Advertising, a form of publicity, can pass on a social message so that people understand their sobligation towards society. The purpose of this study was to look into how consumers responded to socially conscious advertisements. This study conceptualizes the antecedents of attitude towards commercial advertisements that incorporate the social message, including advertising creativity, informativeness, and emotional appeal; each one can influence consumers' behavior. This study also examined the relationship between (i) Attitude towards the ad with a social message (...) and purchase intention of the consumer and (ii) Purchase intention of the consumer and subjective well-being. The interrelationships in the proposed model were investigated using structural equation modeling (SEM). A quantitative survey of university students was conducted in order to gather the data, which was based on an experiment. A field survey of 395 students was conducted to test the hypotheses. The results of the empirical tests confirm that attitude towards the advertisement positively affects the purchase intention of the consumer and that advertising creativity and emotional appeal are the key predictors of attitude towards the advertisement that highlights a social issue. And, purchase intention positively influences the subjective well-being of the consumers. This paper contributes to the theory by giving new insight into the advertising literature. It also provides the necessary knowledge to marketers and advertisers on commercial advertisements incorporating a social message and the subjective well-being of consumers. (shrink)

Concerns about advertising take one of two forms. Some people are worried that advertising threatens autonomous choice. Others are worried not about autonomy but about the values spread by advertising as a powerful institution. I suggest that this bifurcation stems from misunderstanding autonomy. When one turns from autonomous choice to autonomy of persons, or what is often glossed as self-rule, then one has reason to think that advertising poses a moral problem of a sort so far (...) unrecognized. I diagnose this problem using Charles Taylor''s work on "strong evaluation". This problem turns out to have political ramifications that have been only dimly recognized in business ethics circles. (shrink)

An important part of the world we live in is represented by symbols, and mediated images and mass media are the main sources of the symbolic material used in the process of shaping the postmodern self. The cultural industry and the communication technology are growing rapidly and they capture important areas located until recently under the tutelage of traditional social institutions such as the family or the church. If we think of the contemporary society in terms of the weak theology (...) proposed by John D. Caputo as a de-secularized space where the individual’s need for the sacred is strongly revealed, the crucial role played by the media in the construction of the contemporary world becomes obvious. Certainly, within this vast territory represented by the media culture, advertising is one of the most relevant areas for analysis of the manner in which symbolic structures are reintegrated in contemporary society. Therefore, our paper focuses on advertising as an important force that creates symbolic meanings in the contemporary culture. Along with the symbolic content of advertising, a significant part in augmenting its cultural force is attributed to the way it succeeds to contain religious dimensions in its mechanisms. (shrink)

Advertisers often have been accused of using techniques which manipulate and control the behavior of consumers and hence violate their autonomy. Some of these techniques are puffery, subliminal advertising, and indirect information transfer. After examining both criticisms and defenses of such practices, this paper presents an analysis of four of the concepts involved in the debate — the concepts of autonomous desire, rational desire, free choice, and control. Applying the results to the case of advertising, it is shown (...) that advertising cannot be found guilty of intrinsically or frequently violating the consumer's autonomy in any of the relevant senses of this notion. (shrink)

Feminist authors claim that many of the advertising messages are promoting stereotypical images of the genders. However, if in social sciences, gender stereotypes have been facilitated and enforced by religious ideologies, the connections between gender stereotypes in advertising and religious ideologies remain to be investigated. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these connections. Using the tools and methods of philosophy of communication, the paper attempts to emphasize a double discourse of advertising: an external one that (...) derives from existing religious ideologies, and an internal one that borrows the structure and elements of modern religiosity. If the first one is enforcing the gender stereotypes, the second one is more innovative and less related to stereotypical images of genders. When advertising is approached from the perspective of philosophy of communication, its most conspicuous aspect is its narrative dimension. One way in which narratives of advertising are constructed is in the form of myth. We can see that, in some circumstances, advertising has a function similar to myth, or includes structures of depth coming from the world of myth or of religion understood in a broader sense. The power of those elements is derived not from the realm of merchandise value, but from the one of traditional mentalities and cultural representations. In order to illustrate my research on the relation between gender, religion and advertising, I choose a sample of ads, that I analyze using the tools of philosophy of communication. Thus, my research has led me to a nuanced understanding of the relation between gender stereotypes and religion in advertising. (shrink)

