Social and Ethical Aspects of Advertising and Promotion Counter Arguments

In the modern world, there are complex commercial activities where children have taken a recognizable position in terms of consumer behavior from other independent consumer groups. The children category has discretionary incomes to spend leading to higher influence on the family purchasing habits. Children are based on market forces rising from target audiences for various marketing efforts and advertisements. However, the messages are directed at children and hence the messages influence the cognitive development while shaping their lives.

Proponents of child-targeted marketing observe that children are in positions of differentiating between marketing and other communication forms from a tender age. However, they are more vulnerable to the manipulation of advertising messages and susceptible to accepting similar messages as unbiased and truthful. Advertising and marketing tactics lead children into adopting various consumer behaviors resulting in negative impacts on the mental and physical health of children. The negative consequences of youth and child-targeted marketing include obesity. This is a rapidly increasing element for developing and developed countries. Obesity bears a link to the consumption of energy-dense and micronutrient-poor products with high levels of fat, salt, and sugar. The items are directly marketed to children.

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Most children today have increased access to more media outlets that are far difficult to monitor as compared to radio and television. Marketing to the children expands the levels of messaging at sporting events, children's clubs, and concerts, points of sale, websites, and schools and even on social networking sites. Marketing messages introduce children to more inappropriate content such as violence, unrealistic body images, and sexual exposure.
It is important for parents and caregivers to regulate their children's access to business and marketing practices as the key role of supporting and respecting children's rights within different marketplaces. Advertising and marketing to young people and children is an important aspect of developing a business strategy. The children's rights including rights to health, right to be protected or right to non-discrimination should form the core component of considering advertising and marketing campaigns. However, self-regulatory initiatives show insufficiency in guaranteeing the impacts of advertising for children without harming the complementary actions by international organizations and governments.

Commercial appeals directed towards children do not have a commonplace of the reason for the adoption of widespread television and exponential growth of cable television.…