“You can act unethically without breaking any laws, but the community may impose its own informal sanctions for such violations” (O’Sullivan, 2010). This situation can occur against advertisements as well. It’s a known fact that a deceptive advertising leads customers to become more defensive about further advertising claims (Gardner, 1975). Deception protection is really important for someone’s self-efficacy; it makes them handle the problems that they face during their social lives (Boush et al., 2009). As a result of it consumers who feel that the advertisements are making misleading claims start to hold a negative attitude against advertisements and become less susceptible (Boush et al., …show more content…
They consider an advertisement as unethical if it tries to degrade rival or substitute products, gives misleading or false information, makes wrong claims about their brand, conceals information that can vitally affect human life, and if it’s obscene or immoral or against the national interest (Singh et al., 2007). In their third sections, both CAP and BCAP codes, suggest that marketing communications and advertisements should not “materially mislead or be likely to do so” (CAP, p.17, 2014; BCAP, p.3, 2014).
Advertising is a huge sector all around the world so it’s being regulated in most of the countries. At USA, the Federal Trade Commission (FTA) was formed in 1914 to regulate the advertisement (Gardner, 1975). Different than UK, in USA, advertisements are both self-regulated and regulated by FTA. However in countries like Japan and Turkey advertisement regulations have similarities with UK. In Japan, Japan Advertising Review Organization and in Turkey, The Advertising Self-Regulatory Board works with advertisers and marketers, and allows them to self-regulate (JARO, 2014; ROK, …show more content…
Today advertising is under heavy criticism ranging from creating economic waste to promoting harmful products, from sexism to manipulation, from triviality to moral pollution (Singh et al., 2007). Deceptive advertising is pervasive and harms both consumers and advertisers. It can damage the health, welfare, financial resources, privacy, self-esteem, and trust of consumers by using social psychology (Boush et al., 2009). In addition to that big brands’ new advertisements, which promote their products as social status, create distrust about the brand and advertising sector (Klein,