a. How might advertising make markets less competitive?

In one way, a business that has mastered advertising can ensure that their product or service is perceived differently in the market by its consumers. This allows them to position their product as being unique and special from the rest, which, in turn, enables them to charge higher than average prices for these products or services. This concept ensures that the competition is trivialized, and reduced for this particular company.

b. How might it make markets more competitive?

Sometimes, advertising exposes many different products to different consumers allowing them to be more informed about the different choices of goods or services available to them. Therefore, whenever they want to decide which goods or services to go for, they have a more robust understanding of the choices available to them. This concept increases competition in the market since all the businesses have to ensure that they make the customer understand what their product or service offering to them is and how important it is to them (the customer) so that they can convert the customer and make a sale.