| Unedited 7/22/08 |
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Advertising Advertising can be defined as the promotion of a product or service in media such as radio, television, billboards, web pages and mailed flyers. When analyzing the ethicacy of an avertisment it is important to know if the ad, in any way, leads the buyer to false expectations. Leading a person to false expectation is a form of deception. The social morality is tolerent, to a small extent, to deception in advertising. Take for example, vegatables in a grocery store. Signs are strategically placed to confuse the buyer into mistaking the price of a produce. On impulse they reach for the expensive produce instead of the more inexpensive variety. Customary ethics dictates a certain learning curve to consumer buying. The idea goes that consumers before you had to learn the tricks of buying and so should you. However, customary ethics can only go so far supporting such practices. Written ethical codes and ethical theory is quite different from the ethics of custom and tradition. In theory deception is deception no matter how slight it is. In this light deceiving the buyer by the grocer might be seen as dishonest, manipulative and outright wrong. There are other business practices in advertising that border on outright fraud. There is the word concealment to deal with.
IT Ratio: The ratio between what a buyer expects and what they actually receive. An advertisement represents the "frontside of a deal." It says for example that if you sign up now "you can get phone service for $19.99 a month." The "backside" of the deal reveals that the consumer must actually pay $32.41 a month for the service. On top of that, this amount is only good for six month after which the charges go up even more. So the IT Ratio here is 1:1.62. The letters IT signify the integrity. This ratio gives the ethical evaluator some idea of the dilution of a business integrity. Integrity in this light means "doing what you say you will do in fact.." In other words a business with a high IT Ratio is offering the symbol of a product or service but not the substance of product or service. IT Ratios can go quite high in todays world. One can find a car for rent at an airport for $16.50 as advertised on the Internet. The actual amount billed is $59, and that does not include insurance. By cleaver means what looked like a good deal was in fact not very good deal at all. Here, the IT Ratio is 1:3.58.
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