Challenge 36: Advertisements

190. How does advertising influence people's behavior? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.

Advertisements are one of the major methods used by companies and other business corporations to lure customers into buying their products and allowing them to make a profit out of the sales. Advertisements do indeed influence the people of today’s materialistic world where more than half the people buy things because they want to. People like you and me are included in this half of the population.

Advertisements are everywhere. The moment you step out into the streets and look around you see bill boards, flyers and other media related inventions that are advertising products. Even as you lay down on a couch to read the local news paper or switch on the TV, advertisements pop up here and there. These constant reminders of the things you want eventually lead you into buying them. Advertisements can be seen as a predator, surrounding their prey left, right, and center.

I guilty to say that I am a prey, held hostage to the predator. I constantly find myself attracted to the bright colored pages of advertisements in magazines of clothing and shoes. During my 2011 summer visit to Beijing, I was looking through my sister’s magazine, and saw a pair of shoes that I wanted the moment I set my eyes on it. The store was a 15 minute bus ride from where I was staying, and I felt the urge of putting on my shoes and going to buy it right away.

I tried looking at other magazines and surfing the net to get my mind off the shoe, but I my mind constantly went back to that glossy, bright page, which advertised that shoe. In the next five minutes, I had worn my shoes and was walking out to door, going for an “unintended walk.” On that walk, I found myself walking right into the store and buying that shoe.  A part of me was extremely satisfied, but another was a bit guilty. I overcame the guilt by thinking about how I would’ve regretted not buying it.

Advertisements call out to us, and wait keenly for the purchase of that object. It enhances consumerism, which may have a positive impact on the economy, but may do harm to individuals. They alter our minds, making us buy things we can do without, and most of the time, things on advertisements look much better than in real. Sadly, we always seem to fall for them, and pursue their existence.