In a brand filled market where hundreds of brands are born every single day, sustaining as well as capturing market share is not a cake walk. Brands look out for innovative ways to increase the product as well as company awareness among the mass.

Advertising plays a vital role in transferring the value of the brand from the designers table to the end user in the pipeline, the customers. Comparative advertising is one form of advertising where the brands are compared with competing ones, where the name and identity of the competing brands are revealed publically.

Comparative advertising is advantageous in a market environment where the levels of competition among the segment are too high. Globally established brands earning a good share of minds and hearts of customers need not or should not look out for comparative advertising.

It may indirectly affect the positive image which they might have grown and developed over years. In many cases, comparative advertising is seen not to help the established brands to the same extend as they would to growing up brands.

Newly launched brands which are in the growth ladder but find it hard to enter into a direct competition with market leaders stick to this mode of advertising. When the global brands are pictured as competitors, it in turn builds a positive image about the growing ones.

But still many global brands like Coca Cola and Pepsi Co stick to the modes of comparative advertising in those countries where comparative advertising is allowed.

Even market leaders in consumer products like the HUL and P&G stick to comparative advertising in certain occasions mostly aimed at reducing the market share of their competitor.

Comparative advertising generates the question and importance of business ethics in advertising. Many marketing gurus and brand managers now think over the ethical issues associated with comparative marketing.

Overshadowing a brand to increase the market penetration for one brand is considered as an unethical process by many. Challenging brands which are capable of questioning the credibility or quality or usage of the competing brands can stick to comparative advertising but others should stay away from it.