Transcript Chapter Nine Marketing Ethics: Advertising and Target

Chapter Nine
Marketing Ethics: Advertising and
Target Marketing
Jerry Estenson
The Last Two “Ps”
• Promotion and Placement
– Target Marketing
– Market Research
• Ethical Influence
– Persuading, Asking, Informing, Advising
• Unethical Influence
– Threats, Coercion, Deception, Manipulation, Lying
Draw the line between Ethical and
Unethical
Unethical
Ethical
Consumer Protection
• Federal Trade Commission
– Focus on effect or intent
– Who judges what “might” happen
– Political consequences if regulate after harm is
done
• Do we assume consumers are reasonable or
relatively ignorant
Other forms of consumer autonomy
• Over time the market will weed out deceptive
ads and practices
• Affluent Society (John Kenneth Galbraith)
– “Dependence effect” Market was creating the
consumers
• Disrupting supply and demand
• Creating irrational and trivial consumer demands
• Violates consumer autonomy through manipulation
• What would Kant say?
Possible violations of individual
autonomy
• Advertising creates want which are not
autonomous
– Why do people shop?
• Non-autonomous desires
– First order (Happen at any given time and rational
individuals can step away from them)
– Second Order (unable to step back. Like an Alcoholic
• Arrington argues that marketing influences us by
appealing to pre-existing conditions
• Dworkin – To be an autonomous choice it must
indepedently accepted by the individual
• Crisp – Need to know why it is accepted. Gets to
the capacity of the consumer
• Lippke – To be an autonomous decision maker
the individual must have a variety of intellectual
skills, discipline, attitudes, and motivations
– Ads carry meta-messages (emotional appeals,
oversimplification, superficiality, shoddy standards of
proof.
Marketing to the vulnerable
Unique Volunerability
• Consumer (unable to fully participate as an
informed participant in the marketplace
• General (Susceptible to some physical,
psychological or financial harm)
• What about target marketing to poor, minority
groups, accident victims, funeral settings,
college students.