Week 6 assignment

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2 Consumer Well-Being

Chapter Objectives

When you finish reading this chapter you will understand why

Christen wheels her cart down the grocery aisles, absent-mindedly throwing in the usual fill-ins she always buys on her weekly trip. She reaches for a box of Tide laundry detergent and is about to toss it into the cart when she stops herself in midair: She just remembered her resolution to think a little more about the environmental impact of the cleaning products and other groceries she brings into the house. When her son Jon came home from school and asked her how she was helping to preserve the world for the next generation,

2-1 Ethical business is good business. 2-2 Marketers have an obligation to provide safe and functional products as part of their business activities. 2-3 Consumer behavior impacts directly on major public policy issues that confront our society. 2-4 Consumer behavior can be harmful to individuals and to society.

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she was embarrassed that she couldn’t answer him. From the mouths of babes! Time for this 33-year-old to learn a lesson.

Source: DmitriMaruta/Shutterstock.

Might as well start with detergents—Christen thinks about that news report she saw last week about the excessive use of chemicals and other additives that are bad for the water supply, not to mention the huge amount of fresh water U.S. consumers waste just to wash their clothes.

Christen has always bought Tide; it’s the same product her mother used for years. Now as she takes a closer look in the detergent section she notices a lot of other brands, including some “ecologically sound” ones she’s never seen before like Dropps, Ecos, Method, and Seventh Generation. When she looks at each box, Tracy notices that some carry different “ecolabels,” including one issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called DfE (Design for

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the Environment). Hmmm…Tide doesn’t have that on its box. On the other hand, the Tide package does recommend just using cold water instead of hot for the laundry, and Procter & Gamble (P&G) now sells a concentrated version that doesn’t require as much soap to do the wash. Christen also notices that the “green” brands seem to cost a bit more. Today every penny counts—how much of her precious grocery budget is worth sacrificing for a slightly less sudsy wash? All of these choices are really confusing. Maybe she should stick with what she knows and let others worry about the environment. Then again, what will she tell Jon the next time he asks about how “green” she is?

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Business Ethics and Consumer Rights

Mainstream U.S. shoppers like Christen increasingly choose “green” products that are better for the environment. On the other hand, there has been a lot of hype about “the green revolution”; since the recession of 2008, consumers are a lot more cost-conscious. To add to the confusion, even well-intentioned shoppers have trouble figuring out which brands really are better. It’s practically a full-time job to sort out all the competing claims. One solution is for independent rating agencies to develop labeling systems that the shopper can use to decide among options—but even these systems can be overwhelming. There are 464 eco-label systems worldwide. The U.S. government is trying to encourage businesses and consumers to select green cleaning products; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even signed a promotion agreement with NASCAR to raise awareness of the DfE label. In addition to DfE certification and other rating systems the cleaning industry sponsors, a few manufacturers and retailers even offer their own labels, such as SC Johnson’s Greenlist and Eco-Scale by the Whole Foods grocery chain. Other major brands, like P&G’s Tide, sell highly concentrated versions that are formulated to work with cold water. It’s tough to make apples-to-apples comparisons, and these competing systems threaten to “throw the baby out with the bath water” if consumers like Tracy throw up their hands and just stick to what they know.

Ethical business is good business.OBJECTIVE 2-1

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Is it possible for marketers to “do good” and still “do well”; can they provide profits and still do what’s right for customers and the environment?

The answer is simple: Ethical business is good business. A majority of consumers around the world say they are willing to pay more for products and services from companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact. What is even more encouraging is that younger consumers express this preference even more strongly: About three- quarters of them feel this way, and 81 percent of them even expect their favorite companies to declare publicly what they are doing to make the world a better place.

Business ethics are rules of conduct that guide actions in the marketplace; these are the standards against which most people in a culture judge what is right and what is wrong, good or bad. These universal values include honesty, trustworthiness, fairness, respect, justice, integrity, concern for others, accountability, and loyalty.

Of course, notions of right and wrong differ among people, organizations, and cultures. Some businesses believe it is okay for salespeople to pull out all the stops to persuade customers to buy, even if this means they mislead them; other firms feel that anything less than total honesty with customers is terribly wrong. Because each culture has its own set of values, beliefs, and customs, companies around the world define ethical business behaviors quite differently.

