Amount of Information in Advertising a Product - Essay Example

Amount of information must an advertiser disclose to consumers in advertising a product Ethics is the right and good forhumans according to the understanding of humans. Business ethics is the actions of businesses that reflect human value aspects and require the needs of the businesses to highlight business practice evaluation. There has been a need for corporate social responsibility and performance of ethical duties in the course of business actions. Advertising is a public communication mode owing to the high amount of people receiving the message at the same time and within a short time. Advertising allows for access to high amounts of people within a short time and plays a large role in the society today. Realizing the role of advertising in the society, the aim of this study is to understand the ethicality behind amount of information disclosed by advertisers to consumers in advertising a product. This will allow a benchmark on the way forward and a look for the arguments for and against advertisers revealing partial information in advertising products. In the light of the debate, the essay will aim at showing that revealing partial information by the advertisers is ethical. Machan and James (101) define “advertising as a form of promotion”, a sort of plea, like a job application, from people who are trying to make a living” (Machan and James, 101). To argue for the fact that revealing partial information is ethical for a business, the authors use a job application resume that is not expected to reveal all the information of the applicant nor an attractive garment used to reveal the whole person. The consumers should not expect to be presented with the whole information within a fifteen-second commercial on television or on a magazine. The buyer has the responsibility of finding more information on the product just like the employer calls prospective employees for interviews to get a further understanding of their skills before choosing employees among the applicants. Therefore, presenting partial information by advertisers is ethical as it provides a window for consumers to check for further information on the product. The other argument for partial information by advertisers is that the aim of advertising is to relay the availability of the product for purchase by a consumer and not a means of information provision. Advertising aims at catching the attention of the advertisers on the products available for sale. Since it is not a means of communicating with the consumer on the product, the advertiser should be expected to reveal full information on the product. There is no ethical obligation for the advertiser in terms of information delivery and responsibility lies with the consumer to find full product information through searching after advertisements catch their attention. The other argument for partial information delivery to the consumer by advertiser is that the aim of advertising is to enhance the image of the product (Machan and James, 102). The consumers know that advertising is aimed at enhancing the image of a product and may not be the whole truth or lies and they have a chance of looking for further information on the product before making purchasing decisions. This is their sole responsibility to find out what the product actually does and can make the purchase of less expensive versions of the product to sample its effectiveness to make informed choices of their subsequent purchases. This shows that the burden of information and understanding of the product lies on the consumer showing the ethicality of partial information by advertisers. The other reason why partial information delivery by advertisers is ethical is the lack of understanding of the needs and purposes of the consumers. Advertisers assume that consumers will seriously examine the advertisement to make a full realization of the benefits and needs they will meet from product purchase. If their needs are met and the product suits their purposes, they will purchase the product. Consumers are thus not regarded as foolish followers of advertisement depicting the ethical aspects of partial information delivery to make consumers willing to seek more information on the product and relate to their needs and purposes. Advertisement is beneficial to the consumer as a means of getting information on new products, services and other information that will benefit the consumer. This allows consumers to have channels of accessing information on product availability allowing them to make further inquiry and purchase the product. Advertising allows consumers to know different products offering same services and meet their needs. Advertising allows consumers to enjoy free information on the internet and allows consumers to know when organizations produce new services and goods to meet consumer needs. The partial information on advertisements being so beneficial to the consumer shows that partial information delivery by the advertiser is ethical. The ethicality of partial information delivery by consumers also rests on prudence, which is moral virtue that asserts the need for everyone to take decent care of himself or herself. Prudence requires a consumer has to be prudent in making in the purchase regardless of the presence of an advertisement or the Lack of it to be ethical. Impulse buying is a point in case where the arguments persists that is a form of manipulation fir buyers when they rely an advertisement to make a purchase they actually do not need. The advertisers are not to blame in the case of impulse buying because prudence, as an ethical virtue, requires consumers to act to the best of their interest. An error of judgment and a failure to take their responsibilities of being prudent in their purchases by the consumer makes them blame advertisers. Advertisers are acting prudently for taking care of their own needs and responsibilities in [providing partial information, aim at making sales, and not to be blamed for a consumer’s impulse buying depicting the ethicality of their advertisement. Revealing partial information by advertisers is also ethical because there is no moral ethic virtue that compels advertisers to reveal all information on the product. The moral virtue that exists is with the consumers who have the responsibility of seeking the best deals for their own good that is prudence. Therefore, the lack of a moral role since not revealing all information cannot be considered lying to the consumers means it is ethical. The reason why this is not lying is that the consumers can be able to find more information on the product through varied forms of information delivery. These communication channels include