The Problem Of Deceptive Advertising In Malaysia

Advertising is one of the most essential elements in a business filed. Manufacturers all around the world usually will spend a lot of money and sources annually to promote their products as advertising can help them to expand their market become globally (Frolova, 2014). As business field expand wider and broader, the role and utilization of advertising have extended subsequently require a close examination in terms of its roles and capacities. Advertising had become a type of communication which utilized to transfer media message and convince individuals or a specific group of people to persuade them or take new action (Ryans, 1996).

However, some of the manufactures tend to earn more profits by using misleading and deceptive advertisement (Jordan& Rubin, 1979). They tend to use misleading and untrue statement to give a strong impression towards the viewers. These manufactures always reinforce their products are the best among their competitors to gain attention and catch consumer eyeballs (Azcuenaga, 1997). However, their statement are unproven and their advertisement are usually self-approval. For example, advertisers might promote that this product was fresh cooked and organic but in fact, the product might be overnight or already ready cooked. They using unproven statement to promote the products and it can be consider as cheating cases. This lead to consumers have false beliefs onto the nature of the products that being advertised as well as influence consumers have a different purchase decisions. This can boost their sales and profit as consumer are having a high expectation as well as they have a strong trustworthy toward the product (Duncan, 2018).

Deceptive advertising not only using confusing, misleading or untrue statement to confuse consumers. According to Daily Mail, 2014 (an online news in UK) deceptive advertising might also use photography to show a “better side” of product to make them seem way better than they actual are. At this way, consumers will be have a good impression toward the product and the resistance toward product might be decrease as the “better side” of product have been already bear in mind of the consumers. Although consumers already knew that those “perfect products” in advertisement like foods or drinks was assembled by food artists and professional designers as well as been taken by professional photographers, but some of the consumers still trust that the real product that they purchase will be exactly the same with the product inside the advertisement. In addition, there might also have some consumer that wanted to fulfil their curiosity toward the product (Felix, 2015). In fact, deceptive advertising is a technique that never fail to create curiosity and strong impression. But those manufacturers never think that deception advertising may lead to long term negative effects toward consumers and business field (Duncan, 2018).

According to a research done by Christina Rathy (2015), product information and materialism factor are the major element in determining Malaysian consumer attitudes. The results shown that there are the highest value of respondents agreed advertisement persuade consumers buy unneeded products and there are lowest value of respondents feel advertisement misleading value to consumers. He concluded it is because most of the consumer in Malaysia had a positive believe towards the information of products that provided by advertisers and manufacturers. This had clearly prove that how advertising play an important role towards consumer behaviours in Malaysia as well as Malaysian consumers do not think that deceptive advertising in Malaysia is a serious problem in advertising field.

However, a study that done by Aniss, Kadir & Aidaros (2015) revealed a lot of contemporary advertising overpromises to consumers in order to attract new consumers to buy a product. Throughout the study, the result shown that there is a high value of Malaysian consumers admitted that those sexy women who staring in advertisement is used to hide the products’ weaknesses. This is the evidence that advertisers always tend to hide the weakness of products by using overpromising and misleading information to gain consumers’ belief and build positive image of product towards consumer (Fayyaz & Lodhi, 2018).

In addition, a study which conducted by Munusamy and Chelliah (2011) reveal that advertisement play an important role in customer services and satisfaction field as advertisement can attract consumers with a lot of goodies. The result of the study also show out that misleading information in advertising have the biggest impact toward consumer satisfaction as the information or statement of product is untrue and also overpromised. Consumer satisfaction dropped when they realise there is a big difference on the product with their expectations. This is because those misleading information and overpromise in advertisement provide them a high expectations toward the products.

Moreover, result from a study which done by Umar, Bahrun, Sukati (2013) show that customer satisfaction has a positive relationship with brand loyalty. It also explain that consumer will create pre purchase image in their own mind through different way such as advertisement, reviews and discussion with friends which results in consumer will grade the satisfaction level by comparing the pre purchase image of product and reality of product, after they use the product. It also point out that the tendency of repurchase will increase if the satisfaction of level is high and lead to brand loyalty increase too. The repurchase of product had ensure the quality of product and proven that the high satisfaction of consumers toward the product and the brand.

Based on media effects theory, it can be explain that how deceptive advertising influence society by using different methods such as acquiring, triggering, altering and reinforcing then lead to various type of effects like cognitive, beliefs, attitudes, affects, physiology and behaviour (Potter, 2012). When deceptive advertising occurs, consumers’ cognitive, belief, attitude and behaviour can be change or affect easily. For example, a lot of beverage companies had been advertise their product is a healthy which can provide people nutrition. Most of them also try to persuade people to consume their product every day to start a fresh or healthy day. However, we all knew that those beverages are not healthy at all if we check out on the ingredients content of the products. In fact, all of them are sugar-full products which means sugar is the main ingredients in order to make the drinks delicious rather than healthy (Lakhiani, 2018). By using the overpromising technique and adding in misleading information, these manufacturers success to repositioning their brand as “healthy brand” as well as helping their own brand to increase sales. In other words, these manufacturers had provided a wrong spot for the consumers to relief their pressure and tension toward the products as lots of beverages had been proven by society that they are unhealthy. The repeating exposure of advertisement and reinforce of misleading information success to change the memory structure of consumers towards the products as well as strengthen the product’s skills. At last, these products success to create awareness and attention toward consumers and they might purchase the product to fulfil their curiosity. On the other hand, consumers might have an unsatisfied situation after they try the product and experience the big difference on the product compare to the advertising product in their mind-set. This is because consumers have a high expectation before they purchase the product as the deceptive advertisement provide them wrong information and false message in order to gain attention from publics. This lead to decreasing of brand loyalty and confidential of the brand.

However, this theory fail to explain different people may have different respond upon media message or even no impact (Nastran, 2009). Although media message does impact the audience but media rarely direct impact upon consumers or individuals as it always mediated by individuals’ personality characteristics or differences as well as group relationship. Besides, people which in group commitments such as political party and religious group as well as independent opinion and perspective had been developed by audience especially adults. Thus, that only isolated people in society may have a big impact from the media directly (Lazarsfeld, 1940).Which means those message in deceptive advertisement might have no impact toward some group of people, for example adults. This discussion raises a few questions: do deceptive advertising power enough to impact every consumer in Malaysia and is deceptive advertising have any impact to brand loyalty. For instance, this research aims to fill in the research gap by exploring the relationship between deceptive advertising and consumers which are youth in generation Y, 18 to 34 years old toward the brand loyalty.