Do the positive effects of advertising outweigh its negative effects?
Advertising is a communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers various products and services and how to obtain and use them . Nowadays, Advertising plays an important role in people’s daily life. An advertisement is also a product and like every other product in the world, it has its cons and pros. Personally, I believe its merits far outweigh its demerits.
Admittedly ,advertising has a few drawbacks .Firstly, it increases the cost of goods. The cost of the advertisement is included in the price and is ultimately borne by the customers. Also , advertising appeals make people to use such articles, which may affect their health. For example, due to the advertisement of cigarettes ,several persons start smoking ,which becomes a habit .In addition to that ,advertisement results in monopoly in industry and thus reduces healthy competition, it becomes difficult for new firms to enter the field. However , these issues can be resolved by the government by regulating the price of goods ,providing health education and controlling monopoly of the big companies.
Advertising brings many benefits to human’s life. Advertisement is a way of raising awareness about a particular product. It is hardly for customers to purchase a new product without known anything about it ,so the advertisement increases the potential customers’ knowledge of the goods. Similarly, people have a chance to compare and contrast the prices and qualities of same types of products through advertising to get a much reasonable price and better quality. Last but not least, advertising makes shopping simpler and more time-efficient. It helps eliminate unnecessary risk- taking and facilitates easier decision-making at the point of purchase.
In the final analysis ,I concede that advertising may have some potential demerits .However, these downsides of advertisement can be eliminated by appropriate intervention from the government. On balance, I am convinced that buyers will beneficial from the advertisement to a large extent and enjoy a much more convenient lifestyle.