The Ethics Of Electronic Advertising

Advertising in the modern day has developed alongside the advent of business ethics as a scholarly and academic practice. As the ethical environment of business has seen a surge in study and discipline, advertising has undergone even more intense scrutiny and discussion. Though advertising and criticism is no new marriage as it has been under the microscope since its takeoff in the 1930s, developments in both approach by advertisers and its critiques has lead to an even heavier discussion than before. The focal point of this critique revolves around the notion of consumer sovereignty and how it theoretically has been altered by the ad. The aim of this paper is to address this very subject and

The moral issue of the case centers on privacy concerns of the new online advertising

   Abstract:  This paper takes a look at basic ethics in relation to the Internet. By tracing the development of the Internet, it identifies perils of the World Wide Web and their moral significance to a culture trying to move successfully into the twenty-first century.

Everyday, everywhere we are being inundated with advertisements. Whether it be while you are walking down the street, shopping at the supermarket, or even in the safety of your own home enjoying some tv in your down time. Advertising, whether it be big or small is everywhere; and in fact there are many issues with it. Advertising that promotes a service or product in a deceptive way is highly unethical. This is because it doesn’t provide the customer with enough information that they need in order to make a good, educated decision. And on another note, advertising is manipulative because of the way it promotes consumption at such a large scale. Some of the main reasons for advertising being dishonest are because it displays false savings, it exhibits unnecessary upselling and possibly most importantly, it feul’s wasteful consumerism. The significance of this problem, comes in the form of the large sums of money people waste on products they don’t need and once purchased, realise they don’t want. Frankly it is just too overt to look past.

Each day we are bombarded with advertisements from a plethora of corporations in every waking moment of our lives. Advertising agencies have become so advanced at what they do, that often times we may not even realize we are being advertised a product. This raises an interesting ethical dilemma over a certain type of advertising: persuasive advertising. Philosophers, economists, and business professionals have debated over whether or not persuasive advertising is an immoral violation of the autonomy of consumers. While not all forms of advertising are in and of themselves certainly immoral, persuasive advertising is particularly reprehensible due to the fact that not only does it manipulate our unconscious desires of which we are completely unaware in order to sell a product, but it also routinely leads us to act against our own best interest, thus overriding our autonomy.

In Ricardo Bilton’s article “What Would Kant Do? Ad Blocking is a Problem, but It’s Ethical,” Bilton shows an ethical dilemma between publishers and internet users, about ad blocking. Publishers are like to withdraw the ethical argument when discussing the damages of ad blocking, but they still connect business with ad tech companies and ad networks. And internet users are want to clean out all advertisings while they reading a website and watching a video. Although publishers make how many businesses with other companies, users are still like to install an ad blocker because it helps reader operating conveniently, watching a video smoothly, and clean all the “stuff” in websites.

As markets grow and develop so do advertisements and people’s wallet size. Many of the articles and even videos we see today have some form of click-bait to them. Many people have felt the urge to click on an article or link that seems appealing. Yet come to find out it’s just an ad for some weird product or service and as consumers, we buy into it. Many of us are unaware of today’s advertisements in the news, TV, and magazines.

The aim of this paper is to examine the questions “Internet morality: Should it be the same as real world morality? Should we have the same expectations?” In this paper three areas of the Internet have been discussed to examine how the morality of the Internet world relates to the expectations we have of morality in the real world. The main findings of the paper show that currently interactions within the Internet do not conform to our expectations of morality, when compared to real world situations. In the examples explored the use of personal data, the sharing of copyrighted material and through offensive online messages it is shown how many users of the Internet demonstrate little in the way of an understanding of the morality and implication of the actions they are taking. The conclusions of this paper are that we do not see real world morality translated to the Internet world, however it is something we should expect and strive for.

With the advent of commerce, advertisement, which is a form of communication that delivers the information of product to audience and to persuade audience to do some specific action, appeared. At that time, the market is limited so that cries to attract enough customers demand amount. However, with the development of technologies, the advent of long-distance communication devices provides a broader market. The buyers are not narrow to citizen in a town but expand to nation, even to the world. To attract buyers, the modern advertisement was created. Because of the widespread of advertisements, they can easily influent society. There are three issues of advertisement impact our society. The issues are impact on children, branding, and abuse.

Advertising continued to evolve and changed in time with society. As seen, advertising has been part of society for centuries. As companies have become more competitive in the market and begun looking outside of just their product, to their consumer, the importance of ethical discussions of business practices has

Responsible advertising is highly important in shaping the expectations of tourists. As such, cultural authenticity partially relies on advertising techniques used to promote destinations. Crăciunescu discusses how improper promotion language in advertising can lead to the othering of individuals living in regions different than our own (Crăciunescu 129). Chhabra, Healy, and Sills also touched on the topic of responsible advertising, inferring that for many people tourism involves a high level of expectations and anticipations frequently caused by advertising and media-generated signs, “many of which relate very clearly to complex processes of social emulation” (Chhabra, Healy, & Sills #). To combat issues from arising from media-generated messages, advertising techniques incorporate sensitivity and stray from censored images that purport inaccurate depictions of cultural groups and destinations. Trans-national corporations and entrepreneurs should also employ fair living wages for their employees and work with local individuals to address the needs of the local communities that they will be involved with. Doing so will provide opportunities to build stronger relationships with local communities. All of the suggestions mentioned don’t need to be a means to an end, rather they are just the beginning.

Throughout the course of life from the start of the medieval times the use of advertising has been in use whether it was capturing a thief or raising taxes. From industrialization and promoting new cars through advertisement, it has changed the way the whole world operates with the introduction of new and improved items. Today advertising has become a 150 billion dollar industry (ConsumerNation). Advertising is a part of everyday life because it helps companies promote new products, but is is advertising ethical? Advertising is not ethical because it persuades people into buying products they don’t need, unrealistic body images, and informing the consumer about new technology that is not needed.

To understand what criteria is used to distinguished ethical advertising from unethical advertising, we must first define ethical as a term. Ethics is “the basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human conduct.” (Ethics, n.d.) The act of taking an ethical approach to advertising is more of a corporate philosophy rather than a marketing strategy. “It seeks to promote honesty, fairness, and responsibility in all advertising. Ethics is a notoriously difficult subject because everyone has subjective judgments about what is “right” and what is “wrong.” For this reason, ethical marketing is not a hard and fast list of rules, but a general set of guidelines to assist companies as they evaluate new marketing strategies.” (Ethical Marketing, n.d.)

The primary purpose of the Code is to regulate the ethical rules applicable to commercial advertising, that is to say, all activities designed to stimulate the consumption of products and services and promote institutions, concepts or ideas. Due sense of social responsibility, commercial principles of fair competition, conformity to the purposes of national economic, educational and cultural development, are some examples of the main principles established in the Code. The ethical behavior standards set forth therein shall be observed by all professionals involved in advertising activities, including advertisers, advertising agencies, media, broadcasters, journalists and all other communication

So this research paper aims at taking precautionary steps in the ethical front of the advertisers and of course on the parental & children’s front.