Does modern advertisement ensure welfare of consumers in

Bangladesh?
Basharat Hossain, M. Phil. Researcher, Department of
Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
4 February, 2018 12:00 AM printerDoes modern
advertisement ensure welfare of consumers in Bangladesh?

Advertisement is the way or technique to convey information

of the products to its customer. More precisely, it can be said
that, advertisement is the presentation of any relevant
information about the product and placed through the print
media such as newspapers, magazines, posters, booklets, etc.
and electronic media such as radio, television or online media,
etc. It is basically done to sell products and to attract the
attention of potential customers, inform them of the
existence and attributes of a product, and persuade them to
start or continue to buy it.
Advertisement is basically of two kinds:

1) Informative Advertisement and

2) Persuasive Advertisement.

Informative advertisement provides complete information of

the product by highlighting the key features while persuasive
advertisement reveals partial, vague, asymmetric or irrelevant
information of the products. Moreover, persuasive
advertisement pursues to alter the consumer’s tastes,
preferences and convince a consumer to buy this product.
Usually, the scope of asymmetric information arises if the
producer has intention to exaggerate or conceal information
or tell a lie in a transaction. Consequently, informative
advertisement makes consumers better-off while persuasive
advertisement worsens-off them in terms of taking informed
purchase decisions.

However, most of the marketing experts, including Philip

Kotler - the renowned American marketing expert emphasizes
that the message of advertisements should be meaningful,
believable, distinctive and beneficial for consumers.
Furthermore, to ensure the maximum welfare of the
consumer, they accentuate in disclosing true information
about measurements, quality, price and defects of the
products in advertisements.

A report of Mediavest - a US based media specialist and

advertising agency, estimated that, advertising expenditure
was around Tk 200 crore in Bangladesh in 2014. Most of the
expenditure is captured by television and newspaper
advertising. In Bangladesh, Consumers Association of
Bangladesh (CAB), a non-government, non-profit and
volunteer organization has been working since 1978 to
establish the rights of consumers. CAB believes that, to know
the accurate information about the quality, quantity, purity,
potency, standard and price of products and service - is the
right of the consumer.

According to the National Broadcast Policy-2014 (Chapter-4),

in an advertisement, the quality control certificate approved
by BSTI (Bangladesh Standards And Testing Institution) must
be presented, dirty or perverted dialogues, quotation, word,
jingle, abuse must not be used, career as well as health and
medicine advice must be avoided, any language, scene or
commandment that hurt the religion, tradition and culture of
Bangladesh - must not be presented in advertisements and
models in advertisements must be dressed properly and
acceptably.

But it should be mentioned that in Bangladesh, the

contemporary advertisement - that is persuaded by nature, is
using many unfair means, including women in short,
objectionable & offensive dress, semi-nudity, sexual appeals,
irrelevant songs and dancing, unnecessary huge number of
models, false oaths, misinformation etc. These are
contradictory to the rules of National Broadcast Policy-2014.
Consequently, it reduces the welfare of consumer by raising
costs. In addition, it is observed that, the high cost of
advertising has been transferred to consumers in the forms of
higher price, low quality product accompanied by lower
quantitative amount.
Finally, it might be suggested that, Government should be
stricter in applying the advertising principles of National
Broadcast Policy-2014. The respective wing of information
ministry and BSTI (Bangladesh Standards And Testing
Institution) should form monitoring cell together and must
execute it effectually. It may be mandatory that, a company
must update it’s website with appropriate information about
the product and the advertisements must disclose adequate
relevant information through media to educate the customer.
Besides Government steps, consumer should increase their
awareness by visiting website, emailing to the company by
pointing out the defects of product, complaining to the
newspaper, television, BSTI as well as respective authority. As
a final point, the government may inspire and pressurize the
companies to maintain ethical standards by offering
motivations and facilities.

Basharat Hossain, M. Phil. Researcher, Department of

Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

http://www.daily-sun.com/arcprint/details/286555/Does-
modern-advertisement-ensure-welfare-of-consumers-in-
Bangladesh/2018-02-04