Consumers today are exposed to an ever-growing volume of advertisements from competing businesses across multiple media platforms. I believe that this constant commercial presence can substantially influence purchasing behaviour by building brand familiarity and appealing to consumers’ emotions. To protect the public, governments should discourage excessive advertising through taxation while improving consumers’ ability to recognise persuasive techniques.
Advertising can shape consumer behaviour in several important ways. Chief among these is repeated brand exposure. When people encounter the same brand frequently, familiarity gradually develops, and familiar products often appear more trustworthy or attractive than unknown alternatives. As a result, consumers may favour a particular brand even when they have not objectively compared its quality or price with competing products. Another significant influence is emotion-driven consumption. Advertisements frequently associate products with desirable qualities such as success, beauty or social status. For instance, a consumer repeatedly exposed to luxury clothing being portrayed as a symbol of achievement may begin to view such products as necessary for creating a successful image. Consequently, purchasing decisions can be driven by emotional aspiration rather than genuine need.
Several measures could be adopted to reduce these effects. One approach would be to impose higher taxes on companies that advertise excessively. Since frequent promotion would then become more costly, businesses would have a stronger financial incentive to reduce the volume of repetitive advertisements. As a result, consumers would be exposed to fewer repeated messages, reducing the psychological pressure created by constant reinforcement and allowing them to evaluate products more objectively before purchasing. Another effective measure is advertising literacy education. More specifically, consumers should be taught how advertisers use emotional associations, selective information and repetition to shape preferences. By recognising these techniques, individuals can assess commercial messages more critically. This, in turn, can make them less vulnerable to manipulation and encourage more deliberate purchasing decisions.
In conclusion, advertising can strongly influence consumers through repeated exposure and emotional persuasion. To address this, higher taxes on excessive promotion, combined with greater advertising literacy, could limit these effects and enable consumers to make more independent choices.