Is Advertising Ethical?

In every segment of business, there’s “the good, the bad and the ugly.” I’m a Business Major and in my opinion, the ugliest part of business is accounting, but many people find that advertising is an ugliest form of business. The word ugly is used to describe what is not pleasant, unsightly or in our case, unethical. In the following, we will be looking into the book, A Primer on Business Ethics , by Tibor R. Machan and James, E. Chesher, to help us define advertising, and find out what John Kenneth Galbraith and F.A. von Hayek have to say about the ethics behind advertising.

Everywhere we go; there is some company or advertising firm, trying to communicate to us, that we should buy their product. When we step onto a bus, drive down the street, go out to a restaurant, order in, go out to a movie or turn on the television in our own homes, we are being exposed to some form of advertising. Advertising is a companies’ way of telling the consumer, that they exist and that they have what the consumer is looking for. In A Primer on Business Ethics , they say it is “a sort of plea, like a job application, from people who are trying to make a living.”(Machan/Chesher 101) One cannot get a job if one does not send out a resume or an application. Similarly, a business cannot operate if it doesn’t advertise to the consumer. Advertising can often times, be controversial because many companies do not represent themselves with complete truth. A Primer on Business Ethics says “Like make up or shoulder pads, advertising aims to enhance the image of a product or a service. In doing so, it neither lies nor tells the whole truth.”(Machan/Chesher 102) Many critics say this is a problem; but is it really?

One of the critics is, John Kenneth Galbraith, who sees advertising as a form manipulation of the human mind. He says, “[…] their central function is to create desire-to bring into being wants that previously did not exist.”(Machan/Chesher 103) He believes that a person will buy something that they did not want, before they had been advertised to. The advertisement is directly correlated to reasoning that went behind the purchase. A good depiction of Galbraith’s point of view is an image of a man who goes into a car dealership. He goes into the dealership looking for a low profile car at a reasonable price. Upon his arrival he is greeted by a car salesman, who saw him from a distance. The salesman asks him what he is looking for and before the customer knows it, the salesman has put the image of him driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, in a brand new, cherry, red convertible sports car, with the top down and the woman of his dreams in his passenger seat. Galbraith would say that a car dealership manipulated the customer into buying a car that he previously did not want. This would be unethical because the dealer was trying to make the man spend more money on a car that the man didn’t want, as if the salesman was brainwashing him. This view is contested by F.A. von Hayek, who sees the consumer in a different light.

Hayek argues that consumers have far more control over their lives than Galbraith believes. One of his arguments is that the idea of “want”, is not planted, but is developed by the individual. He feels that consumers are not powerless nor are they ignorant to advertising. “If we dislike sports, it doesn’t matter how many commercials for surfboards, jerseys, and Monday night football that we see. They just bounce off us.”(Machan/ Chesher 103) He is saying that humans are not robots who are programmed and told what to buy. Consumers will spend their money based on their own wants, which were placed there by themselves.

Prudence is described as, “[…] the moral or ethical virtue that requires one to take decent care of oneself.” (Machan) In an ethical business transaction, prudence is involved. In A Primer on Business Ethics, the issue of impulse buying is presented. This is an issue because, when a person is advertised to, and they buy an item that they may or may not want, prudence is questioned. Galbraith would argue that in this case, ethics were not used because the seller prompted the buyer to act impulsively and in a sense manipulated the buyer. Machan and Chesher argue that once the consumer realizes that they weren’t looking out for their own interests, they blame the advertisers. They also say that the advertiser was not to blame because the advertiser was using prudence, but instead the consumer is to blame, because they had the lapse in judgment and failed to take care of their own responsibilities.

       Now that we have seen both side of the issue we can see which side truly has more validity in the discussion. In Galbraith’s argument, he states that when advertisers do their jobs, they are planting “wants” inside of their target markets. It is true that an advertisement can make the consumer buy something. This is a fact that most of us have found true. It’s not uncommon for a human being to see a commercial on the television, advertising a delicious sizzling steak at a restaurant like Chili’s, and then soon after, finding themselves sitting in a booth awaiting their succulent steak. The part of his argument that is wrong is the part that says that our decision to go to Chili’s was solely based on the fact that a Chili’s commercial aired when we were watching television. Hayek said that our desire to buy the steak came from our personal preference toward steak. If a consumer was a vegetarian, they would still be sitting on their couch, watching The Wheel of Fortune or some other program. Consumers have the capacity to discern between what they want and what they do not want. In marketing classes, they teach us about different types of promotions. There is advertising, public relations, sales promotion and a few other types. One of the things that they tell us is that advertising has the least credibility. This means that most people aren’t likely to believe the promises made by a company in a commercial on the television or in a newspaper advertisement.

            There must be some sort of other goal of advertising than to manipulate people into buying their product. The answer to that is that people don’t need to be manipulated. A business that advertises becomes successful because they have, either taken the time to market their product to fit the consumer’s needs or because they have a product that is highly desired by the consumer. Do people still buy things that they wouldn’t have wanted if a commercial hadn’t aired? Yes, this happens all the time, but it isn’t because the advertiser acted unethically. It is because the person bought something without thinking. Unless the sale of the item will actually be detrimental to the consumer’s well being, the burden cannot be placed on the advertiser. It is our own responsibility to look out for our own well being, hence prudence, which is a moral virtue. If we fail to do so, by taking a loss and buying something that we don’t want, we are at fault.  

            It’s very easy to demonize a part of business that at times, separates us from our television program or misrepresents a product. Galbraith sees advertising as a way to manipulate the consumer, and Hayek the consumer as an individual who is responsible for their own decision regardless of how they are advertised to. In the end, Hayek had the stronger argument because he pointed out flaws in Galbraith’s statements. Ultimately, the information portrayed here, shows that humans can make their own decisions; advertising helps make their decisions easier.

Tell me, what companies out there are crossing the line of Ethical Advertising? What do you think about this issue?