Negative Effects of Marketing on the American consumer

Based on Argument Essay 1
Marketing is the process through which a business organization makes known of its product to potential consumers. It involves all activities that ensure that the organization’s products flow to the seller as well as the communication of new product lines, changes in production among other aspects. The activities involved in marketing include advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, and public relations. Marketing is not only beneficial to the company but the consumer as well. The customer is made aware of the availability of products and services that are of higher quality as compared to the rest. Through marketing, the consumer also benefits as a result of lower prices resulting from aggressive product promotions. However, marketing if unchecked can have many negative effects on the consumer.
Today the American consumer has become the dumping zone for any information by the advertisers who are interested in increasing the sale of their goods and services. Commercialism has taken center stage in all media, the internet, movies, schools, and any other interest avenues that the consumer can be found (Griffin 74). As such, the consumers are pushed into absorbing the contents of the advertisement even without being interested in the products or services rendered. Ideally, modern entrepreneurship and the business world as a whole heavily rely on marketing in the form of advertising to reach the potential consumers. The companies and organizations engaging in the goods or services have the obligation of ensuring that their products reach the customers with the aim of making sales.

The profits are based on the sales volume that is anchored on the number of consumers reached with the information as well as the market share. In that regard, the advertisers grab every available opportunity to sell their products through the available media. Nightingale (38) explains that the companies are willing to spend a lot of resources into advertising with the hope of huge returns when the products are purchased. The majority of advertisements are entirely misleading. They also convey unrealistic views of certain products and services. Advertising is, therefore, unethical due to these unrealistic expectations, false images, and negative impact on children.
Undoubtedly, children are the most affected by companies’ aggressive marketing (Schlosser 116). At their tender age, children allow their mind to be constructed and molded by any information that is fed into their brains. They grow based on everything that surrounds them as they are very susceptible to all external influences. Children in most cases gain misinformed beliefs about the products being advertised as they misinterpret facts concerning the product. According to Joseph Mc Laughlin, a researcher from the New York-based Fordham University; children under the age of six are more gullible because most can’t tell the difference between a program and a commercial. Glossy images in billboards, fliers, magazines and television, therefore, creates the uncontrolled impulse to buy in these children. According to Eric Schlosser the author of “Kids Kustomers” in which Mc Laughlin’s sentiments were echoed, “among the main aims of advertising is simply getting children to nag and nag their parents” (Schlosser 223). This means those kids are seen as the easiest way of making parents buy these products.
The companies that major in the production and sale of junk food items have taken the advantage to advertise their products targeting young children. “The upsurge of obesity and overweight conditions among the children is to a great extent linked to the high consumption of junk foods” (Ruskin and Schor 22). Essentially, some of the advertisements are placed in classrooms, during TV shows, as well as within children programs such as cartoons. The number of advertisements has increased in the recent past with the developments in technology providing fertile grounds for the advertisements to thrive. The perspective of the children regarding the products being advertised has changed. Most of the children believe that the products being advertised are superior, of better quality, and more nutritious for their body. The advertisements placed in the classrooms, as well as other learning institutions, have interfered with the concentration and focus on the children from the class activities (Schlosser 224). In fact, the advertisements are highly memorable and rapidly access the cognitive features of the children’s brains hindering their learning process. Such ads have led to the sale of their products within the school environment as the demand for the goods and services increase.
Advertising has over time become quite unethical. It relies on the creation of an unrealistic image to make people buy products on sale. Customers often experience a high feeling during the consumption of a product, but the feeling soon wears off leaving the customer quite dissatisfied. Fast foods have been known to be the most notorious in the exaggeration of products. A food product usually appears to be so juicy and hearty but the actual product that a consumer receives at times does equal half of the product in quality. It is usually far beyond expectations. People usually order their product based on the image depicted, but after the purchase, they often end up discouraged as the product does not meet their expectations.
