Marketing to Children Ethical Analysis. Business & Marketing Essay

Marketing to Children Ethical Analysis
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Introduction
In the contemporary competitive business environment, marketing has become an integral part of human life. It has become impossible to imagine an event, magazine, television, radio, magazine, or any social media platform without a commercial. In reality, businesses across the world are spending billions of dollars annually in stimulating, coaxing, and manipulating people to consume their products as well as improve their competitive edge. Most companies are spending nearly 10% of the revenues on marketing their products and services (Watson, 2020). Usually, advertising exploits people's anxieties, produces false needs, and offers fake solutions. By doing so, it raises discontent that leads to consumption. While the degree of impact of advertising on adults may not be necessarily challenging, the consequences can be demoralizing for children (Watson, 2020). In reality, youngsters are more susceptible to this form of influence. Therefore, this study will analyze the ethical concerns of marketing to children in relation to Kantian theory.
Over the years, advertisers used to appeal to the parents, but today they directly charm children. For example, in the United States, an average child sees over 30,000 television advertisements every year, needless to mention the myriad of content they access online, in video games, at the movies, in print, at school, or across the highways (Watson, 2020). Advertising to teenagers has elicited controversial concerns among different players in society. Marketing helps children socialize as consumers, carve out unique identities as they become adults, improve critical analysis, and enlighten them about products. On the flip side, advertising contributes to a series of problems, including obesity, precocious sexuality, and poor impulse control, to name a few (Watson, 2020). For instance, children's exposure to unhealthy food products greatly influenced food inclinations, desires, and diets. Therefore, there are genuine concerns on how marketers approach the young audience.
Children are vulnerable to manipulation by marketers. In his study, Tolman discovered that the environment could influence a child to become anything in the society – “Give me a healthy child from any background, and I will turn him or her anything you want –a scientist, lawyer, politician or even a thief (Biss, 2018).” Although Tolman wanted to apply his theory to human learning, advertisers have widely utilized advertisers to turn children into consumers. This raises ethical questions about whether marketing to children is good or bad.
Most of the adamant concerns have been raised on whether kids represent vulnerable audiences that require protection, methods marketers are using in social platforms, parents and other stakeholders' role in helping children contend with these messages, and the severe implications of advertisements for young people. The short-term and long-term concerns linked to exposure to marketing messages for products that are not healthy for children and the images and messages in advertisements the kids see (Kim et al., 2017). Without any doubt, this conditio...