During the past year, I have written several columns about deceptive advertising. It’s time to address the issue again. How many times have you been lured into a store by an advertisement for an item at an unbelievable price? Once you get to the store, if the item is even available, you find it wasn’t worth the price of gas to get there. Of course, the salesperson nods in agreement and immediately directs you toward a more expensive item. However, you’re still aggravated that the original item turned out to be worthless.
Deceptive advertising is so common, consumers have become conditioned to it and rarely say anything. That is the biggest problem. Consumers should be saying, “We’ve had enough, we do not want to be scammed and we are taking our business elsewhere!”
The advertising world gets their cues from the consumer. If we stop feeding into their deceptive ways than they will have to put on their thinking caps and figure out how to get us back.
A suggestion… Instead of running an ad for a product that is ridiculously inexpensive but obviously poorly constructed, why not advertise a higher quality item that consumers would actually want to buy and would be willing to pay a few dollars more for. I refuse to believe that being truthful about the quality of merchandise would discourage customers from shopping.
Honesty and ethics go a long way!
