IMPACT OF UNETHICAL ADVERTISEMENTS ON VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERS

Abstract

Advertising is a paid form of communication aims to notify the customers about the product in the mass market. The impact of these advertisements has substantially increased in India and within a time, the industry has carved a niche for itself where various advertisers are so engrossed to outsmart their competitors or to seize the market through different practices that they have overlooked its impact on the customers. The goal of any organization should be to attain profits through fair practices but this greed has led them towards unethical practices. This is the reason that the issue of ethics and ethicality have become a major talking point and play an important role in today’s era of marketing. Ethics in advertising affect the consumer’s trust on the advertisements, promotes negative behavior targeting children and women, as today marketers can go to any length to persuade their audience to purchase the product and rely on it. Therefore, various commissions and acts were formed to protect the interest of consumers through implementation of proper code of conduct, code of ethics and policies where they were given the rights to claim against the false and misleading statements and acts of the marketers. The focus of this paper is to study about the unethical advertisements, types of unethical advertisements, the consumer behavior and their actions against the unethical advertisements. The attention lies on how the competitors act on such misleading acts and what effects do these claims and complaints will result on the brand credibility. The issues and challenges faced by the Commission and Governing bodies to take action against the companies and how the companies react to such decisions. The focus will lay on the new ways of advertising ethics to build consumer trust. The aim of the paper is to study the scope and limits of ethics in advertising through primary and secondary research. The secondary research was made through the questionnaire to identify customers opinion towards unethical advertisements, how do they respond to such types of ads, their perspective about the companies awareness when they visualize these ads, their opinion regarding types of unethical advertisements, reason why do they watch advertisements and do they take decision the basis of those ads, how easily they get influenced by such types of ads. The primary research is done through various research papers available on the internet, various case studies and the actions taken by ASCI on those cases. Companies should focus on the brand credibility for a long time rather than focusing on to capture the market share and attain profits for a short term period. Various cases will be discussed where big brand like HUL, P&G went into various unethical means to fight competition and capture the market share. The theses will be then followed by the discussion on audience responses gathered through the questionnaire and then the findings and recommendation to safeguard the interest of the consumers and stop the unethical paths followed by the companies.