SELF-REGULATION OF ADVERTISING IN TURKEY: THE ROLE OF CHANGING INDUSTRY DYNAMICS

It is the recognition of the advertising industry that ethics in advertising require an overall responsibility of all stakeholders of industry. There are a number of laws in many developed countries that clearly define rules and regulations in regards to placement, timing and content of the advertising. Self-regulatory organizations (SROs) also exert some regulatory authority over the industry. This study serves an important up to date analysis of these challenges, transformations, and evaluates reflections through the self-regulatory mechanism of advertising in Turkey. In order to address these challenges, our paper provides first a comprehensive review of the literature on advertising ethics and analyzes the distribution of complaints submitted to the Turkish Advertising Self Regulatory Board (TASRB). The analysis is based on a content analysis of the complaints received by TASRB among various industries over regulation codes, between the years 2006-2010. Complaints were coded for 19 industries over 26 codes for advertising practice and categorized for the complaint submitting party, as consumer or competitor. The results revealed an increase in the number of complaints. When the most complaint receiving industries; telecommunication, cosmetics/personal care, cleaning supplies, and IT were analyzed, findings reveal that complaints received by TASRB consistently placed under the codes of truthfulness, substantiation, and denigration