These cultural differences certainly influence whether business practices such as bribery are acceptable. Since 1977 the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal for U.S. executives to bribe foreigners to gain business. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), to which most industrialized countries belong, also outlaws bribery. Still, these practices are common in many countries. In Japan, it’s called kuroi

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kiri (black mist); in Germany, it’s schmiergeld (grease money), whereas Mexicans refer to la mordida (the bite), the French say pot-de-vin (jug of wine), and Italians speak of the bustarella (little envelope). They’re all talking about baksheesh, the Middle Eastern term for a “tip” to grease the wheels of a transaction. Giving “gifts” in exchange for getting business from suppliers or customers is acceptable and even expected in many countries.

Regardless of whether they do it intentionally, some marketers do violate their bonds of trust with consumers. In some cases, these actions are actually illegal, as when a manufacturer deliberately mislabels the contents of a package. Or a retailer may adopt a “bait-and-switch” selling strategy that lures consumers into the store when it offers inexpensive products with the sole intent to get them to switch to higher-priced goods.

In other cases, marketing practices have detrimental effects on society even though they are not explicitly illegal. Some companies erect billboards advertising alcohol and tobacco products in low-income neighborhoods; others sponsor commercials that objectify women as they pander to male viewers.

Needs and Wants: Do Marketers Manipulate Consumers?

One of the most common and stinging criticisms of marketing is that companies convince consumers they “need” many material things, and that they will be unhappy and inferior people if they do not have these “necessities.” The issue is a complex one and is certainly worth

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considering: Do marketers give people what they want, or do they tell people what they should want?

Who controls the market—companies or consumers? This question is even more complicated as new ways of buying, having, and being are invented every day. It seems that the “good old days” of marketerspace—a time when companies called the shots and decided what they wanted their customers to know and do—are dead and gone. Many people now feel empowered to choose how, when, or if they will interact with corporations as they construct their own consumerspace .

In this new environment, individuals dictate to companies the types of products they want and how, when, and where (or even if) they want to learn about those products. In turn, companies need to develop and leverage brand equity in bold new ways to attract the loyalty of these consumer “nomads.” People still “need” companies—but in new ways and on their own terms. As we’ll see throughout this text, profound changes in consumer behavior are influencing how people search for product information and evaluate alternative brands. In the brave new world of consumerspace, we have much greater potential to shape our own marketing destinies.

Do Marketers Create Artificial Needs? The marketing system has come under fire from both ends of the political spectrum. On the one hand, some members of the religious right believe that marketers contribute to the moral breakdown of society when they present images of hedonistic pleasure and encourage the pursuit of secular humanism at the expense of spirituality and the environment. A coalition of religious groups called the National Religious Partnership for the Environment claims that gas-guzzling cars and other factors that cause

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climate change are contrary to Christian moral teachings about protecting people and the Earth.

On the other hand, some leftists argue that the same deceitful promises of material pleasure function to buy from people who would otherwise be revolutionaries working to change the system. According to this argument, the marketing system creates demand—demand that only its products can satisfy.

A Response.

As we saw in Chapter 1 , a need is a basic biological motive; a want represents one way that society has been taught to satisfy the need. For example, thirst is a biologically based need. Marketers teach us to want Coca-Cola to satisfy that thirst rather than, say, goat’s milk. Thus, the need is already there; marketers simply recommend ways to satisfy it. A basic objective of marketing is to create awareness that needs exist, not to create needs.

Is Marketing Necessary? More than 50 years ago, the social critic Vance Packard wrote, “Large-scale efforts are being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences.” The economist John Kenneth Galbraith charged that radio and television are important tools to accomplish this manipulation of the masses. Because consumers don’t need to be literate to use these media, repetitive and compelling communications can reach almost everyone. This criticism may even be more relevant to online communications, where a simple click delivers a world of information to us.

