The Impact of Advertising on Public Perception and Behaviour

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WRITING FROM SOURCES
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1WRITING FROM SOURCES
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

2WRITING FROM SOURCES
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