Applied Business Ethics: Analysis of Social Responsibility in Advertisements

This article analyzes the ethical question of social responsibility in advertisements, including the negative impacts of ads on children and teenagers. It identifies six key facts relevant to the analysis, and suggests two assumptions to fill gaps in publicly available information. The article uses act utilitarianism to forecast three positive and negative consequences of the ethical act central to the question, and provides an ethical conclusion that suggests ways to improve the content of advertisements to increase net utility.

Running head: APPLIED BUSINESS ETHICS
Applied Business Ethics
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Table of Contents
Explain why your specific ethical problem is important and in need of analysis?..........................4
Identify and fully reference 6 key facts relevant to the analysis of your ethical question...............4
Increased fast food consumption among children leading to obesity and other heath issues......5
Ad campaigns being set up at schools and diverting the attention of students from studies.......5
Too many ads of beauty products harming the self esteem of dark complexioned people.........5
A huge sexual undertone in the advertisements corrupting the young teenage minds................6
The action and the stunts in the advertisements creates provokes the teenagers.........................6
Too many advertisements of alcohols and tobacco increases chances of addiction among
children and teenagers..................................................................................................................6
Identify 2 assumptions which you are required to make to fill gaps in publically available
information relevant to your ethical problem..................................................................................7
Analyse the ethical act central to your ethical question using act utilitarianism by forecasting
three important positive and three important negative consequences.............................................8
Provide an ethical conclusion which compares expected positive with negative consequences
including an estimate as to whether the net utility will rise or fall..................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Explain why your specific ethical problem is important and in need of analysis?
Social responsibility is a broad concept that includes the ecological, social, political and
the overall health and wellbeing of the audiences. In the present day, there are many
advertisements which are untrue. There are advertisements, showing new flats and multistoried
buildings that are well furnished and offers a very high and lavish lifestyle to the people.
However, people might get much attracted towards this and might forget about conserving the
nature. These advertisements might instigate them to undertake huge construction projects just to
afford a high lavish lifestyle and start on any property estate business. Those advertisements,
however, will never show the harmful effects that are created on the environment due to such
large-scale construction. There can be chances of air water or soil pollution. Apart from this, this
can create a desire among people to somehow afford that excessive high standard of living
(Grayson and Hodges 2017). The ethical question chosen here is the social responsibly of the
media and advertisement. In other words, it questions the authenticity and the truthfulness within
the advertisements. It also raises questions like how much beneficial are these ad campaigns for
the audiences? Do they have any dangers? What are they and how can they be mitigated?
Identify and fully reference 6 key facts relevant to the analysis of your ethical question.
There are several reasons that prove this social responsibility issue to be one of the major
ethical questions.

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Increased fast food consumption among children leading to obesity and other heath issues
Children are innocent and are easily attracted towards the flowery ways in which the
advertisements talk about different products like that of food products (Reichert and Lambiase
2014). There are many fast food advertisements that come up on the television showing the best
and the new fast foods like burgers, chips, chocolates and many other such products. Children do
not really have the quality of seeing through these flowery and colorful ads or even
understanding if these products will be good or bad for their health. The consumption of the fast
foods has increased a lot and it causes health problems like obesity (Percy and Elliott 2016).
Ad campaigns being set up at schools and diverting the attention of students from studies
The ad agencies know that the children and the teenagers are exposed to social media like
the facebook, twitter and even simple net browsing. So, the advertising agencies use these social
media platforms to showcase many of their products like discounts on pizza from dominos, pizza
huts. Apart from this they also set many campaigns directly in the schools and in return give
huge money to the school authorities. Thus, this brings in many digressions for the children and
they are diverted from their studies. They create unnecessary pressure on their parents to get
them the items that are shown in the advertisements (Radesky et al. 2015).
Too many ads of beauty products harming the self esteem of dark complexioned people
Another advertisement is that of the beauty products. Too much emphasis is given to the
skin tone, the body shape, the hairs and many other such body parts. It does not only
commodifies women but also creates an inferiority complex among girls. They try to copy the
beautiful models and give up eating in order to get a zero figure or a slim body. They develop a
dangerous disease like anorexia, weakness, bulimia.

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A huge sexual undertone in the advertisements corrupting the young teenage minds
Advertisements also cause a corruption in the minds of the children by adding a sexual
undertone to all the items that are shown on television. Women are usually portrayed as sex
objects. These ads ruin the way children should actually think. Too many advertisements of
condoms another sex inducing objects often provoke the minds of the children and the youth.
The teenagers might easily be able to obtain those materials and take some steps that can make
them fall into great dangers (Tuncay and Coleman 2015).
The action and the stunts in the advertisements creates provokes the teenagers
Huge stunts are shown on the television, internet advertisement links and many games
that are played by the children and teenager. The ads pretend that performing such stunts make
people a hero and a star. As a result of this, many teenagers try imitating them and are subjected
to huge danger.
Too many advertisements of alcohols and tobacco increases chances of addiction among
children and teenagers
The incidences of underage drinking and tobacco consumption are also increasing due to
the excessive advertising. Children and particularly the teenagers are getting acquainted with
these products very easily. They cannot skeptically look at the ill effects of these ads and start
practicing the same in their real lives as they have seen on media.