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The American Association of Advertising Agencies created this ad to counter charges that ads create artificial needs. Source: Used with permission of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Some people charge that marketers arbitrarily link products to desirable social attributes, so they foster a materialistic society where what we own defines our value as a person. One influential critic even argued that the problem is that we are not materialistic enough: We do not sufficiently value goods for the utilitarian functions they deliver but instead focus on the irrational value of goods for what they symbolize. According to this view, for example, “Beer would be enough for us, without the additional promise that in drinking it we show ourselves to be manly, young at heart, or neighborly. A washing machine would be a useful machine to wash clothes, rather than an indication that we are forward-looking or an object of envy to our neighbors.”9

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A poster for Westin Hotels’ Well-Being Movement. Source: Courtesy of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

A Response.

Products meet existing needs, and marketing activities only help to communicate their availability. The economics of information perspective regards advertising as an important source of consumer learning. This view emphasizes the economic cost of the time we spend to search for products. Accordingly, advertising is a service for which consumers are willing to pay because the information it provides reduces their search time.

Do Marketers Promise Miracles?

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Advertising leads us to believe that products have magical properties; the things we buy will transform our lives. We will be beautiful, successful, perhaps even live forever. In this respect, advertising functions as mythology does in primitive societies: It provides simple, anxiety-reducing answers to complex problems.

A Response.

Marketers simply do not know enough about people to manipulate them. Consider that the failure rate for new products ranges from 40 to 80 percent. Although people think that advertisers have an endless source of magical tricks and scientific techniques to manipulate them, in reality the industry is successful when it tries to sell good products and unsuccessful when it sells poor ones.12

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Consumers’ Rights and Product Satisfaction

Fifty-four million dollars for a pair of missing pants? A judge in Washington, D.C., made headlines a decade ago when he filed a $54 million lawsuit against his neighborhood dry cleaner because it lost a pair of his pinstriped suit pants. He claimed that a local consumer protection law entitled him to thousands of dollars for each day over nearly four years in which signs at the shop promised “same day service” and “satisfaction guaranteed.” The suit dragged on for several months, but at the end of the day the plaintiff went home with empty pockets. And some people claim we have too many lawsuits in this country!

If you’re not happy with a product or service, what can you do about it? You have three possible courses of action (though sometimes you can take more than one):

1. Voice response—You can appeal directly to the retailer for redress (e.g., a refund).

2. Private response—You can express your dissatisfaction to friends and boycott the product or the store where you bought it.

Marketers have an obligation to provide safe and functional products as part of their business activities. OBJECTIVE 2-2

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3. Third-party response—Like the pantsless judge, you can take legal action against the merchant, register a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, or write a letter to the newspaper. These comments can be effective, especially when others join in. Cover Girl ran an advertising campaign targeted at female football fans that depicted a model wearing a Baltimore Ravens jersey with the tagline, “Get Your Game Face On.” At about the same time, a prominent Ravens player made headlines in a series of allegations about NFL players who physically abused their wives and girlfriends. Protestors went online and altered the ad to make it look like the model had a black eye. When enough people band together to express negative marketplace sentiments through activist organizations such as Greenpeace or in social media mass protests such as the one Cover Girl ran into, dramatic changes can result.

The Tangled Web From ihatestarbucks.com to boycottwalmart.meetup.com/, irritated customers have launched hundreds of gripe sites to air their grievances against companies. The practice is so widespread that some firms proactively buy unflattering domain names to keep other people from buying them. Xerox, for example, registered xeroxstinks.com, xeroxcorporationsucks.com, and ihatexerox.net. About 20,000 domain names end in “sucks.com.” About one- third of these sites are registered to none other than the companies they slam: owners include Walmart Stores, Coca-Cola, Toys “R” Us, Target, and Whole Foods Market.

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In one study, business majors wrote complaint letters to companies. When the firm sent a free sample in response, this action significantly improved how the students felt about it. This didn’t happen, however, when they only received a letter of apology—but no swag. Even worse, students who got no response reported an even more negative image than before. This shows that any kind of response is better than none.

Mass protests can sometimes bring about change. Source: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo.

A number of factors influence which route we choose. People are more likely to take action if they’re dissatisfied with expensive products such as household durables, cars, and clothing than for problems with inexpensive products. Ironically, consumers who are satisfied with a store in general are more likely to complain if they experience something bad; they take the time to complain because they feel connected to the store. And, if a

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company resolves the problem, customers feel even better about it than if they hadn’t complained in the first place! The moral: Although nobody likes criticism, organizations should encourage people to complain for these reasons:

1. They get the chance to correct the situation. 2. They will avoid an escalating problem that results when consumers

take to social media to let others know they’ve been treated badly. People are more likely to spread the word about unresolved negative experiences to their friends than they are to boast about positive occurrences.

