false statistics used in advertisements

Advantages

ADVANTAGES

none for consumers

but businesses benefit by gain sales

DISADVANTAGES

• marketing strategies are focused more on raising sales than providing accurate product information.

DISADVANTAGES

• Some producers would lie in order to bring their sales the most common thing consumers look for is healthy or natural products to buy. Sometimes the information shown in statistics can be distorted over time with new sources that are false so it is hard to say what information is really true.

Harms

HARMS

• Consumers Suffer-They may waste money on a product or service that can't provide what they are looking for, or they might be unaware of the pitfalls involved in the product or service.
• Businesses Suffer- it might seem like deceptive advertising harms consumers and ends up benefiting businesses that employ the practice. But deceptive advertising often does significant harm to companies that use it. Consumers do not like being conned, and oftentimes they will retaliate against companies that trick them.

History of advertisements

• Advertisements are a promotion for a product, service or an idea. This is known to be used even in ancient times for example, in history the earliest signs of this could be seen in the Roman times with slogans and art painted on the wall. Advertising as we know it was during the mid-1400s in the form of newspapers or magazines. Even during the time of World Wars it was still used to promote the cause.
• Just as long as advertising has been around there has always been some false information given to make a consumer or even a certain group of people to feel a certain way about a topic or an object. Advertising and packaging usually help increase consumer awareness on a product and provide information for them to help them make valid decisions but some marketing strategies are focusing more on raising sales than to show the truth.

Different Types

• flawed correlations- The problem with correlations is this: if you measure enough variables, eventually it will appear that some of them correlate. As one out of twenty will inevitably be deemed significant without any direct correlation, studies can be manipulated (with enough data) to prove a correlation that does not exist or that is not significant enough to prove causation.
• data fishing- This is the misuse of data analysis to find patterns in data that can be presented as statistically significant when there is no real underlying effect.
• misleading data visualization- a distorted graph with misleading statistics.

More Types

• Purposeful and selective bias- most common examples for misuse of statistics and misleading data is, perhaps, the most serious. Purposeful bias is the deliberate attempt to influence data findings without even feigning professional accountability. Bias is most likely to take the form of data omissions or adjustments.
• Using percentage change in combination with a small sample size- Another way of creating misleading statistics, also linked with the choice of sample discussed above, is the size of said sample. When an experiment or a survey is led on a totally not significant sample size, not only will the results be unusable, but the way of presenting them – namely as percentages – will be totally misleading.

Misleading Advertising

In 2007, Colgate was made to abandon their claim by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the U.K. that “More than 80% of Dentists recommend Colgate.” The slogan in question was positioned on an advertising billboard in the U.K., and was deemed to be in breach of U.K. advertising rules.

The claim, which was based on surveys of dentists and hygienists carried out by the manufacturer, was found to be misrepresentative as it allowed the participants to select one or more toothpaste brands. The ASA stated that the claim “… would be understood by readers to mean that 80 percent of dentists recommend Colgate over and above other brands, and the remaining 20 percent would recommend different brands.”