A Study Of Ethical Issues In Commercial Advertising To Children In Contemporary Mainland China

When advertising to children is restricted, even been banned in many developed countries, we easily find various kinds of advertisements to children looming around Chinese children now. Advertisements to children are found everywhere influencing Chinese children. By the same marketing means as found in other adult markets, these advertisements target children. They are so attractive, that even adults can hardly resist them. Directly or indirectly recommending various commodities and services to children, advertising very often immorally makes use of children'cognitive weakness, such as children's credulity and fantasy. They indoctrinate some incorrect consumption ideas to children, fostering some wrong buying habits and consciousness of pursuing brands. Kinds of these commercial advertisements reflect the lacking in social responsibility and neglecting business ethics in the process of profit making by enterprises. We should pay more attention to these phenomena.This study mainly uses methods of literature research and qualitative analysis. The author read much documentary, including domestic advertising periodicals such as Advertising Pointer(1999～2005年), Modern Advertising(1996～2005年), Advertising Panorama(1996～2005年), China Advertising(1998～2005年)and International Advertising(1987～2005年), and articles and monographs published in other countries. Based on these study, the paper makes research on the ethics problems found in the current advertising to children in China.The paper is composed of four chapters in addition to the part of preface. The first chapter reviews and summarizes present study documentary about business ethics of advertising to children. The second chapter generalizes various kinds of ethics problems in advertising to children in china at present. The third chapter analyzes causes of ethics problems in advertising to children in china. Based on borrowing and comparing related laws and regulations of other countries, the last chapter tries to give suggestions on solutions to these problems.