3. They collect valuable insights about customers’ experiences that will (hopefully) help them to improve for future customers.

4. If consumers do not believe that the store will respond to their complaint, they will be more likely to simply switch than fight as they just take their business elsewhere.

Companies that score high in customer satisfaction often benefit from a big competitive advantage—especially when so many firms skimp on the attention they pay to customers. A five-year study of customer satisfaction in the Canadian banking industry provides typical results: Banks that provided better service commanded a larger “share of wallet” than did others (i.e., their customers entrusted them with a larger proportion of their money).

Even so, more than half of the chief marketing officers (CMOs) who participated in a large survey reported that their companies do not reward their employees if customer satisfaction improves. More than one-third said they have no way to track word-of-mouth among customers, and fewer than three in ten said their firms are good at resolving customers’ complaints. What is wrong with this picture?

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Consumers get creative when they want to vent their feelings about companies they don’t like. Source: Michael Matthews/Alamy Stock Photo.

When a product doesn’t work as we expect or turns out to be unsafe (like the spate of hazardous products from China, ranging from toothpaste to dog food), it’s the understatement of the year to say we’re not satisfied. In these situations, marketers must immediately take steps to reassure us, or they risk losing a customer for life. If the company confronts the problem truthfully, we are often willing to forgive and forget. But if the firm seems to be dragging its heels or covering up, our resentment grows. This is what happened during the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or during the infamous “Poop Cruise,” when a disabled Carnival cruise ship sat at sea while 4,200 passengers and crew suffered through five days with no plumbing or electricity, and little food, under the glare of an unrelenting media spotlight.

Market Regulation

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The subprime mortgage meltdown that led to the collapse of major investment banking and insurance companies such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, as well as triggering the Great Recession of 2008 (and beyond), illustrates why many people look to governments and industry watchdogs to provide oversight and regulation rather than relying strictly on businesses to police themselves. Some members of the business community regard this level of government oversight as excessive, and the Trump administration has aggressively unraveled many rules that relate to product safety and the environment. Still, concern for the welfare of consumers has been an issue since at least the beginning of the 20th century, and activists continue to voice concerns about a range of issues such as child labor, exploitative advertising, and genetically engineered food.

Partly as a result of consumers’ efforts, the U.S. government established many federal agencies to oversee consumer-related activities. These include the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the EPA. After Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book The Jungle exposed the awful conditions in the Chicago meatpacking industry, Congress was prompted to pass important pieces of legislation—the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 and the Federal Meat Inspection Act a year later—to protect consumers. A summary of some important consumer legislation enacted since that time appears in Table 2.1 . You can find other information about consumer-related issues at consumerreports.org and cpsc.gov (the Consumer Product Safety Commission).

Table 2.1 Sample of Federal Legislation to Enhance Consumers’ Welfare

Year Act Purpose

1953 Flammable Prohibits the transportation of flammable fabrics

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Fabrics Act across state lines.

1958 National Traffic and Safety Act

Creates safety standards for cars and tires.

1958 Automobile Information Disclosure Act

Requires automobile manufacturers to post suggested retail prices on new cars.

1966 Fair Packaging and Labeling Act

Regulates packaging and labeling of consumer products. (Manufacturers must provide information about package contents and origin.)

1966 Child Protection Act

Prohibits sale of dangerous toys and other items.

1967 Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act

Requires cigarette packages to carry a warning label from the Surgeon General.

1968 Truth-in- Lending Act

Requires lenders to divulge the true costs of a credit transaction.

1969 National Environmental Policy Act

Established a national environmental policy and created the Council on Environmental Quality to monitor the effects of products on the environment.

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1972 Consumer Products Safety Act

Established the Consumer Product Safety Commission to identify unsafe products, establish safety standards, recall defective products, and ban dangerous products.

1975 Consumer Goods Pricing Act

Bans the use of price maintenance agreements among manufacturers and resellers.

