Ethical Issues Surrounding Children Advertising - Essay Example

?Outline I. Introduction: An overview of ethical issues surrounding children advertising. II. Relevant Theories/Models: A discussion of developmentaltheories, such as the cognitive developmental theory of Piaget, and information processing theory of child development. III. The Relevance of the Issue to the Wider Context of Marketing Theory: A discussion of the importance of integrating other developmental theories into marketing theory and practice. IV. The Relevance of the Topic to the Learning Outcomes of the Course: A discussion of the importance of an evidence-based approach towards ethical advertising to children. Ethical Issues Surrounding Children Advertising Introduction Advertising to children has long been the point of extensive debate about the impacts such advertisements could have on young, vulnerable, and easily influenced consumers. One issue with children advertising is that kids are not capable of differentiating between the programme and the advertisement. Hence, youngsters do not have the same critical thought as grown-ups do and more apt to believe ads (Buijzen & Valkenburg 2005). Ads may take advantage of children’s irresistible desires for bodily gratification, attachment, play, persuading them to choose prefer physical items over socially driven alternatives. Some scholars claim that ads make children impulsive, impatient, and materialistic (Ramsey 2006). Therefore, this essay takes into consideration the ethical issues surrounding children advertising. Relevant Theories/Models Because the issue of advertising’s effect on youngsters was charged to children’s cognitive developmental weaknesses, with a number of governmental concerns for the possible fault of unethical advertisers who deliberately deceive youngsters with their advertisements, that became the main emphasis for the believed solution, too. Thus, Jean Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory is a relevant and suitable model for the issue of ethical issues surrounding children’s advertising (Mercer & Miller-McLemore 2005). Originally, marketers’ application of models of development started as reactions to detractors of children advertising with explanations that the models would help them to further promote ethical marketing. Marketers could prevent the making of ads that unjustly exploit children’s lack of ability to function outside a developmentally established scope of information deciphering. For instance, the study of Ward and colleagues focuses on the inclination of children to give importance to a portrayed product fully relative to actual attributes (Srivastava & Nandan 2010). The child would give importance to more vibrant colour or bigger size instead of doing a critical assessment of how the product could carry out its publicised features or purposes, which may be anticipated at a later developmental phase of a child (Shimanovsky & Lewis 2006). Therefore, this essay supports the argument that this knowledge can strongly contribute to the promotion of ethical children’s advertising. In this essay, the issue puts emphasis only on ethical and suitable children’s advertising, rooted in the belief that encouraging them to be fine and critical consumers is an admirable objective, and this belief is never challenged. The discourses on children advertising persist, all the same, with advocates of a critical, perceptive child challenging those who emphasise children’s core incorruptibility and immaturity (Davis 2002). A particular issue in establishing the disagreement between marketing and children as a problem of a child’s undeveloped capacity for rational thoughts rests in the beliefs that advertising composes mainly of disseminating product information and that a critical, wise person has the liberty to work on acquired information (Abelman & Atkin 2000). According to Stuhlfault and Farrell (2009), this point of view overlooks the complexity of image and representation in advertising, together with the different ways wherein individuals encounter an ad (e.g. as entertainment, as a social media, as information, etc.). Moreover, it disregards the ability of social factors and social networks to influence behaviour. The Relevance of the Issue to the Wider Context of Marketing Theory Almost all studies on the ethical issues concerning children advertising have been carried out in the perspective of established models of children’s development, such as the cognitive developmental theory of Piaget, but more current models have emerged. Particularly, one of the most important frameworks is the information processing theory of child development. This paradigm has shaped several studies on marketing and children, but its application has been narrowed (Rotfeld 1990). According to Calvert (2008), more current child development models have mostly been disregarded, and still several of these are especially vital to children’s knowledge of cognitive capacities because this paradigm could give ideas into the way that youngseters reflect on and understand ads. When marketers started to used developmental models to their activities, they found out that they possess a remarkable instrument for advancing the endorsement of their products/services. They may apply developmental models as an arena for informing youngsters about consumptive habits (Calvert 2008). According to some researchers, theories of cognitive development “portray the processes by which young children develop from what might be characterised as ‘perceptual, narrow information decoders’ in their earliest consumer acts to ‘abstract, flexible, broad information processors’ by early adolescence” (Mercer & Miller-McLemore 2005, 105). Instead of seeing development as an obstacle for marketing theory and practice, these scholars believe that the cognitive developmental phase of does not automatically limit his/her ability to become skilled at different consumptive practices. Several consumptive practices can be learned early in the life course (Mercer & Miller 2005, 105). Scholars in the marketing field in the 1970s started to give emphasis to ‘consumer socialisation’ (Mercer & Miller 2005, 105) mechanisms and the value of exploring children’s socialisation and its role in consumerism and marketing. As this essay has highlighted, the prevailing framework in studies on children puts emphasis on their understanding of beliefs and mentalities. This framework regards issues that are relevant to the concerns which have been stated in the marketing literature. Topics like the interpretation of ads, the persuasive impacts of marketing, the manoeuvring of images and ideas through marketing, and the connection between behaviour and ideas. Every one of these issues can be more helpful than the conventional paradigms that have been employed in most marketing studies. The Relevance of the Topic to the Learning Outcomes of the Course Ethical issues surrounding children advertising spread out into bigger discourses about the social effect of advertising to children. In view of this, a number of scholars are anxious that the inclination by marketers to single out children and to do so in ever more abundant and complex methods creates a more widespread risk to essential social principles and marketing ethics (Koslow 2000). Discourses about wider social issues will certainly persist into the near future. In trying to understand them, however, additional studies are required in several arenas. Primarily, according to Calvert (2008), additional empirical studies into the impacts of advertising on children’s social and psychological development are required for an appropriate assessment of arguments about the intensity and range of its influence. A thorough analysis of the ethics of children advertising will essentially rest on a strong explanation of the attribute of social and individual value. Ultimately, even in connection with unethical marketing ways, careful attention should be given to discern between those instances that create a grave risk to kids as to require government directive of those activities that although maybe ethically doubtful are inadequately risky as to require government intervention. References Abelman, R. (2007) “Fighting the War on Indecency: Mediating TV, Internet, and Videogame Usage among Achieving and Underachieving Gifted Children” Roeper, 29(2), 100+ Abelman, R. & Atkin, D. (2000) “What Children Watch When they Watch TV: Putting Theory into Practice” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 44(1), 143. Buijzen, M. & Valkenburg, P. (2005) “Parental Mediation of Undesired Advertising Effects” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 49(2), 153+ Calvert, S. (2008) “Children as Consumers: Advertising and Marketing” The Future of Children, 18(1), 205+ Cui, G. & Choudhury, P. 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