Question: Ethics and Advertising At issue, legally and ethically, for consumers is whether advertising is deceptive and creates or contributes to creating harm to consumers. Although advertising is supposed to provide information to consumers, a major aim is to sell products and services. As part of a selling process, both buyer and seller are involved. As discussed earlier, "buyer beware" imparts some responsibility to the buyer for believing and being susceptible to ads. Ethical issues arise whenever corporations target ads in manipulative, untruthful, subliminal, and coercive ways to vulnerable buyers such as children and minorities. Also, inserting harmful chemicals into products without informing the buyer is deceptive advertising. The tobacco industry's use of nicotine and addictive ingredients in cigarettes was deceptive advertising. The American Association of Advertising (AAA) has a code of ethics that helps organizations monitor their ads. The code cautions against false, distorted, misleading, and exaggerated claims and statements as well as pictures that are offensive to the public and minority groups. The following questions can be used by both advertising corporations and consumers to gauge the ethics of ads:
1. Is the consumer being treated as a means to an end or as an end? And what and whose end?
2. Whose rights are being protected or violated intentionally and inadvertently? And at what and whose costs?
3. Are consumers being justly and fairly treated?
4. Are the public welfare and the common good taken into consideration for the effects as well as the intention of advertisements?
5. Has anyone been or will anyone be harmed from using this product or service?