Chapter Nine Marketing Ethics Advertising and Target Marketing

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 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.