1975 Magnuson- Moss Warranty- Improvement Act

Creates disclosure standards for consumer product warranties and allows the Federal Trade Commission to set policy regarding unfair or deceptive practices.

1990 The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act

Reaffirms the legal basis for the Food and Drug Administration’s new rules on food labeling and established a timetable for the implementation of those rules.

1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act

Established a moratorium on special taxation of the internet, including taxation of access fees paid to America Online and other Internet Service Providers.

2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Prompted by the recession that began in 2008, intends to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end “too big to fail,” to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, and to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices. The Trump Administration is working to repeal this Act.

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2016 Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016

Passed in response to a number of incidents where companies tries to stifle negative online user reviews by including a “gag clause” in a contract that threatens legal action or monetary damages when customers say bad things about the company. The bill allows the FCC and individual states to take action against companies that try this tactic.

Table 2.2 lists major U.S. regulatory agencies and what they do. One of the most important ones for consumers is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); it polices advertising claims as well as the contents of edible products and pharmaceuticals. For example, as part of an FDA crackdown on consumer drug advertising, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals launched a $20 million corrective advertising campaign for Yaz, the most popular birth control pill in the United States. This term means that the company must inform consumers that previous messages were wrong or misleading. The TV commercials, which ran during prime-time shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and on cable networks, warned that nobody should take Yaz hoping that it will also cure pimples or premenstrual syndrome. Bayer was required to run these ads to correct previous messages after regulators decided the earlier ads overstated the drug’s ability to improve women’s moods and clear up acne.

Table 2.2 U.S. Regulatory Agencies and Responsibilities

Regulatory agency

Responsibilities

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

Protects the public from potentially hazardous products. Through regulation and testing programs, the CPSC helps firms make sure their products won’t harm customers.

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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Develops and enforces regulations aimed at protecting the environment. Such regulations have a major impact on the materials and processes that manufacturers use in their products and thus on the ability of companies to develop products.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Regulates telephone, radio, and television. FCC regulations directly affect the marketing activities of companies in the communications industries, and they have an indirect effect on all firms that use broadcast media for marketing communications.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

Enforces laws against deceptive advertising and product labeling regulations. Marketers must constantly keep abreast of changes in FTC regulations to avoid costly fines.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Enforces laws and regulations on foods, drugs, cosmetics, and veterinary products. Marketers of pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter medicines, and a variety of other products must get FDA approval before they can introduce products to the market.

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

Regulates interstate bus, truck, rail, and water operations. The ability of a firm to efficiently move products to its customers depends on ICC policies and regulation.

Advertisers, retailers, and manufacturers typically try to police themselves to ensure that their messages and products are not harmful or inaccurate. In addition to good intentions, they have a practical reason to do so: They don’t want governments to do it for them. Indeed, sometimes these efforts

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even seem to go a bit over the top. Consider, for example, a ruling by the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which is one of these industry watchdogs. Acting on a complaint by rival Kimberly-Clark, P&G must add little flecks of cartoon toilet paper to the backsides of its Charmin cartoon bears in future ads for its toilet paper. Although P&G supported its claim that Charmin leaves “fewer pieces behind” than the Cottonelle brand (and showed the results of its test on the brand’s website), the NAD decided that the test “did not accurately reflect the results consumers normally see and experience.”27

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Consumerism

“Absolut Impotence.” So reads a parody of a vodka ad created by Adbusters, a nonprofit organization that advocates for “the new social activist movement of the information age.” The editor of the group’s magazine argues that America is no longer a country, but rather a multitrillion-dollar brand subverted by corporate agendas. He claims that “America™” is no different from McDonald’s, Marlboro, or General Motors.

Adbusters sponsors numerous initiatives, including Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, that try to discourage rampant commercialism. These efforts, along with biting ads and commercials that lampoon advertising messages, are examples of culture jamming , which is a strategy to disrupt efforts by the corporate world to dominate our cultural landscape. The movement believes that “culture jamming” will change the way information flows; the way institutions wield power; the way TV stations are run; and the way the food, fashion, automobile, sports, music, and culture industries set their agendas.

