Advertising and consumer desires: ethical implications of creating versus fulfilling wants

¶ … power of a successful ad stems from the population it addresses rather than its words. To put it simply, ads must incorporate its potential customers' hopes, fears, wishes, and dreams, and position the product they are advertising as the key to them. 'Mass desires' is the term typically utilized for denoting such already existing feelings. They merely represent a common private want. Secretly, a large number of individuals desire the very same things - health, wealth, attractiveness, and happiness. An ad will be effective if its creators understand the way a given product will be able to fulfil these private desires (Lee, 2014).

Some advertisers, in a perpetual bid to draw customers and link their products to hedonistic, lavish or "cool" lifestyles, have repeatedly gone past the bounds of what may be regarded as socially and ethically acceptable advertising. An understanding of one's market can aid sellers in designing and adapting their ad messages and brand/product positioning for increased responsiveness to and capitalization on market needs. The fact that the low-power market is lured by status-enhancing things may give rise to an ethical quandary for manufacturers/sellers, particularly because of the racial differences prevailing in conspicuous product use. For the middle-class of society, compensation by purchasing costly items may do nothing but aggravate their already delicate financial condition, contributing to the nation's mounting credit-card debt. In addition, taking into account the willingness of buyers to pay more and more each day, this, arguably, accords companies an unfair way to "extract satisfaction" while setting selling prices of products (Galinsky, 2008). Advertisements convey to the market that, for becoming desirable or sexy, one needs a specific appearance, which can be achieved by buying certain makeup and clothes, and getting cosmetic procedures. Inherent in all ads is the idea that one "needs more" for "more happiness" -- more gadgets, larger houses, better cars, etc. However, those who get lured by this are, in fact, led to nothing, but surplus credit-card debt. Ethics, at one level, consist of two interlinked elements: the traditional activities undertaken by a community/society and philosophical guidelines established by the community/society for accounting for those traditional actions and decreeing actions in future. These two elements establish the basic principles of ethical conduct within society and allow one to compute how far a marketer/advertiser or individual deviates from the societal standard. In this context, the rights of a person are dependent on criteria of what constitutes customary (and hence, proper) behaviour in the community. Advertising becomes unethical when it begins violating fundamental economic assumptions (The Economic, Social, and Regulatory Aspects of Advertising, n.d).