facets in the domain of advertising can be associated
with factors of product itself, the content the advertisement message is carrying, its target base or
other social consequences like endorsement and promotion of harmful products such as alcohol,
cigarettes, visuals demonstrating sexist ideas and pornography, racism influencing the minds and
perceptions of the public (Richards, 2013). It is important to note the way cigarette or smoking
advertisements have been experiencing severe rate of criticisms for targeting the marginalized or
minority section of the society.
Forms of stereotyping has been found to be considerably persuasive whereby it reveals
that the portrayals of women in advertisements in various ways tend to conform to the major
proportions of the advertising stereotypical portrayals of women (Simon & Hoyt, 2013).

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Furthermore, researches have demonstrated that stereotypes have the potentialities to pose
unconstructive or negative impact on women. It has been noted that women can perceive the
‘satisfied and contented housewives ‘stereotype often depicted on advertisements as a cultural
directives which may further result to segregate them from their own desires, wishes concerning
career and personal life and further replace them with the ‘ideal’ presentation through the means
of popular cultural aspects (Grau & Zotos, 2016). It has been revealed by several observations of
public being offended because of the strong and persuasive reaction they get from few adverts
which demonstrate negative impact on other individuals or women in particular or groups in
society. Furthermore, such advertisements have been considered as detrimental or offensive thus
challenging the personal ideologies and sentiments and perceptions (Solomon et al., 2014).
However, such situations trigger with the critical gender portrayals which further promoted their
emotions as unacceptable attitudes or idealistic or unfeasible aspirations regarding the factors
related to appearance and behaviour (Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). Representations of women
with perfect shaped body are further viewed as a potential area of causing detrimental
circumstances. While public has often been engaging discourses on subjects related to the rate of
impact these visuals could have on the minds of young people who are aiming to establish their
own identities and focusing on their appearance and personality (Eisend, Plagemann &
Sollwedel, 2014). Modern day young women are condemning the stereotypical adverts shown on
television advertisements whereby several advertisements tend to demonstrate young mothers as
immensely healthy and fit rather than depicting the real scenario of a new mother (Mitchell,
2013). They believe that such advertisements need to draw their concentration towards women
who had recent motherhood experiences and must reflect the situations they encounter related to
post-natal depression and various other thoughts which has been persisting their minds (Asemah,

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E. S., Edegoh, L. O., & Ojih, 2013). The content of the messages provided by several
advertisements promoting anti aging products or weight loss capsules which make certain groups
develop the sense of inadequacies or failure thus enhancing the rate of hostility and aggression
within the groups. The feeling of public or consumers associated with advertisements has been
regarded as immensely significant whereby their attitudes related to the direction of the
advertisers (Spatt, 2010). However a stable stereotypical presentation or falsification of
advertisements are regarded as deceptive advertisements which aim towards the consumer base
regarding the qualities of the endorsed product along with the anticipated effectiveness and
benefit from retaining the products. Furthermore, public or the consumers integrated to the goods
or are convinced to buy the products being endorsed are especially being probable to the alleged
deceptive forms of advertising, along with the numerous competition authorities further
encompassing the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which impose legal actions considering
the misleading portrayal of the advertisements. Furthermore, the US FTC Act has stated that
“unfair methods of competition or deceptive acts of representation in advertisements have been
recognized an unlawful acts (Moriarty et al., 2014). However the deceptive habitual acts of
modern marketers are probable to have the crucial detrimental outcomes on the level of customer
satisfaction as well as loyalty intentions whereby the degree to which deceptive habits comprise
of detrimental acts has been regarded as convoluted issue (Attas, 1999). Furthermore, significant
observations have been focusing on behaviour and attitudes regarding advertising whereby the
major proportion of these studies have recovered the detrimental or negative behaviour and
perceptions concerning the US public (Malik et al., 2013). Certain researches have revealed the
behavioural patterns and attitudes in association to deceptive advertising and scientifically
discover the consumers’ behaviour and perceptions in the direction of advertising deception .

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At this juncture, it is significant to note the varying perceptions and arguments some
theorists have revealed stating the effective and enhancing impact recent day advertisements
have been depicting which is thus considered as a effective communication procedure. Modern
theorists along with significant marketing analysts have perceived advertising from the
functional perspectives, thus has been referred as a paid, non-personal form of communication
through the means of several media by business enterprises, non-profit organizations to aid to
establish a fundamental knowledge and awareness of the product or service in mind of the
potential consumer base in order to establish knowledge related to the product (Miller, Eagly &
Linn, 2015). Furthermore advertising as a promotional strategy aims to provide a fundamental
mechanism in establishing effective product awareness and condition the mind of a potential
consumer in order take final purchase decision (Spatt, 2010). The primary mission of modern
advertisers lies on the attainment of prospective customers and further influence their level of
awareness, knowledge and purchase behaviour of the public. They intend to comprehend the
understanding of potential customers and the way they would like to see their products.
Advertising sector in recent time has been effectively contributing to the brand choice and
preferences among the consumer base (Bart, Stephen & Sarvary, 2014). It is also to be noted that
ethics in the domain of advertising sector is directly associated to the purpose and nature of the
advertising whereby a considerable degree of exaggeration in the advertisements becomes
essential to prove the competitive advantages of the product. For instance the advertisements for
social causes are regarded as ethical and are widely being accepted by the large domain of public
(Spatt, 2010). Though endorsements of contraceptive pills are regarded to have been losing
certain degree of morality and decency at certain areas, these advertisements must not to be

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constrained as they aim to enhance the level of awareness among people and further educate
them in these areas (Spatt, 2010).
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that advertising is perceived as
immensely pervasive and crucial phenomena in the globalized era, a significant force which
influences the level of perception and behaviour of public. The content or visuals of advertising
has been persistently been influencing the public both in the way they perceive and the way in it
considers the relationships with others. However, advertisers in order to mitigate the increasing
rate of unethical acts must execute their businesses in a more ethical manner and further
implement improved moral principles associated with sincerity, reliability, human dignity as well
as social accountability. Modern advertisers must keep in consideration the importance and
vitality of the advertising sector to the public and thus execute their business operations guided
by ethical morals and standards.

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References
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