How Advertisement Manipulates Customers Choices and Spending Habits Essay - 11

How Advertisement Manipulates Customers Choices and Spending Habits - Essay Example We know advertisement is an investment only when it is not a false advertisement. It should not manipulate the customer’s desires and spending. Advertisement can actually modify the spending habits and customer choices by convincing its audience in a manner that may be ethically unacceptable. These days companies tend to use manipulative advertisements. Some ads are very informative; e.g TV ads about the yellow pages, information about supermarkets etc. These ads may be a little bit manipulative but customers end up purchasing a good because of the information provided by these ads (Phillips 14). For example, there are some ads like Mountain Dew (beverage), which portray the ability of humans to act in ways that are beyond ordinary. Now this is just a false manipulation that can literally affect the perception of viewers. But some authors argue that manipulative advertisement is the second name of persuasive advertisement which is a big source of forcing the customers to purchase the product. In other words here the marketer is hitting/targeting the customers emotionally. Once you persuade a person emotionally, selling the product becomes easy. In manipulative advertising the marketers are doing the same. Seeing this idea, manipulative advertisement becomes objectionable . It cannot be termed as the ethical one because it is persuading the customers in unacceptable manner. Some manipulative advertisements can be in the form of celebrity marketing especially female model. This makes the product so special to the customers, when they think of it they say this celebrity uses it, I must use this (Dachis n.p.). Here again the customers are being hit emotionally by getting the celebrity in to the product. This motivates the general public especially the youth to a great extent. In this case they are inventing the feelings which you as a customer never had before. They make you feel like that hero/model who uses that product.  The purpose of all this is to make the consumer feel like being the person that is being used as a character in the advertisement.