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PROMOTING RESPONSIBLE ADVERTISING: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF
MISLEADING ADVERTISING ON CONSUMERS
IN LITHUANIA AND FRANCE
Miglė ČERNIKOVAITĖ
Vilniaus Kolegija / University of Applied Sciences,
Faculty of Business Management, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to compare the misleading advertising effects on customers’ behavior in Lithuania and
France. The market saturation, often demands from companies heavily invest to marketing and advertising.
Despite advertising value for all market participants, some advertisers’ are reaching the consumers in a
misleading way: reflects incorrectly characteristics indicate false prices, provide substandard reality, applies
subjective comparisons. Misleading advertising research and prevention is very important and necessary to
ensure not only the protection of consumers, but also for the moral growth of Lithuanian companies. The
research analysis revealed that Lithuanians often recognize misleading advertising and identify the company’s
unethical behavior faster than in France. In both countries the consumers will not buy from the company if it
propagates misleading information and they will not recommend to their friends, but seldom appeal with
complains, especially in Lithuania. Therefore is a need to spread of adequate and legitimate information
concerned with products and services, especially while shopping online.
Keywords: consumer research, customer, relationship, misleading, advertising, promoting responsible
advertising.
Introduction
In the current business world with a large variety of goods and services, advertising is
becoming one of the most important instruments of existing and potential customers’ and
visitors’ information, awareness and interest in the cause of persuasion. While information
declared in advertising should be objective, but it will always be presented in such a way
that would affect consumers more than just knowing the fact. The phenomenon of
misleading advertising is a very common practice in the current business world. Using
deception the company is trying to manipulate consumers and attract as many people as
possible. Consumers expect that the product will be superior then others, but usually their
suspense is not satisfied. This subject is quite new, because manipulation in advertising
doesn’t yet have a definition.
Misleading advertising, in the most blatant of contexts, is illegal in most countries. However,
advertisers still find ways to deceive consumers in ways that are legal, or technically illegal
but unenforceable. In modern society it is widely considered the ethical aspects in
advertising. EU tries to approximate the laws of the Member States on unfair commercial
practices, including misleading advertising, which directly harm consumers’ economic
interests and thereby indirectly harm the economic interests of legitimate competitors. EU
tries to protect people from actions or omissions which by deceiving the consumer prevent
him from making an informed and thus efficient choice.
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