Today the high sales of popular consumer goods reflect the power of advertising and not the real needs of the society in which they are sold To what extent do you agree or disagree Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your o

Apropos of the statement, I am in partial accord with it. In modern era, our life is highly influenced by advertisements. Although advertisements were initially believed to have fundamentally beneficial influence on humankind, it can be contended that it has veered to unethical direction of popularizing good of less use and proliferation of consumerism.

To begin, I strongly believe that advertisements have played an indispensable role in soaring sales of goods of mere importance among affluent and rich high-class societies. Being affluent allows them to experiment and buy assortment of goods without considering their actual use. To exemplify, consider the increase in sales of smart phones. It is very expensive compared to other basic mobile phones. But intensive advertisement of this product has induced a desire among people to buy it even though they merely use all its functionalities and features. In addition, another category of our society who is highly influenced by advertisements is children. The way advertisement is pictured tends to excite children enormously. Consequently, they obligate their parents to purchase products, like toys, which they never use after buying.

Nevertheless, it is found that 80% of world's population is average-income earners and low-income earners. They are working hard every day to sustain and meet their daily fundamentals. Therefore, majority of our total population are compelled to be frugal and prudent enough to decide what is useful and what is not. Although these people have desire to buy fancy products, they tend to refrain as they cannot afford. Consequently, impact of advertisement on majority of citizens is minimal.

In a nutshell, I assert that advertisements can be seen as powerful mean of inducing desire of fancy and useless goods while it has only partially succeeded in increasing the sales of these consumer goods. As economic condition of individuals improves, the effect of advertisement to enhance sale of fancy consumer goods will increase exponentially.