This article examines whether the likelihood and amount of firm charitable giving in response to catastrophic events are related to firm advertising intensity, and whether industry competition level moderates this relationship. Using data on Chinese firms’ philanthropic response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, we find that firm advertising intensity is positively associated with both the probability and the amount of corporate giving. The results also indicate that this positive advertising intensity-philanthropic giving relationship is stronger in competitive industries, (...) and firms in competitive industries are more likely to donate. This study thus provides evidence suggesting that even in the wake of catastrophic events, corporate philanthropic giving is strategic. (shrink)

Political advertising is changing. This chapter considers some of the implications of this for the democratic process. I begin with recent reports of online political advertising. From this, two related concerns emerge. The first is that online political advertisements sometimes occur in the dark, and the second is that they can involve sending different messages to different groups. I consider these issues in turn. This involves an extended discussion of the importance of publicity and discussion in democracy, and (...) a comparison between dog whistles and dark advertisements. Through this, I look to outline some of the ways in which online political advertisements can undermine the democratic process. (shrink)

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the (...) common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands. (shrink)

Claims advertising is nothing but a metaphysical hypothesis about the moral nature of things: objects aren't purely physical or economical entities. Any object, regardless of its nature, can become a complex of possible happiness--not just an object of value, but a moral source of perfection for any one of us.

This article analyzes the four main criticisms against commercial manipulative advertising : the virtue ethics criticism, the utilitarian criticism, the autonomist criticism, and the Kantian criticism. After demonstrating the weaknesses of the virtue ethics criticism, the utilitarian criticism, and the autonomist criticism, I reconstruct the latter using Kant’s conception of autonomy. In doing so, I simultaneously expand the Kantian criticism: irrational advertising not only entails treating humanity merely as means, but it also threatens moral autonomy by encouraging heteronomy (...) and sometimes even a rebellion against the moral law. (shrink)

Review of Delia Cristina Balaban, Advertising. From Strategic Planning to Media Implementation, (Iaşi: Polirom, 2009).

Libertarian philosophy asserts that only the initiation of physical force against persons or property, or the threat thereof, is inherently illegitimate. A corollary to this assertion is that all forms of speech, including fraudulent advertising, are not invasive and therefore should be considered legitimate. On the other hand, fraudulent advertising can be viewed as implicit theft under the theory of contract: if a seller accepts money knowing that his product does not have some of its advertised characteristics, he (...) acquires the property title to the customer’s money without voluntary consent, which is theft. The balance between these two logical extensions of property rights—the right of free speech and the right of contract—lies somewhere in the area of communication philosophy, and can be explained through understanding the role of communication in human interactions. Advertising is a form of communication that may convey important information about the conditions of the proposed contract. These conditions are expressed in particular words that may have different meanings in different circumstances. Therefore to determine whether a particular example or “misinterpretation” is mere sophistry or a type of fraud, the judicial system has to approach each issue on a case-by-case basis. The border between legal and illegal should be determined by precedents and by expectations based on commonly accepted definitions of terms—what people commonly understand by the words and other forms of communication they use. (shrink)

Native advertising has recently become a prominent buzzword for advertisers and publishers alike. It describes advertising formats which closely adapt their form and style to the editorial environment they appear in, intending to hide the commercial character of these ads. In two experimental studies, we test how advertising disclosures in native ads on news websites affect recipients’ attitudes towards a promoted brand in a short and long-term perspective. In addition, we explore persuasion through certain content features (i. (...) e., message sidedness and use of exemplars) and how they affect disclosure effects. Results show that disclosures increase perceived persuasive intent but do not necessarily decrease brand attitudes. However, disclosure effects do not persist over time and remain unaffected by content features. (shrink)