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Identify 2 assumptions which you are required to make to fill gaps in publically available
information relevant to your ethical problem
The ad agencies must check and alter the quantity and the quality of the ads that they are
telecasting. They must not telecast these ads on television or on social media so often. They must
alter the content of the ad. The beauty products add must not have tags unlike the Nivea white is
purity ad campaign. They must show that these beauty products do not add anything extra to the
qualities that people naturally possess. All individuals are special, beautiful and unique in their
own way and they do not need any mere cosmetics to define who they actually are.
It is also the duties of the parents of children and the young teenagers, to be frank with
their wards and talk with them regarding these advertisements that are shown. Parents must also
keep a check on the duration for which their children are using the social media platforms.
Parents must also keep a constant follow up with the friend and the schools of their children and
do not allow them to perform any dangerous life taking stunts.

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Analyse the ethical act central to your ethical question using act utilitarianism by
forecasting three important positive and three important negative consequences.
The ethical act central to the social responsibility is to create utility by making people
fairer, prettier and beautiful.
 Teenagers often have many skin problems like pimples and acne and are bullied because of
the same. Adolescence is a very sensitive time when all girls and boys want to look
beautiful. They might use the beauty products and get a good result (Štumberger and
Golob 2016).
 Some of the medicinal products that are used to control unwanted pregnancy like condoms;
or contraceptive pills might be of very good use to people. It can protect against health
problems like AIDS.
 Advertisements of food new flats and buildings might give a boost to business as many
entrepreneurs may get ideas to start new construction projects.
The negative impacts can be
 Too much advertisement of products like condoms and contraceptive pills might induce the
teenagers to take some steps that might be very dangerous for them. They can get
involved in sexual intercourse at a very young age knowing that there are products
available in the market to solve these issues.
 Too many advertisements of beauty products often affect the self-esteem of people who are
of a dark complexion.They suffer from inferiority complex and pressurize their parents to
buy them all the beauty products. Over usage of such products harms them in many ways.
Often these products are not suitable for their skin types but they carry on using the same

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just to look beautiful (Bury et al. 2016).
 Too many ads for new flats and high lavish lifestyles make people greedy and they might
get involved in many unethical and illegal practices only in order to earn more money for
affording a lavish lifestyle.
Provide an ethical conclusion which compares expected positive with negative
consequences including an estimate as to whether the net utility will rise or fall.
So, it can be concluded that the ad agencies have to be very cautious about the content of
their advertisements. For an instance, while showing the beauty products, they must not add any
racial undertones to it. So that it does not hurt the sentiments of people. In this way, the
customers will know that there is no compulsion on using those products others is no such rule
that one has to follow. The advertisement houses must develop products that will suit the skin
types of all the consumers so that all of them can get equal opportunities. So, all the consumers
will have this feeling that none of them are being left out. The tagline of the beauty products
must be “beauty for all” and not “white creates purity”. These will help in increasing the net
utility. More customers will increase their faith in the brands of those products and will increase
their purchases.

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References
Bury, B., Tiggemann, M. and Slater, A., 2016. Disclaimer labels on fashion magazine
advertisements: Impact on visual attention and relationship with body dissatisfaction. Body
image, 16, pp.1-9.
Grayson, D. and Hodges, A., 2017. Corporate social opportunity!: Seven steps to make
corporate social responsibility work for your business. Routledge.
Jernigan, D., Noel, J., Landon, J., Thornton, N. and Lobstein, T., 2017. Alcohol marketing and
youth alcohol consumption: a systematic review of longitudinal studies published since
2008. Addiction, 112(S1), pp.7-20.
Percy, L. and Elliott, R.H., 2016. Strategic advertising management. Oxford University Press.
Radesky, J.S., Schumacher, J. and Zuckerman, B., 2015. Mobile and interactive media use by
young children: the good, the bad, and the unknown. Pediatrics, 135(1), pp.1-3.
Reichert, T. and Lambiase, J. eds., 2014. Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the erotic appeal.
Routledge.
Štumberger, N. and Golob, U., 2016. On the Discursive Construction of Corporate Social
Responsibility in Advertising Agencies. Journal of business ethics, 137(3), pp.521-536.
Tuncay Zayer, L. and Coleman, C.A., 2015. Advertising professionals’ perceptions of the impact
of gender portrayals on men and women: A question of ethics?. Journal of Advertising, 44(3),
pp.1-12.