Chapter NineMarketing 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.