THE EFFECTS OF UNETHICAL PRACTICES IN ADVERTISING

Our country, Nigeria is more of a capitalist state and everyone in his kind of business wants to maximize profit. By the way of negligence of the ethical standards, some advertisers, regardless of the decency, truthfulness and social values which advertising upholds stick to unethical advertising practice, thus, causing loss of lives, discomfort, and dissatisfaction to the consumers of some goods and services. In the words of Ifedayo Daramola (1999) “a number of advertisements carried by Nigerian newspapers, radio and television are illegal and libelous; while some contain malice” This work has been structured in five chapters to make an ideal project. Chapter one embodies background of the study, which deals on advertising in its entirely. The chapter two of this work, made an indepth review of related literatures. These literatures bother on enhancing social responsibility through advertising, the power of persuasive communication in advertising, factors affecting buying behaviour, the theoretical framework and measures to enhance ethical standards in advertising practice. The third chapter covers the methodology with which the study is carried on. In this regard, the sample survey technique was chosen. The technique evaluated the description of research population, sample and sampling techniques, instrument of data collection, techniques of data collection and limitations of the methodology. In chapter four, the presentation and interpretation of data collected is done. This is based on description of data according to its relevance to a given research question. Also, discussion and interpretation of results are carefully made.