Advertising & Consumer Soveriegnty
...who their target audience is, but do not know the individual that exist within the target audience. “They [advertisements] appeal to unknown individuals” (Commerce and Morality p43). For example, advertisers may target teenagers to sell a new hip shoe. Advertisers will have hip teenagers to model the product instead of mother or father figures to identify with the target audience. So on the whole, the advertisers may touch the target audience, but each individual in the target audience will identify with the advertisement at difference levels. The goal of advertisers is to create an advertisement that can appeal to the general target audience, not deeply touch a small group of individuals in the target audience that ignores the rest. Consumer sovereignty by many, including John Kenneth Galbraith (“John Kenneth Galbraith”), seizes to exist in today’s age. Consumer sovereignty is consumer independence. Consumers have the choice. If they were no choice in society then there is no sovereignty. It is “the authority of consumers to determine what is produced through their purchases of goods and services” (“The Market System”). Many believe that advertising takes away consumer sovereignty. Advertising is repeated again and again in order to influence consumers to not have choices. Consumers see so much of one advertisement that it forces them to go out and buy the product and service. In this setting, consumer sovereignty would seize to exist. By people admitting there is no consumer sovereignty, they admit no free will. They are admitting that they are determined to buy these products that they are exploited to. In a sense, these consumers are forced to buy the product if they are imposed by mass advertisement of the product. Determined or brainwashed? Does advertising have any role in forcing consumers to buy products? Consumer sovereignty still does exist in today’s age and can never seize to exist with our economic system that is set. Consumers see an abundance of advertising and from this advertising creates desires. Most consumers, when there is money to be spent, will not save their money but rather go out and buy something. Whatever appealing advertisement crosses their path at the time they are willing to go out and buy something is what they will buy. Is it the advertisement’s fault that the consumer went out to buy something? Not at all. Advertising does not take away consumer sovereignty. We have free will to choose what we want to buy and when we want to buy an item. We have these manifestations of what we want in our head. These aren’t caused by advertisements but rather from observing other individuals of what they have in society and wanting to have that item to be as well of or better off than that individual. We live in a materialistic society. Advertising did not make it this way, individuals of society did. Furthermore, advertising reflects the attitudes of our society. For example, sex has become open more and more in today’s society. It is no longer a taboo to discuss sex. We are encouraged to express ourselves in an open matter regarding sex. Therefore, many advertisements refer to sex in order to sell a product. Consumers go on to say the add is distasteful. Ironically, advertising generally expresses the attitudes and tastes of society. For one to say an advertisement is distasteful is calling the times they live in distasteful. That person is part of a society that has let sex come out in the open and now can be seen in advertisements. Criticizing tastefulness in advertising only criticizes the times consumers live in. Advertising does not want to have consumers to find their distasteful and obscene. “It is the culture that “deserves” indictment – not the advertisers who reflec...