Weak regulations let TV ads exploit gullible audience
- Source: Global Times
- [22:05 March 08 2010]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Ryan Ulrich
Chinese TV is filled with adverts 24 hours a day, many of which are outright cons.
One advert that I saw said that a cell phone which originally cost 3,500 yuan ($512.70) was now being sold for about 100 yuan. Is the cell phone for real? Maybe, but that didn't seem to be the main point of the ad. To take advantage of the offer, you had to call a particular number – for 39 yuan, more than a third of the price of the product they were selling.
As International Day for Consumers' Rights and Interests, March 15, approaches, this case makes me think about the adverts that I've seen on TV in China and the US. Some of these ads are clearly gimmicks, while others are just extravagant. What should be done about it?
In the US, strong supervision, laws and watchdog groups have developed to protect consumers. However, they sometimes seem to misuse their rights.
For example, in 1996 Pepsi ran a series of adverts promoting their drink by saying that if you collected a certain number of points from drinking cans of soda, you could purchase gifts like T-shirts, hats and other items from the company. One of the "gifts" was a Harrier fighter jet which, the ad said jokingly, would cost 7 million points.
I didn't think anything about this until someone sued the company. They had found out the points could be bought for 10 cents each, and gave the company a check and the minimum number of coupons necessary to buy the Harrier jet. When the company refused, he sued for misleading advertising. Eventually, the court ruled that no reasonable person would have believed that the jet was for sale. Was this a case of false advertising? Or someone who should have known better?
In China, the responsibility is placed more on the consumer. For example, when goods are sold on TV in these programs, most people I talked to took a caveat emptor attitude, feeling that it was the consumer's responsibility to realize that the goods were fake. This is especially the case with cheap designer bags or electronics.
The TV stations also seem to have the attitude that it is the responsibility of the consumer to know whether or not the goods are real, and have few or no standards when it comes to making money off the gullibility of others.
In 2009 the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television made a push to ban sexually explicit advertising. As part of that push they sought to crack down on Internet shopping adverts as well. A consumer society in Jinlin, Liaoning Province said that half of all consumer complaints by farmers in the area were the result of these type of TV adverts.
China needs to strengthen consumer education. Part of the reason that all these adverts exist are that people buy the products and fall for the tricks. By alerting consumers that these products could be fakes, fewer people would buy them.
Tighter regulations at the local levels need to be enforced. On several blog sites and in conversations with friends, it was mentioned that the leading television networks don't tend to broadcast these adverts as much, and instead they're confined to smaller provincial networks.
While we need more educated consumers, the law also needs to protect the vulnerable.
Older consumers, and people from less sophisticated backgrounds, shouldn't be blamed for falling for these tricks. The attitude that if somebody gets cheated, it's all their fault, rather than the advertisers, needs to change.
The author is a MA candidate at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University School for Chinese American Studies. viewpoint@globaltimes.com.cn
