The Positive and Negative Effects of Advertising on Consumer Behavior

The background given provides us with an idea of the definition of advertising, its purpose and goals, its different cycles

Magazines are popular in the United States; they can be found in stores, offices, and houses. They are popular for advertising. Television, news, radio, billboards and online websites are just a few forms of media that companies use to advertise their products or services. Companies use advertisements to influence the consumer to either buy or use their products and services. Advertisements are used to manipulate consumers in many ways.

Unfortunately, advertising is sending our country into a quick downward spiral, doing an immense amount of harm and little good. Companies pay millions of dollars each year, in hopes to successfully pull the wool over our eyes and get their product sold. The dishonesty is leaving the citizens of this country with nothing to gain. The biggest problem with advertising is that the majority of it is alarmingly misleading. Advertisements convey an unrealistic view of a particular product. Companies go to extraordinary lengths to persuade consumers to indulge in unnecessary luxuries. Once again, the consumer falls victim to their tricks and

Mass media is one of the main approaches used in health promotion and its lack of success may be due to its oversimplification or segmented view of health and well-being.

In today’s society, the media, in many ways control the average consumer’s way of thinking. Bright billboards, catchy radio jingles, colorful magazine ads, and eye catching T.V ads play a major role in obesity in the United States. The one dollar double cheeseburger, offered by Burger King and McDonalds is a prime example. Burger King offers more meat with a better taste, and the advertisements are very colorful. Media tends to influence un-natural way of thinking among the average consumer. These ads usually misrepresent images of their target audience, using physically fit looking people in the fast food ads. A large number of these advertisements place a great deal of attention on the foods taste, rather than its nutritional value. This causes the consumer to overlook the risk and pay more attention to the taste and convenience. Well designed fast food media campaigns play a major role in the unnatural thinking that leads to obesity in the United States.

Advertisements have become more common and can be found in almost all locations in the society; however they vary depending on the content and the medium they use to convey the information. It can be noted that television has become one of the most influential and powerful medium since it gives both visual and hearing attributes. Television is preferred by many organizations among them being Power ads since it gives a leading hand in competition since it basically influences the consumers not because of the unique product qualities but the mode at which the advertisement is made. Advertisement being one of the marketing strategies has to be designed in a way

Wakefield, Melanie A., Barbara Loken, and Robert C. Hornik. "Use of Mass Media Campaigns to Change Health Behaviour." The Lancet 376.9748 (2010): 1261-271.

Everyday our lives are affected by advertising and media. Companies use advertising to take advantage of every aspect of people’s lives. As a result, a change needs to happen in advertising, for the negative impacts of advertising are hurting the cultural norms of society. Everyday companies use advertising as a tool to take advantage of the relationships of consumers.

Therefore, the fact about the advertisements are that it can benefit the society in many ways but at the same time it can mislead the society by indulging the people in misusing the products that are advertised in wrong ways. The ads like smoking confute the benefits of advertisement however the ads like that of Kellogg’s Company affirms that advertisement can be beneficial to the society as it gives information about the health issues. In this way, the writer sums up about advertising having both the good and the bad aspects towards the

Mass media has considerable potential for affecting health behavior. Results indicated that the amount of media based health information is associated with a patient’s health decision making process and a medical professional’s medical advice.

2.1 Ways in which media can be used to influence the attitudes and behavior of people in relation to health and

Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, persuasive, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Its impacts created on the society throughout the years has been amazing, especially in this technology age. Influencing people’s habits, creating false needs, distorting the values and priorities of our society with sexism and feminism, advertising has become a poison snake ready to hunt his prey. However, on the other hand, advertising has had a positive effect as a help of the economy and society.

Advertising has had a major impact on society. Some may be considered positive and some negative. Take a look around, advertisements are placed everywhere, television commercials, billboards, newspapers, and even on the sides of buses. Advertising is the basic form of marketing and trading throughout the world. Today’s society knows it as marketers trying to influence or persuade consumers into buying something. It also serves as a medium for services and businesses. There are many advertising strategies, but television commercials will always remain the number one strategy. Think about it, how much television is watched a day, probably a lot. What better way to advertise a product or service? Advertising has a positive effect on our economy. It does not only influence and persuade consumers, but it also benefits them in many ways. It also benefits manufacturers and their company, and the world as a whole.

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 is a persuasive communication attempt to change or reinforce one’s prior attitude that is predictable of future behavior. We are not born with the attitudes for which we hold toward various things in our environment. Instead, we learn our feelings of favorability or unfavorability through information about the object through advertising or direct experience with the object, or some combination of the two. Furthermore, the main aim of advertising is to ‘persuade’ to consumer in order to generate new markets for production.