DECEPTIVE MARKETING in FMCG Sector
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 8:35:19 by Awais Khan
DECEPTIVE MARKETING in FMCG Sector
When it comes to deceptive marketing and unethical practices our beauty products industry takes the prize. A recent research by Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies has revealed that fairness cream sellers overstate product benefits and illiterate and poor segment of our society actually buys their false and misleading statements.
Moreover, these companies use appeals based on our social issues which including girls getting married due to fair complexion which is a result of a certain beauty product.
All these companies are doing is reinforcing perception and beliefs of people about the fair skin superiority, female stereotype roles and materialism.
Most of the claims by these companies are erratic. A few months ago I saw a huge banner in Karachi that said that 90% of the women prefer a certain soap brand. A subscript at the bottom stated that the research is based on 100 females.
For a population size as big as ours, 100 is just too small a sample size to be representative of the entire population. And every now and then we see beauty soap ads containing models and actors that refer to their brand as the secret of their soft and glowing skin.
If that were true, why would these celebrities use a hundred other chemicals on their face?
Earlier this year proctor and Gamble came up with an ad campaign that termed Head and Shoulders as world number one anti-dandruff shampoo suggesting that it renders 100% dandruff free hair.
There was no research or evidence to back the statement. In fact such a statement was made in Europe too and P&G was made to take off this ad (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4877080.stm). But they believed they could fool people in Pakistan and knowingly ran the same false claim.
Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=1429
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