Introduction Cosmetics are amongst the huge expenditures for consumers, especially women, with the revenue generated by the industry surpassing $7 billion every financial year. Cosmetic advertising provides women with product information. There is a greater likelihood of women purchasing products subsequent to seeing an ad. In particular cosmetic companies may make women to have a feeling of insecurity and thereafter offer their products as a solution. Cosmetics retailers conduct the designing and relaying of advertising with the main intention of changing consumer attitude, perceptions and purchasing behavior toward cosmetics, prompting them to purchase more products (Thompson, 2018). On a daily basis, consumers are exposed to numerous advertising messages. The fundamental objective of advertising is to strongly attract consumers by providing them information associated to the products, how such products should be applied and guidance on how to purchase them. It is totally essential to make certain that consumers perceive advertising as an aspect that is positive and constructive and nothing else. However, in recent periods, one of the key apprehensive aspects encompasses how deceptive advertising impacts cosmetic advertising and the role that cosmetic advertising regulation can play in limiting the adverse effects of misleading and deceitful advertisement practices.

Deceptive Effects of Cosmetic Advertising

Deceptive advertising is formally delineated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as a demonstration, omission or practice that has a likelihood of misleading the consumer and practices that have been established as being deceitful and deceptive in particular instances including both verbal and written exemplifications, deceitful product price claims, retailing of defective products or services and also the lack of disclosure of proper and pertinent information (Newaz, 2017).

Based on research conducted by Fowler, Reisenwitz, and Carlson (2015), research has shown that deceptive claims in cosmetic advertisements give rise to consumers making inaccurate decisions. In the course of time, such endeavors may cause consumers to become cautious towards and cynical of advertising claims. For example, inadequate contrasts and assessments that give the suggestion that a product is of superior quality but which fail to provide a proper appraisal referent are worthless to consumers. Furthermore, deceptive advertising claims may transform the consumers into a group of pessimists who end up being hesitant and disbelieving of the advertisers, the media and the establishments in all their forms. In addition, such claims can be deemed exasperating, belligerent and discourteous to the intelligence of the consumer (Fowler et al., 2015).

This article by Fowler et al. (2015) intends to make a determination concerning the extent to which cosmetics claims consist of deceptive content within fashion advertisements. Based on the information delineated by the authors, most of the claims appeared to be explained basically by three categorizations comprising the subjective, scientific, and performance categories. The results demonstrated that a greater number of cosmetic claims were classified more deceptive than were considered acceptable. A more wide-ranging examination of these inclinations specified that, most superiority claims were grouped as false and the scientific claims had a propensity to be clustered as ambiguous or as overlooking important information. What is more, performance claims has a likelihood of being perceived as ambiguous and endorsement claims were perceived as being acceptable.

In accordance to Knapton (2015), research study established that 1 in 5 glamorous cosmetic advertisements stand up to enquiry, with corporations criticized for their ambiguous science and fabricated or deceitful...

In fact, approximately, 25 percent of the claims in the market were found to include consummate lies. Deception does not just undercut the credibility of advertising in its entirety by making consumers defensive, but at the same time also generates detrimental effects for the advertisers who are directly accountable for making such claims. Research studies undertaken make it apparent that marketers have a potent self-centeredness in maintaining the truth in cosmetics advertising.
Deceptive advertising in cosmetics could misinform and mislead consumers by prompting them to spend a greater amount of money on a product or a service by divulging them to the risk of damage or harm through deceitful and fabricated claims regarding health or safety. In particular, these kinds of unethical practices result in harm amongst people in several ways. Aside from cautiousness, another impact of deceptive advertising is the cause of economic instability and the degradation of social values in addition to the threat to the health of human beings. To begin with, in the past number of years, there has been the inclination of introducing female consumers to cosmetic products meant to reduce weight and also burn body. The downside to this is that these kinds of advertising largely make unsubstantiated claims that consuming certain foods can enhance health and even diminish the risk of severe illnesses. However, great deals of cosmetic creams being retailed in the market have been found to comprise of compounds such as steroids and they result in significantly hazardous effects on the consumer (Newaz, 2017).

Deceptive advertising can in the same manner have a detrimental impact in competitors in the market and the business in itself by generating a longstanding loss of both products and revenues. This is for the reason that they are generally inefficacious and come with prospective severe side effects. In accordance to Newaz (2017), deceptive advertising of cosmetic products prompts and instigates women to spend a greater amount of money and purchase such kind of products. As a result, it diminishes their financial savings and either in a direct or indirect manner, decreases the consumers’ budget spent on basic needs to the disadvantage of their financial objectives and plans. Furthermore, it results in consumers having the tendency to be compulsive buyers towards cosmetic products.

Another effect of deceptive cosmetic advertising is the degradation of social values. Based on the article by Newaz (2017), the marital market is considered to prefer fair appearing girls. Aspects such as discrimination, racism together with the humiliation that is linked to dark skin as it were, have become deeply embedded within our minds. Consequently, young females in the present day are frantically making investments in purchasing cosmetic products such as whitening creams devoid of taking into account the adverse effects of such products. Furthermore, the manufacturing companies of these products capitalize on the mental fascination of such consumers by alluring them with striking advertisements that more often than not comprise of false information within them. What is more, these advertisements are undertaken in such appealing manners that eventually cause the consumers to fall prey and give in to such products. In addition, the use of celebrities in such advertisements or the preference for a certain skin color largely impacts social perspectives in the societal order owing to the reason that people consider them to be the norm. For instance, a dark skin lady that goes through racism and taunting owing to the skin color will go to great extents to change even if it harms them because she has the perspective of being different from the norm (Newaz, 2017).

Role of Cosmetic Advertising Regulation in…