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This paper seeks to examine ethics and deceptive advertisement and their inter-relatedness and its importance in the practices of corporations. The weakness of ethical practices within organization in recent times has become a pressing need for corporation if they are to effectively address the frequent occurrences or unethical and sometimes illegal practices. This paper further addresses and analyses and discuss the issues that surrounds Deceptive Advertisement, the moral perspective on Deceptive Advertisement, and the relevance of deceptive advertisement to Caribbean organization and the importance of any criticism of deceptive advertisement and the moral position on the matter of deceptive advertisement. The ethical issues faced my organization and recommendations to address identified issues are also address within its context. Deceptive Advertisement
According to Business Glossary 2011, Deceptive Advertisement is an advertising that makes false claims or misleading statements, as well as advertising that creates a false impression. Therefore if retailers systematically advertise merchandise at low prices to get customers into their store and then fail to have the merchandise, they are claimed to be guilty of deceptive advertising. In addition, Deceptive practices can take many other as well, such as false promises, unsubstantiated claims, incomplete descriptions, false testimonials or comparisons, small print qualifications of advertisements, partial disclosure, or visual distortation of products. Thus in relation, the public wants and expects advertising to be truthful, but exactly what does this mean in practice? Does it mean saying that a new car can get you from New York to California in style is insufficient? For the ad to be truthful, does it also need to say that driving cars adds to environmental pollution and that you might get hurt or killed in an accident along the way? Does "honest" advertising require that some products (like prescription drugs, for example) need to make fuller disclosures about possible side-effects than do ads for hamburgers and cars? Analyze and discuss issues related to the topic
Deceptive advertising, also known as false advertising, is an act of deliberately misleading a potential client about a product, service or a company in general by reporting false or misrepresenting information or data in advertising or other promotional materials. False advertising is a type of fraud and is considered an offence in many countries.
In the 1900s, advertising was largely unregulated by either the government or advertising industry standards , as a result, sellers got away with making false claims without any prohibition. Medicinal advertisements were among the worst offenders making statements that were not only often outrageous but frequently completely false. Today, because of government and industry-based regulations, the use of false claims in advertisements has become highly unlikely. In addition, the force of negative publicity has reduced these claims as this will have severe or fatal repercussions for the company.
Ethical Issues in Deceptive Advertising
It is factual that companies, who create and release advertisements of a dishonest or fraudulent manner, have a moral responsibility for their claims. So it can be said that if a company seeks to influence people to choose and act in a rationally good way, they are morally good. On the other hand, if a company seeks to persuade people to do evil deeds that are self-destructive, they are considered immoral.
So within this very general framework, we identified three moral issues that are particularly relevant to deceptive advertising and each was analyzed competently. The issues consist of; truthfulness, dignity of humans and social responsibility.
To analyze the truthfulness of deceptive...
Trevino, L.K and Nelson, K.A (2010), Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How To Do It Right, 5th edition, John Wiley and Sons Publishing, United States.
Nwagwu Juan (2006), Ethical Concerns of False Advertisement, Pittsburgh State University. http://www2.pittstate.edu/reuret/ethics06/juan06ethics.pdf (accessed Nov 20, 2011)
Jef I. Richards - 2001 - Business & Economics - 244 pages
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