Marketing also creates unrealistic expectations on the consumer. Advertisement for prescription drugs is the most notorious for this situation. In prescription drugs commercials, consumers are depicted by the image ads as very healthy and happy people after the use of the drugs, but in reality, this is not the case. They fail to explain the drugs’ side effects that may be quite harmful to the user. Fitness advertisements also share the same characteristics as prescription drugs in their failure to warn the consumer of any adverse effects that may arise. Messages like “Lose belly fat in just a week” “Get ripped in three days” among others are just insincere. They fail to tell the consumers that they may experience increased heart rates, headaches, constipation, blurred vision, restlessness, and dizziness among other complications. Due to the failure to achieve the unrealistic expectations expected, consumers usually see themselves as failures and eventually give up. For example, someone who was intent on losing weight may entirely shelve his plans on noticing that he has not lost any significant weight in a week as advised yet if he had been patient, notable improvements would have been seen with time.
The false beauty in advertising has significantly impacted on women’s perspective on their appearance. Women are now striving for the ideal perfection as advertised by most beauty products manufacturers. Many are consumed by thoughts on how to look as flawless as the models used in the advertisements thereby leading to serious body image problems. Women who previously regarded themselves as beautiful now spend much of their time thinking how to alter their appearance or look better than they already are. Others spend much of their time lamenting how they have unappealing faces. These thoughts can lead to insomnia, eating disorders, stress and suicidal thoughts if unchecked. The unhappy feeling, therefore, results to use of diet pills, Botox injections, and cosmetic surgeries.
Companies when castigated for not being ethical in their advertisements often argue that advertisement has facilitated the creation of the awareness concerning the various products including their advantages. Some of the organizations have partnered with the health fraternity in creating awareness on some healthy food items need for the body. It is worth noting that the majority of the products being advertised have positive implications for the consumers (Turow and Matthew 61). For example, the partnership between UNICEF and McDonald’s focused on educating the consumers on the various nutrients contained in various food items. The advertisement aimed at fighting malnutrition by helping societies to understand the concept of a balanced diet in particular through the uptake of the food items. As such, McDonald’s produced food products that are highly nutritious for the body especially containing crucial vitamins and minerals good for proper upbringing.
Although advertising may play an important role in the society, it is one of the reasons America is going on a downward spiral. The concept of product placement whereby the advertising companies entrench their messages between the movies, novels and children’s books has impacted the social spheres (Ruskin and Schor 23). The perceptions of life events that are associated with the actions displayed in the adverts have changed negatively. For example, the moral decadence regarding sexism, respect for parents, and societal responsiveness has taken the backward dimension. As such, the adverts have polarized the society towards devaluing some essential social attributes in the society. However, not all is lost though since the civil societies have utilized some of the advertisements to espouse on legal rights of individuals especially for the persons living with a disability. In fact, some of the advertising companies have included corporate social responsibility in their operations where they assist various communities with aid that positively impact their lives. As such, they show good examples of how people should coexist in the societies by upholding mutual love and respect for all.
In conclusion, it is notable that the advertisements including the product placement strategies deployed by companies have adverse effects on the society, especially regarding behavioral indicators. The advertising companies squeeze their information in various channels where unsuspecting viewers are forced to see the adverts. As such, minimal protection is offered to the public especially the children who are most vulnerable to adopting weird behaviors. Despite the few merits the advertisements such as awareness creation and social responsibility, the adverts affect key instruments of a healthy society including the morals. Consumers given a false impression about products by the adverts also suffer greatly from the portrayal of a perfect body by these ads. They end up hating themselves and regarding themselves as worthless. If unchecked, marketing will utterly destroy our society. Therefore it should be controlled and minimized for the good of the society.
Works Cited
Griffin, Penny. Popular Culture, Political Economy and the Death of Feminism: Why Women Are in Refrigerators and Other Stories. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2015.
Nightingale, Virginia. The Handbook of Media Audiences. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print.
Ruskin, Gary and Schor, Juliet. Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture. Multinational Monitor. 26.1 & 2. 2005. Print. 20-24
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.
Schlosser, Eric. “Kid Kustomers.” 2001.Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular
Culture for Writers. By Sonia Maasik and J. Fisher Solomon. 6th ed. New York, NY:
Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. 222-26. Print.
Turow, Joseph, and Matthew P. McAllister. The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.