Weight Loss Advertising: Moving from Claim Credibility Control to Performance Focus in Public Policy

摘要

This research focuses on the commercial weight-loss programs (Programs) industry that presently falls under the aegis of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) tasked with preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices. We argue that the public policy focus on controlling deceptive claims [e.g. the "Red Flag Initiative" (Avery et al. 2013)] may not always result in consumers getting enough information from Program advertising to make beneficial choices. This research argues that the possible impact of current public policy initiative needs to be assessed in their impact on availability of objective criteria for the consumers in Program advertising. Objective information can help consumers select the Program that has a better fit with their goals, sets and meets their expectations, and results in consumer trust in the Programs. In the context of obesity control objective information might help control the extent of obesity in the US. Obesity is a growing concern in the US with obesity trend on the rise (Wang et al. 2008). Consumer frustration from Programs is evident as consumer perception of weight-loss advertising credibility is low (Prendergast, Liu, and Poon 2009), consumer participation low in Programs, while consumer attrition high from Programs (Gudzune et al. 2015; Tsai and Wadden 2005).