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Sachin Kumar is currently working as Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, School of Business and Management Studies, Central University, Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. He can be reached at sachincuhp@gmail.com
In India, the deception in advertisements is increasing day by day. One of the significant causes of ad deception is enhanced competition among firms. The qualitative research explores the errors in positioning strategies of the advertisements in the Indian context. The study attempts to analyze which categories/sector is more deceptive in terms of advertising practices adopted. The study also reveals a trend of deception in advertising for over three years of 2015-2017. The study uses content analysis to divide the sectors among which advertising standard council of India found complaints about misleading advertisements. Through content analysis, the sectors framed are health care, education, information technology (IT) and communication, food and beverages, e-commerce, personal care product and others. The present research takes month-wise data of 36 months from January 2015 to December 2017 for the deceptive advertisements in India from the website of the Advertising Standards Council of India. The findings provide new insights about the number, frequency and trend of deceptive advertising practices adopted by the above-defined sectors in India.
Advertising, Advertising standards council of India, Deceptive ads, Health care, Education, IT, e-commerce, Personal care product
JEL Classification: C41, D18, I21, M37
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