False Advertising

In response to Tim Cheung’s blog post ( https://blogs.ubc.ca/timcheung/2012/01/15/6/), I’ve found that most of us have been victims of false advertising. They’ve used weasel words to exaggerate how fancy their products are. The question is, will companies change their marketing policies or continue to gain profits over the consumer’s right to know.

There are three main types of false advertising: failure to disclose, flawed and insignificant research, and product disparagement. Failure to disclose means the representation of a product is untrue and is unable to disclose a material fact. So misleading advertising comes from both misstatements and avoid disclosing something the consumer should know. The example of the beats headphone demonstrates this kind of false advertising. Besides, Flawed and insignificant research can be defined as represents a product in a way that is unsupported by research or accepted authority. The last one is Product Disparagement which involves defaming competitors’ products.

After the misleading advertising has been verified, the court can require the company to launch a corrective advertising campaign and make a correcting statement in that campaign. In order to ensure consumers have competitive prices and product choice, the Competitive Act prohibits a number of marketing strategies. Consumers can complain to the Government about any of these false advertising even they have no intention of buying the product. An non-govermental organization named Advertising Standards Canada is made up of advertisers, representatives from advertising agencies and the media and consumers. It encourages monitoring false or misleading advertising and reduce the amount of it.