As a technology of commemoration, epinician song was a late archaic innovation. To gain acceptance for this innovative genre, Pindar works to anchor it to Greek epic and encomiastic poetry, that is, to demonstrate its continuity with these genres. But Pindar also regularly vaunts his poetry on the grounds that it is novel and inventive, potentially undermining his efforts at anchoring. This paper studies Olympian 13 as an example of a text in which Pindar’s habits of anchoring his poetry and (...) advertising its inventiveness are effectively reconciled. I argue that the ode’s central Bellerophon myth, a pointed rewriting of Homer’s account of Bellerophon (Il. 6.119-211), and the ode’s hybrid meter are showpieces of poetic innovation that demonstrate the worth and originality of Pindaric epinician to the ode’s Corinthian audience, while at the same time anchoring this genre to Homeric epic and dithyrambic song. (shrink)

Medicine is unique among professions and trades, offering a 'product' which is unlike any other. The consequences for patients of being attracted by misleading information to an inappropriate doctor or service are such as to demand special restrictions on the advertising of doctors' services. Furthermore, health care in the UK is organised around the 'referral system', whereby general practitioners refer patients to specialists when necessary rather than have specialists accept patients on self-referral. But this need not inhibit the provision (...) of helpful factual information to those who need it. Recent policy changes by the General Medical Council considerably broaden the scope for general practitioners to make factual information of their services available to local people, while safeguarding the public against promotional activities which are designed to increase demand for certain kinds of specialist service by playing upon individuals' fears and lack of medical knowledge. (shrink)

The level of development of advertising and sponsorship activities in Russia is still significantly inferior to Western countries, but every year we see tremendous development in this area. Sponsorship is not mostly considered as an investment and marketing communication yet, but rather as a charity. This approach, according to the authors, is more consistent with philanthropy. In this regard, the article defines the concepts of "sponsorship" and "philanthropy", shows the difference between them. Examples of interaction between sports organizations and (...) sponsors are considered. The role of advertising in this interaction is analyzed. According to the authors, Russia has a good legal framework for regulating the relations of sponsors, patrons, athletes and fans, but the system of ethical control of such relations is poorly developed. (shrink)

The partner choice approach to understanding the evolution of cooperation builds on approaches that focus on partner control by considering processes that occur prior to pair or group formation. Proponents of the partner choice approach rightly note that competition to be chosen as a partner can help solve the puzzle of cooperation. I aim to build on the partner choice approach by considering the role of signalling in partner choice. Partnership formation often requires reliable information. Signalling is thus important in (...) the context of partner choice. However, the issue of signal reliability has been understudied in the partner choice literature. The issue deserves attention because – despite what proponents of the partner choice approach sometimes claim – that approach does face a cheater problem, which we might call the problem of false advertising in biological markets. Both theoretical and empirical work is needed to address this problem. I will draw on signalling theory to provide a theoretical framework within which to organise the scattered discussions of the false advertising problem extant in the partner choice literature. I will end by discussing some empirical work on cooperation, partner choice, and punishment among humans. (shrink)

Digital media is getting smarter. Home electrical goods are getting smarter. This article explores how one aspect of content is beginning to reflect this—digital advertising. It is becoming increasingly important for advertisers to target consumers as individuals and in communities of interest rather than by demographic. This article explores the impact of smart systems and artificial intelligence (AI) on advertising and examines different approaches to creating intelligent and smart content and how behaviour is fast becoming the guiding principle (...) for new content forms. (shrink)

Advertisers in Israel routinely omit representation of women and girls as a form of adaptation to norms prevalent among ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, by which the representation or allusion to a woman’s body, voice, or garments is considered immodest and distracting. What, if any, should be the response of antidiscrimination law to exclusionary advertisements, and why is this question worth exploring? This article argues that laws banning discrimination in the provision of products and services should also apply to advertisements that categorically (...) refrain from presenting women. Beyond protecting individual members of vulnerable groups, antidiscrimination law should partake in freeing the public sphere of messages that reinforce discriminatory values. The intended, overt, and complete denial of women’s existence merits the law’s intervention in commercial speech. After conceptualizing the harm caused to unspecified individuals and defining discriminatory advertisements, we outline the considerations that should guide the designing of rules against discriminatory ads and apply them to a set of real-life incidents of exclusionary advertisements, demonstrating how to assess the severity of discrimination in each case. Finally, we consider the free speech implications, as well as the argument that liberal multicultural accommodation renders “modest” advertisements legitimate. (shrink)

