Legal Aspects of Advertising: Business Laws and Regulations Review

This report delves into the critical aspects of business laws and advertising regulations, emphasizing the importance of ethical and legal practices in promoting goods and services. It highlights the need for advertisers to adhere to court and parliamentary rules, ensuring transparency and accuracy in all promotional materials. The report explores the Australian consumer law, focusing on prohibiting harmful practices and regulating safe business-to-customer transactions. It addresses common pitfalls such as misleading pricing, hidden charges, and misrepresentation of product features, with examples from online shopping and food advertising. The report underscores the significance of clear and honest communication, emphasizing that organizations must promote their goods and services without disparaging competitors. The report also includes several case studies, like the Auckland's premier Fujitsu dealer and Domino's Pizza, demonstrating the legal implications of misrepresentation in advertising. The report concludes with a call for advertisers to understand and comply with all regulations to ensure consumer trust and avoid legal issues.

Business Laws

The business advertiser have to ensure that the advertisements which they have
given through newspapers, radio and other channels must follow all the rules and regulations of
the court and parliament. Advertisements is the process of promoting various goods and services
to the customers. All the terms and conditions must be properly displayed while promoting them
so that consumers cannot be mislead by the offers (Bagust, 2013). All the offers which are given
by the business-advertisers must be proper, correct and should not hurt the feelings of people.
Further, pricing and products guarantee and warranty periods must be properly explained to
consumers and services must be provided by the advertiser when it promises them different
services.
The advertiser has to make sure that trademark laws are properly followed while making
its logo or providing new name of the product. While advertising new product in the market, they
have to assure that all the information is correct and follows courts rules and legislation (Zeller
and Cole, 2014). In order to provide competition to other competitors, advertisers uses illegal
lotteries to win contests. In this, they assure winning chance to people and encourage them to
purchase their products so that they can surely win the prize. All this misconception are given by
advertisers to make profit and mislead the customers.
The customers must be given fair chance to choose their products by themselves without
forcing them to purchase the products which company wants. They should not be cheated and
misguided by the business-advertisers so that they can make fair choices for their products. All
the customers have right to purchase the products according to their demands and they must not
be defrauded by the advertisers. Australian consumer law focuses on all these practises and helps
in prohibiting harmful practises, provide safety for purchasing products and regulates safe
business to customer transactions (Hunt, 2015).
Various companies claims that there are no risks involved with their products and
encourage customers to purchase their goods through credit cards, debits cards. Actual thing is
that they do not get goods on time which are promised by them and when consumers contact
them, they deny that these are not involved in their terms and conditions (Bargiela-Chiappini and
Nickerson, 2014). Some other pitfalls are associated with auto-mobile products. Business
advertisers do not show hidden prices of their tax, insurance, registration fees and additional

charges to their customers while advertising their products. They have to provide proper
information while dealing with their consumers so that they cannot break laws and legislation of
the court and parliament. All the offers and gifts must be acceptable and properly meets demands
of customers. The advertisers have to make sure that their product advertisements cannot impact
on the feelings and emotions of any class of people so that they can be able to win confidence
and trust of customers (Miller, 2015). All the terms and condition as-well-as actual prices of the
product should be properly mentioned at the time of promotion so that they do not have to face
any legal issues while selling their products.
Laws in advertising plays a key role and organisations needs to be aware of all the
regulations to render customers', the "whole picture". Several number of issues may arise
because of misrepresentation of the advertisement. It is thus necessary to ensure that the ads are
not false or misleading. Publicise should not contain any content that targets and hurt anyone's
culture. Organisations needs to understand that they are required to promote their goods and
services rather than demoting any competitors' (Miller, 2015). It is essential for the entities to
represent the ad in appropriate manner and it should contain the realistic facts. In case of foods
and beverage promotion, all the details such as quality test, energy, fats and other nutrients
should be mentioned correctly. Also, the prices stated in the advertisement should not differ from
the selling rate. A relevant case in which, the complainant had complained that a misleading
statement was used in the advertisement that is they are Auckland's premier Fujitsu dealer which
can be accessed through: Airtech Website Advertisement [2010] NZASA 678 (26 January 2011)
Nowadays, the most trending topic is the online shopping and this is the platform too,
where misrepresentation occurs at the highest level. This is the difference between the images
displayed on screens and the actual ones. Besides this, companied need to be more careful when
it come to the context to nudity promoted through any video, picture, etc. A case filed by L
MacCormack against Domino's Pizza in 2017 is that the food purchased by him does not look
like the pictures on the website. For more information, the access is : Domino's Pizza, Digital
Marketing Chairman's Ruling [2017] NZASA 274 (21 August 2017). However, the way of
managing the right information it is the proper representation of the advertisement. A recent case
of misrepresentation happened with Samsung (New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority,
2017). The complainant has said that a feel of concern about the youngsters has been developed
after watching as the advertisement through which the organisation is promoting their products

advocates that its okay to break as many bone sin your body buy perusing a sport. Further
information can be accessed with the help of the case mentioned: Samsung Galaxy Phone
Television [2017] NZASA 73 (6 March 2017). Apart from this, the most important thing that is
need to emphasise on while promotion is the clarity of the message which is supposed to be
understand by the consumers (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, 2017). In case,
if it fails then it will be total loss for the company. All the elements are required to be considered
while shooting such as background music, time lapse, lights, etc. and should ensure that they are
up to the mark according to the demand of the advertisement. Brand Developers Ltd - Television
[2017] NZASA 232 (11 August 2017) , a case in which the complainant has claimed that the
information was speed up which results in unclear message that the air hawk can inflate the items
above in less than 2 seconds.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bagust, J. (2013). The legal profession and the business of law. Sydney L. Rev. 35. 27.
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. & Nickerson, C. R. (2014). Writing business: Genres, media and
discourses. Routledge.
Hunt, K.M., (2015). Gaming the system: Fake online reviews v. consumer law. Computer Law &
Security Review. 31(1). pp.3-25.
Miller, R.L., (2015). Business Law Today, Standard: Text & Summarized Cases. Nelson
Education.
Zeller, B. & Cole, B. (2014). Australian Trade Agreements–A Divergence between Trade Policy
and Business Outcomes–Can They Deliver Trade-related Growth for
Australia?. Global Journal of Comparative Law. 3(2). 236-255.
Online
Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, (2017). [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.accc.gov.au/business/advertising-promoting-your-business>. [Accessed on
21st September, 2017]
New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority, (2017). [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.nzlii.org/nz/cases/NZASA/2017/185.html>. [Accessed on 21st September,
2017]