Is It Ethical To Advertise To Children Under 10 Years Old In Order To Sell Products For Profit? Expert Answer

Marketing ethics are aspects which expose the moral attitude of marketing companies underneath advertising or marketing. In contrast, advertisers performing ads are also relevant to the manner in which they decide whether it will deliver positive or negative values to the potential customers. This is understood, nevertheless, that advertising is always conducted inside a context that has tipped the interest of true promotion. For example, if children’s ads undermine their reputation, honesty, fairness or confidentiality, this is regarded as unethical conducts.

Young children under 10 years are constantly the focus of advertisement and promotions due to the amount of money they spend on themselves and the impact they have on spending of their parents. It poses unique issues in the ethical perspective. Too often, these concerns overlap with indistinguishable claims as found in children having learned such marketing concepts, whether or not? Advertising aimed at children alone frequently met the limits and led to multiple ethical problems.

As the phrase goes, “selling to children is as simple as nailing a nail in soap”

It is not ethical to advertise to children under 10 years old in order to sell products for profits because children under 10 years are in a phase of growth, and are therefore incapable to hold the substantial nature or sarcastic meanings confined in advertising messages. They do not even understand how to separate advertisement from other internet content once they are young. They blend fantasy and reality until around the age of 10. For example, a child less than 4 years old would not recognize that the show is over and an interval advertisement began when a commercial interruption occurred while watching their favorite cartoon. But after knowing the differentiation between ads and other internet content, child can get an opportunity to recognize the compelling character of ads at around 12 years of age. Most parents and families may not even understand this critical issue, while marketing does not only recognize this quite well, but actively finds ways to exploit children’s weakness to increase their profitability.

On top of that, children’s advertisement is about exploiting their consumers’ mentality (Ayub & Abid, 2017). In other words, Palmer and Carpenter (2006) found out that children’s market is defined as “No such market at the same time includes ads to users who are occasionally sellers; and sellers who are rarely users.” Without even a question it represents the marketplace truth. And we can no longer believe that traditional marketing and advertising is primarily about transmitting knowledge and producing sufficient profit for the client. In order to keep up with the ever-changing phenomenon, Kotler, Kartajaya and Setiawan (2016) have reshaped traditional marketing to “persuade and remind their audience of their products to be able to educate and outrage.”

Because of these ethical issues, advertisers face great difficulties when selling their commodities into the children’s marketplace from the bodies of different authorities. Sutherland (2020) did, however, have concerns about the efficacy of implementing all the advertising bans and whether this activity is ethical to show beneficial benefits to advertisers and customers alike. Consequently, to create good advertisement, advertisers might find unethical strategies that could help them achieve their targets at all costs and advertising to children under 10 years is one of that living example.

References

Ayub, R., & Abid, N. (2017). Tv advertisements as a moderator on children buying behavior. RADS Journal of Social Sciencess & Business Management, 4(2), 65-80.

Sutherland, M. (2020). Advertising and the mind of the consumer: what works, what doesn’t and why. Routledge.