Political advertising has long been a target for criticism regarding unethical behaviour. This study looks at the attitudes of Australian advertising agency executives and politicians towards ethical issues relating to political advertising. A sample of 101 advertising agency executives and 46 federal politicians were compared and some attitudinal differences were found, which could be areas of tension in the agency-client relationship.

This study investigates the persuasive advertising and informative advertising effects of CSR initiatives on corporate reputation and brand equity based on the evidence from the life insurance industry in Taiwan. The study finds, first, policyholders’ perceptions concerning the CSR initiatives of life insurance companies have positive effects on customer satisfaction, corporate reputation, and brand equity. Second, the advertising effects of the CSR initiatives on corporate reputation are only informative. Third, the impacts of CSR initiatives on brand equity (...) include informative advertising and persuasive advertising effects. This study contributes the literature by explicit defining the advertising effects of CSR initiatives. Following the first step made by McWilliams et al. (Journal of Management Studies 43(1):1–18, 2006 ), the hypotheses of this study crystallize their conceptual framework. The obtained results in this research first identify the informative advertising effects and persuasive advertising effects of CSR initiatives. (shrink)

Moral reasoning among media professionals varies. Historically, advertising professionals score lower on the Defining Issues Test than their media colleagues in journalism and public relations. However, the extent to which professional identity impacts media professionals’ moral reasoning has yet to be examined. To understand how professional identity influences moral reasoning, if at all, and guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, 134 advertising practitioners working in the USA participated in an online experiment. While professional identity was (...) not a significant predictor of moral reasoning, an interaction effect between gender and identity priming occurred. This finding suggests that we reconsider moral psychology theory’s explanatory power for media practitioners and consider how the complexity of professional identities in concert with gender and professional training, among other variables, interact to affect moral reasoning. In addition, advertising practitioners participating in this experiment scored higher on the DIT than those tested previously. (shrink)

It is argued that persuasive advertising overrides the autonomy of consumers, in that it manipulates them without their knowledge and for no good reason. Such advertising causes desires in such a way that a necessary condition of autonomy — the possibility of decision — is removed. Four notions central to autonomous action are discussed — autonomous desire, rational desire and choice, free choice, and control or manipulation — following the strategy of Robert Arrington in a recent paper in (...) this journal. Replies are made to Arrington's arguments in favour of advertising. It is also claimed that the argument developed by Philip Nelson, which concludes that even if persuasive advertising does override autonomy, it is still in the interests of consumers to be subjected to it, is seriously mistaken. Finally, some caveats concerning informative advertising are presented. (shrink)

This study compares the perceptions and ethical evaluations of select advertising controversies between U.S. and South Korean cultures. In addition, the utility of using ethical ideologies, as measured by the Ethics Perception Questionnaire, is examined. Results suggest a surprising level of similarity between the two cultures regarding perceptions of advertising practices. The role of ideology factors strongly into theses evaluations as measured by the EQP.

Child advertising is routinely accused of being inherently unfair. This is normally based on the claim that younger children do not understand advertising’s selling intent, a claim that is well supported by the available evidence. But the argumentation that gets us from this claim to inherent unfairness has been largely ignored. This article addresses this gap in the literature by considering two accounts of fairness as candidates for understanding child advertising: the process-exclusive account and the inclusive account. (...) The article argues for the rejection of the process-exclusive account on the basis that it ends up condemning acceptable, non-commercial persuasion. The article then examines the candidates for the negative outcome of child advertising that is required for unfairness on the inclusive account. It concludes that the evidence for each being inherent to child advertising is currently insufficient to support the conclusion that child advertising is inherently unfair. (shrink)

Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs has been a heavily contested issue over the past decade, touching on several issues of responsibility facing the pharmaceutical industry. Much research has been conducted on DTCA, but hardly any studies have discussed this topic from a corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective. In this article, we use several elements of CSR, emphasising consumer autonomy and safety, to analyse differences in DTCA practices within two different policy contexts, the United States of America and the (...) European Union (EU). Doing so results in an alternative analysis of the struggle between proponents and opponents of DTCA from a CSR perspective, adding an alternative view on this debate. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has dramatically changed the way organizations communicate, understand, and interact with their potential consumers. In the context of this trend, the ethical considerations of advertising when applying AI should be the core question for marketers. This paper discusses six dominant algorithmic purchase decision pathways that align with ethical philosophies for online customers when buying a product/goods. The six ethical positions include: ethical egoism, deontology, relativist, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and ethics of care. Furthermore, this paper launches an “intelligent (...) advertising” AI theme by examining its present and future as well as identifying the key phases of intelligent advertising. Several research questions are offered to guide future research on intelligent advertising to benefit ethical AI decision-making. Finally, several areas that can be widely applied to ethical intelligent advertising are suggested for future research. (shrink)

Advertising spokespersons have been defending their industry against tobacco and alcohol advertising bans by claiming the bans will do no good. In mature categories, they say advertising does not attract new users, but merely causes people to switch brands. This article contends that such an argument is based on legal pragmatism and will eventually fail because the public does not believe it. It suggests an ethical defense based on the public's right to know.

Advertising is a tool by which the audience who may be the viewers, readers or listeners are communicated and convinced to buy or taking any action regarding the products, or getting information about the services provided. The TV advertisements influence the consumers’ buying behaviour. The need of TV advertisement has increased with the fast growth of mobile phones industry in Pakistan. This paper investigates the relationship between independent variable of advertisement with dependent variables of consumer choice, consumer awareness, consumer (...) perception, and consumer motivation by getting the responses of 250 respondents using questionnaires based on 5-point Likert scale from the graduating students of various faculties at University of Karachi. The main results of the study show a strong association between the independent and dependent variables. It is a fact that the brands which are advertised on TV are purchased more because people become emotionally attached with such brands or products. This study is very useful for producers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers as well engaged in mobile business in Pakistan. (shrink)

Despite a growing population of older people, traditional prejudices against age continue to flourish in society. The media in particular are often guilty of ageism, persistently focusing upon the ‘youth market’, and advertisers are particular offenders. By ignoring older people, or using them as caricatures, the advertising industry not only violates its ethical responsibilities to this group within the community, but also overlooks the commercial opportunity presented by the new generation of older consumers. The article presents research into UK (...) print media which shows that older people tend not to be featured in advertisements in mainstream publications, but are prominent in advertisements in publications for the over‐fifties. The issues this raises in terms of the duty of advertisers to respect the rights of older people are discussed, along with the commercial imperative to provide more appropriate images of older people in UK advertising. (shrink)

The proliferation of online disinformation has become of major societal concern. Because of online programmatic algorithms, brands may find their ads running on disinformation websites alongside disinformation. In this experimental study (N = 617), we investigate people’s brand-related and news-related responses in this context. Results show that when an advertised brand is displayed on the same webpage as a disinformation article, brand attitude and brand trust are negatively affected; this effect is even more pronounced when the brand is thematically congruent (...) with the disinformation article. This suggests that brands (especially congruent ones) might be contaminated by disinformation. In addition, presenting an ad alongside a disinformation article increases the credibility of the article, as well as people’s level of agreement with the article’s content. This seems to suggest that advertising can lend validity to disinformation and amplify its (harmful) effects. These results have important and timely managerial and societal implications. (shrink)

