Advertisements

Advertising can be a service to the customer. This is true when advertisements give reliable information about the goods advertised. Such information is needed if the customer is to make a clever choice when he buys. It is useful in that it lets him know of the kinds of goods in the shops. Printed advertisements do this job best as readers can collect them and compare them. They can be taken along to shops where their claims can be checked against the actual goods. It is much harder to do this with TV or radio advertisements. The best TV and radio advertisements direct the listener's attention to printed advertisements to be used as suggested above.

Some advertisements are not very useful to the customer. Instead of helping him to satisfy his real needs, they set out to make him want things. That is to say, they create needs. The people who produce these advertisements understand our weaknesses. They recommend that we should use the products of their firm and make U.S. believe that what they advertise will benefit U.S. in many ways. Advertising has become a very big business. At its best it can be useful to the customer. At its worst it can mislead him by suggesting something false. The only real safeguard for the customer is his own alertness.