Advertising Regulation
Darren D. Lewis
Grantham University

Advertising Regulation Over the years, advertising has faced a lot of challenges and failures resulting to retrogression in the business world. However, these failures have prompted concerned parties and societies to develop control systems designed to ensure improved marketing behaviors. In the past, it was assumed that if advertising regulations collapsed the only approach was to implement governmental regulation on advertising trends to minimize marketing technicalities. Research shows that focusing on alternative institutional arrangements provides a platform through which rules and standards are determined, performance monitored and necessary readjustments of rules are enforced. The main cause of failure in advertising regulation, is the constant replacement of authoritative marketing acts of state governments which creates loopholes (LaBarbera, 1980). Researchers have noticed that despite the world’s attempt to improve the performance of advertisements, the technical knowledge to implement the necessary regulation has been a challenge. This paper will focus on alternative and complementary forms of society and government control over marketing activities, emphasizing on Advertising Self-Regulation (ASR). Advertising Self-Regulation (ASR) helps organizations to behave in a certain way for fear of losing potential clients and markets because they are confined by the law and they want to lessen the uncertainty of their competitors advertising behavior. The regulation of advertisements depends on the combination of the community, the market, the state and the private interest of the government because each depends on the other for their respective functioning (Boddewyn, 1985). Business associations depend on community values and cohesion, which are influenced by economic and political market forces that are subject to hierarchical control, political design and pressure of direct state intervention. It is also applied in advertising; the community’s response may be evasive due to the advert’s content that may either be materialistic, useless, boring or misleading (LaBarbera, 1980). However, such advertising misconduct is regulated by aspects of corporate self-discipline, such as organizational ethics and code of conduct. Companies that lack professionalism in its advertising operations suffer loss because consumers boycott to purchase products advertised and competitor firms seize the opportunity to provide consumer-friendly advertisements. In case, consumers file for a complaint pertaining specific adverts, the state government responses by prohibiting or restricting the airing of such adverts on state media outlets. In some instances, the state government may impose heavy taxation in order to reduce positive impact of the advertisements (Jones & Pickering, 1985). Associational self-regulation is a manifestation of private interest government, which is mandated to depict the community’s standards. Moreover, it supports and implements the state’s laws pertaining to advertising and offers alternatives to either over or under-regulate the advertisement. ASR and other forms of regulation intertwine with each other in order to reflect the accepted marketing standards by the community. The main aim of ASR is to ensure advertising standards are internalized by corporates in order to propagate moral adhesion in the community (Boddewyn, 1985). Therefore, the complementary role of self-regulation is to ensure that advertisements should facilitate the implementation of developmental norms reinforced by other norms emanating from the community and state. Business self-regulation consists of internalized governmental organs that are controlled by business associates who determine the accepted rules of behavior. This kind of regulation ensures that corporate functionalities are adhered to and the consumer’s interest is protected not only by the state, but also