In “The Ethics of Advertising for Health Care Services” (2014), Schenker, Arnold, and London argue that advertisements for physicians, hospitals, and other health care services are morally problematic and ought to be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as it regulates prescription drug ads. I argue that the regulation of prescription drug ads has been so ineffective that, if the harms of health care service ads are similar to the harms of drug ads, such regulation is bound (...) to fail. This is a major public health concern, because any good produced by these ads does not necessarily morally compensate for the harm caused. If the ads cannot be banned entirely, I propose a regulatory strategy that involves redesigning them from the ground up. (shrink)

This study examines the self-reported ethics of both current and future advertising practitioners, and compares their responses to four scenarios and 17 statements on advertising ethics. Stepwise discriminant analysis was used to determine the extent to which both groups applied the classical ethical theory of deontology to the scenarios and statements. Results indicate significant differences between both groups. For example, current advertising practitioners are significantly less likely than future practitioners to apply deontology to decision making. The implications (...) of these results are discussed and suggestions for future research are outlined. (shrink)

According to conceptual metaphor, this study finds and categorizes three metaphors in perfume commercials: FRAGRANCE IS ATTRACTION, FRAGRANCE IS EMOTION, and FRAGRANCE IS OBJECT. Drawing on the analytical tool of multimodal metaphor analysis, the study further analyzes how perfume commercials complete the metaphorical operation mechanism of mapping from visual and auditory modes to olfactory. It is found that, different from the traditional definition of a concrete source domain and an abstract target domain in conceptual metaphors, the joint participation of multiple (...) modes in commercials may cause a reversal of the degree of abstraction between the source and the target. Due to the limitation of transmitting olfactory information in fragrance commercials where the audience can only receive audible and visual information, “scent” becomes a more abstract concept, while the abstract concepts of “attraction” and “emotion” become a more concrete source. Additionally, the three metaphors’ advertising effects in fragrance commercials are evaluated. Theoretical implications for future studies in multimodal metaphor analysis are also discussed. (shrink)

American democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas to create a rational and well informed public, which, in turn, makes decisions that benefit society as a whole. Unfortunately, media reliance on advertising may be eroding the necessary free flow of information. This article addresses the proper role of advertisers in the media. Certainly advertisers enjoy some degree of economic power over the media, but should that influence be used to control media content? Arendt's view of communicative power demonstrates (...) how advertisers' power originates with the public. Donaldson's social contract theory of business explains why that power entails responsibility and why advertisers are obligated not to abuse it. (shrink)

This paper sketches how late seventeenth-century Dutch anatomists used printed publications to advertise their anatomical preparations, inventions and instructional technologies to an international clientele. It focuses on anatomists Frederik Ruysch and Lodewijk de Bils , inventors of two separate anatomical preparation methods for preserving cadavers and body parts in a lifelike state for decades or centuries. Ruysch's and de Bils's publications functioned as an ‘advertisement’ for their preparations. These printed volumes informed potential customers that anatomical preparations were aesthetically pleasing and (...) scientifically important but did not divulge the trade secrets of the method of production. Thanks to this strategy of non-disclosure and advertisement, de Bils and Ruysch could create a well-working monopoly market of anatomical preparations. The ‘advertising’ rhetorics of anatomical publications highlight the potential dangers of equating the growth of print culture with the development of an open system of knowledge exchange. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la revue October, N° 131, Winter 2010, p. 23–50. Nous remercions Michael Cowan de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. In September of 1925, readers leafing through Der Kinematograph or Lichtbildbühne or another such film journal might have encountered a strangely familiar sight : in an advertisement for a major exhibition of the German film and photography industries entitled “Kipho” (“Kino und Photo”), which was to be held in Berlin from September 25th to (...) (...) - Cinéma, animation et vidéo – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Pharmaceutical advertising is one of the most important kinds of advertising that can have a direct impact on the health of a consumer. Hence, this necessitates the fact that it is essential for advertisers of such products to take special care and additional responsibility when devising the promotional strategies of these products. In reality, it has been observed that pharmaceutical product advertisers often promoted their products to achieve their own goals at the potential risk of having an adverse (...) effect on the consumerÕs health. This type of advertising is most often seen in over-the-counter drug product advertisements, and not as often in the case of prescription drug advertisements, which is relatively new. This article analyzes various purposes of advertising pharmaceutical products and also the potential problems that arise from the way pharmaceutical products have quite frequently been promoted. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for advertisers to present required product disclaimers quickly at the end of advertisements. We show that fast disclaimers greatly reduce consumer comprehension of product risks and benefits, creating implications for social responsibility. In addition, across two studies, we found that disclaimer speed and brand familiarity interact to predict brand trust and purchase intention, and that brand trust mediated the interactive effect of brand familiarity and disclaimer speed on purchase intention. Our results indicate that fast disclaimers actually (...) reduce brand trust and purchase intention for unfamiliar brands, suggesting that there are both economic and social responsibility reasons to use less rapid disclaimers for unfamiliar brands. Conversely, disclaimer speed had no negative effects on brand trust and purchase intention for highly familiar brands, presenting ethical tensions between economic interests (e.g., an efficient use of advertisement time) and social responsibility. We discuss the implications of our framework for advertising ethics, for corporate social performance, and for corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