visiting the websites of the company, searching for testimonials through the internet, looking for product description, and through search engines. The consumers therefore make themselves vulnerable to make purchases they do not meet their needs and purposes when they fail to undertake their responsibility to search for all the information making partial information delivery ethical and lack f prudence unethical for consumers. Advertisers have an ethical responsibility of being honest and avoid misleading the consumers on the products advertised. This does not include revealing all the information on the product. The fact that the advertisers have to be honest ensures that the medium for example television transmitting the advertisement will be affected in cases of dishonesty by advertisers ensuring honest advertising. Advertisers also are responsible to shareholders and boards of the companies they work with to honest advertisement. Since the advertisers have no obligation to reveal all the information on the product, consumers have to be aware of advertisements. However, my opinion is that when consumers seek to better understand a product and make enquiries, advertisers should be honest and reveal this information. The consumer has ability to make this inquiry before making any purchase showing that not revealing all the information by an advertiser is ethical as long as consumers seek all the information from the companies. John Waide believes there is a need for advertisers to refrain from associating a product to deep-seated non-marketing virtues like friendship, esteem, and excitement, acceptance by others (Waide, 73). The reason for Waides assertion is because the products have no association to the non-marketing desire and virtues. However, associative advertising is not deceptive or is it a violation of the autonomy of the audience in deciding to purchase the product or develop the associated virtues (Arrington, 3). According to Waide, associative advertising influences audience to neglect non-market cultivation of the virtues and instead substitute them with market goods resulting in worsening of virtues (Waide, 73). However, Waide concludes that associative advertising does not violate audience autonomy and is not deceptive; therefore, it is ethical advertisement, and his worry is not the ethicality of the advertisement but the virtues at stake. There are counterarguments that partial information to the consumers by advertisers is unethical. These arguments treat humans as objects of advertisements like clay that can easily be modeled into anything. To this, I state that consumers are not preprogrammed robots that are easily manipulated by gimmicks and psychological techniques used by advertisers. Authors against advertising argue that advertisers manipulate consumers into purchasing a product, thereby, equating consumers to puppets on a string. This is not true because of the decision-making power of the consumers on making a purchase or not and they have to determine by themselves whether they will rely on the advertisement in making a purchase. John Galbraith argues that advertising causes nonexistent desires on the consumers and academicians have believed that consumers have no power to resist advertisement. This cannot be the case because in the real sense consumers can actually ignore an advertisement. This makes advertisers to design advertisements clearly to avoid them being ignored by consumers, who have the power to ignore even the best of adverts. The other reason the arguments that consumers have no power to resist advertisement is that advertisers have a a target audience of the people who are willing to purchase the product, if consumers did not have the power to chose adverts could not be aimed to a certain audience. The other argument given for the partial advertisement being unethical is that it causes nonexistent desires. This cannot be the case because if that were the case, consumers with interests in reading and books and having no interest in sports would have developed desires for sports. The reasons include the large amount of advertisement for Monday night football, jerseys, and surfboards. Despite these many advertisements, consumers are divided to sports lovers and non-sports lovers and this demarcation continues to exist showing that advertisements as not a cause of desires. Therefore, it cannot be true that partial advertisement is unethically for causing nonexistent desires. Suppression veri is considered unethical as a form of advertising and making sales by a salesperson. The salesperson using price deception to make a sale through not revealing that a product is available at a lower price in another location. This is, however, not the duty of the salesperson to reveal prices to consumers of other stores offering the products at lower prices, but their role is to make a sale for their own company. Lack of this revelation is ethical for the lack of contractual or moral obligation of the salesperson to reveal different locations with lower product prices. Secondly, consumers have other considerations for their satisfaction including customer service, home delivery, and location among other considerations making different locations offer different prices. This makes non-revelation of the different pricing ethical since the consumers may have knowledge of the pricing differences but the added benefits in a certain location make them purchase at the higher prices. In conclusion, partial information for the consumers by advertisers is ethical. The reasons for the assertion is that there is no obligation binding advertisers to provide all information, a fifteen-second advertisement cannot convey all the information on a product, and that advertising is a promotion and not a way of delivering information. Other reasons include prudence by both consumers and advertisers, the aims of advertisement, honest does not entail revealing all information, and that consumers have the power to decide to make a product purchase or not. However, arguments that revealing less information by advertisers is unethical include that advertising causes nonexistent desires, manipulate consumers to make purchases and suppression veri. From the analysis, the conclusion is that it is ethical for consumers to reveal partial information in advertising. Work Cited Arrington, Robert L. "Advertising and Behavior Control." Journal of Business Ethics. 1.1 (1982): 3-12. Print. John, Waide. The Making of Self and World in Advertising. Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 6, (2), Feb. 1987, p. 73-79. Print. Machan, Tibor R, and James Chesher. A Primer on Business Ethics. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Print. Read More