Consumers are faced with increasing numbers of advertisements from competing companies. To what extent do you think are consumers influenced by advertisements? What measures can be taken to protect them?

Companies compete for consumer attention through an increasing number of

advertisements

. Though

advertisements

impact

people

to a certain extent, there are ways to safeguard them. These days

advertisements

are so manipulative that they control the behaviour of

people

towards products these days.

People

are drawn to buy commodities they will not ever need or sometimes are harmful to them.

For instance

, soft drinks like Coca Cola and Pepsi are advertised in a way that they attract consumers who know that these drinks damage their teeth and upset their stomachs. Technology has

also

opened doors for these businesses to manipulate

people

. Almost every website and mobile application track their users, from their eating habits to their clothing size, they harvest as much

data

as possible.

This

data

is

further

sold to the advertisers who create targeted ads for these customers and hypnotise them into buying their products. Sometimes, the

data

that is

supposed to be private, like phone numbers or emails of the users, is hacked due to the absence of security measures in these applications.

This

type of hacking is promoted because advertising agencies are willing to pay millions so they can spam those phone numbers or emails. Keeping these

advertisements

in check is paramount.

Firstly

, it should be mandatory for these

advertisements

to tell

people

about the adverse effects of their product on

people

's health and the environment.

Secondly

, an organisation or a task force should be created with the purpose of finding the defaulters of the above rule, so all agencies should follow

this

seriously.

Thirdly

, websites or applications that sell their users'

data

without their clear consent should be penalised and if

such

data

is sold to advertisers and they use that

data

, those advertisers should be punished too.

This

would create fright among these companies and they would not involve themselves with

such

sellers without proper due diligence.

Finally

, there must be a strict regimen dictating the protection of customer

data

by websites, mobile applications and advertising companies. In conclusion,

advertisements

affect the mindset of the

people

into buying useless and harmful products but through rules and regulations on these

advertisements

, it is possible to safeguard

people

.