To augment the consumption of the ever growing production of processed foods, food companies are specifically targeting children with their advertisements. Advertising has even infiltrated the educational system in the form of corporate sponsored “educational materials.” This paper discusses the effects such aggressive forms of advertising have on the development of personal autonomy, or self-governance. I argue that the bad reasoning skills such advertisements promote undermine the development of the very abilities children need to become adults capable of (...) making rational choices. A detailed look at several types of food advertisements aimed at children supports this claim. (shrink)

Public policy tries to promote appropriate drug use by allowing firms to market drugs in interstate commerce only for uses that the Food and Drug Administration has found to be safe and effective. Because of their medical knowledge, physicians are authorized to prescribe drugs even for uses unapproved by the FDA. Nevertheless, physicians have relied on drug firms for information on appropriate prescribing despite the inherent tension between drug firm dissemination of information to promote sales and rational prescribing. In the (...) past, physicians often relied particularly on drug firm advertising for information on drug use. Today, physicians rely on drug firms to finance continuing medical education. A historical review reveals connections between these two different ways commercial interests have influenced the information that physicians receive and points the way to needed reforms. (shrink)

Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising is pervasive in the United States. Beyond its effect on consumer behavior, DTCPA changes the relationship between individuals and physicians. The author provides a brief history of pharmaceutical advertising in the United States. The author then analyzes the current commonly used marketing techniques of pharmaceutical companies and argues that pharmaceutical companies are “irrational authorities” in Erich Fromm’s sense of the term since they seek to exploit persons. Using concepts from various philosophers from the Continental tradition, (...) with a particular emphasis on the work of Michel Foucault, the author analyzes the power relations involved in DTCPA and ultimately argues that DTCPA subtly undermines the contemporary paradigm of patient autonomy while simultaneously depending upon it by treating health consumers as “dividuals,” that is, as porous entities to be manipulated. (shrink)

Examination of most-used textbooks discloses a glaring and serious need for introductory advertising text writers to cover ethics within a framework of theory and principle to provide students with the necessary theoretical tools indispensable for arriving at individual ethical conclusions. Instead of ethical principles and theory, the study finds a preoccupation with defense of the advertising profession against common societal criticisms; defenses which omit factual support and strike chords of overcharged emotionalism.

Advertising by health care institutions has increased steadily in recent years. While direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is subject to unique oversight by the Federal Drug Administration, advertisements for health care services are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and treated no differently from advertisements for consumer goods. In this article, we argue that decisions about pursuing health care services are distinguished by informational asymmetries, high stakes, and patient vulnerabilities, grounding fiduciary responsibilities on the part of health care providers (...) and health care institutions. Using examples, we illustrate how common advertising techniques may mislead patients and compromise fiduciary relationships, thereby posing ethical risks to patients, providers, health care institutions, and society. We conclude by proposing that these risks justify new standards for advertising when considered as part of the moral obligation of health care institutions and suggest that mechanisms currently in place to regulate advertising for prescription pharmaceuticals should be applied to advertising for health care services more broadly. (shrink)