The Consumer credit act 1974 aims to protect consumers when they purchase goods on credit. Consumers must be given a copy of any credit arrangement they enter into.
Also Reebok can’t send sales staff to people’s homes and try to pressure people to buy goods credit or charge high interest rates.
The Data Protection Act 1998 is where organisation dealing with personal details is limited to what they can do with your details. They have to be kept confidential to a certain extent.
Reebok can’t keep the details longer than necessary, they must be accurate, used for the reasons stated when the information was taken and used only for lawful purposes.
Voluntary standards
Volountary codes of practise are statements by an organisation or a committee about methods of working which are recommended as good practise within the industry.
Organisations, companies and businesses that volunteer to stick to these codes display symbols showing the customers what they do.
The ASA is responsible for all advertisements and promotion in these areas:
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Press – local, regional and national magazines and newspapers.
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Outdoor Advertising – posters, billboards transport and aerial announcements.
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Direct Marketing – mail, leaflets, letters, brochures and catalogues.
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Screen Promotions – Cinema adverts, T.V adverts, internet and computer games
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Sales Promotions – front page promotions, on package promotions and competitions.
The British code of Advertising and sales promotion are the rules governing this type of activity.
The ASA protects the consumer by helping the advertisers, agenises and the media to produce advertisements that will not mislead customers or offend them.
These are the basic principles:
- Legal, honest and truthful
- They have to act responsible and the consumers and society
- They must be acting fair and can’t say other businesses are not good for example.
The ASA can ask for an advertisement to be stopped if the advertiser doesn’t change the advert. The ASA has no legal powers but they can get pressure groups and this can harm a companies name and give them a bad reputation.
Reebok
Reebok had an advert with 50 Cent and it talked about him getting shot 9 times and him surviving it.
Reebok thought that there would be a good advert because it shows 50 cent making something of his life after all what’s happened. Some people didn’t like the advert and started a group against the advert called mothers against guns which was founded by Lucy cope of Southwark London.
The mothers against guns didn’t like the advert because they said it was promoting guns in a good way and felt that the younger children could see that guns is a good thing.
They went to the ASA and complained. The ASA said that they breached the TV advertising standards dealing with the violence of 50 cents life inappropriately.
Reebok had to withdraw the advert because it was getting to much publicity and Reebok was getting a bad name for its self.
There was a mixed opinion on the advert, but Reebok had to get rid of the advert because there could be loosing out on more customers everyday.
If people don’t like Reebok they can easily go to other rivals such as Nike and Adidas so it’s a very competitive market and Reebok need to be careful what they do.