Although some in corporate America may dismiss these extreme sentiments as the ravings of a lunatic fringe, their proponents deserve to be taken seriously. The scandals involving such corporate icons as BP, AIG, Enron, Martha Stewart, Arthur Andersen, Bear Stearns, and massive product recalls from companies such as General Motors and Blue Bell Creameries fueled a growing bonfire of mistrust and skepticism among the consuming public.

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President John F. Kennedy ushered in the modern era of consumerism with his “Declaration of Consumer Rights” in 1962. These include the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to redress, and the right to choice. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of consumer activism as consumers began to organize to demand better-quality products (and to boycott companies that did not provide them).

The publication of books such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, which attacked the irresponsible use of pesticides, and Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, which exposed safety defects in General Motors’ Corvair automobile, prompted these movements. Many people have a vigorous interest in consumer-related issues, ranging from environmental concerns such as global warming and climate change, toxic waste, and so on, to excessive violence and sex on television or in the lyrics of popular rock and rap songs like Robin Thicke’s controversial Blurred Lines music video that some people interpreted as encouraging rape. Indeed, after a public outcry Reebok had to drop the rapper Rick Ross from its endorsement roster after he released a song about spiking a woman’s drink with the drug MDMA, also referred to as ecstasy or molly.29

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The evidence is clear that a brand’s philanthropic activities can influence shopper behavior and ultimately purchase decisions. Consumers are especially interested in choosing brands that support causes they find personally relevant. These causes include medical cures and disease prevention, social change, faith-based initiatives, and animal and child welfare.

As a reaction to these feelings, many firms today try to integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) into their business models. CSR describes processes that encourage the organization to make a positive impact on the various stakeholders in its community including consumers, employees, and the environment. For example, the shoe company TOMS is well-known for its promise to give a needy child a pair of shoes for every pair it sells.

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Transformative Consumer Research

Indeed, some consumer researchers are themselves organizing, not only to study but also to rectify what they see as pressing social problems in the marketplace. This perspective is called participatory action research (PAR) or transformative consumer research (TCR) . It promotes research projects that include the goal of helping people or bringing about social change. Scientists who subscribe to this perspective view consumers as collaborators who work with them to realize this change rather than as a “phenomenon” on which to conduct research. Adherents of TCR work with at-risk populations, such as children, the disadvantaged, and the disabled, or on such topics as materialism, consumption of dangerous products, and compulsive consumption.

Marketing Pitfall When an organization wants to encourage people to contribute to its cause in some way, it seems like a good idea to provide an initial token display of support such as wearing a T-shirt, signing a petition, or asking them to join a Facebook group. Makes sense, right? Not necessarily. Some critics are worried about the phenomenon they term slacktivism ; small and relatively meaningless expressions of support for important causes such as liking a charity on Facebook that substitute for donations or volunteering. One study

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found that if the initial display is visible to others, this public behavior can actually reduce the likelihood that the person will contribute beyond that. Under some circumstances the need to make a positive impression on others is satisfied by the public display, so the person exhibits slacktivism and doesn’t bother to do anything else to support the cause.30

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Social Marketing

As the emerging TCR perspective shows, the field of consumer behavior can help to improve our lives as consumers. Social marketing strategies use the techniques that marketers normally employ to sell beer or detergent to encourage positive behaviors such as increased literacy and to discourage negative activities such as drunk driving. Many researchers help to evaluate or create public policies to ensure that products are labeled accurately, to certify that people can comprehend important information in advertising messages, or to prevent children from being exploited by program-length toy commercials that masquerade as television shows.

CSR is more than a nice idea; it’s also good business. Consumer research convincingly shows that, when all other things are equal, people are likely to choose a brand that gives back to the community. Cause marketing is a popular strategy that aligns a company or brand with a cause to generate business and societal benefits. Indeed, one survey reported that three out of five consumers bought a product or service in the previous year because of its association with a cause. An executive observed, “As a whole, Americans do have a heightened sensitivity to how they can help make a difference.”

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Major Policy Issues Relevant to Consumer Behavior

It’s hard to divorce consumer behavior from most of what goes on around us. The field intersects with many of the big issues we read about and debate every day. These range from human rights and humane working conditions to the safety of what we eat, the future of our environment, and our relationships with governments, corporations, and other organizations. In this section, we’ll introduce three major issues—without pretending to cover all of the important ones.

Data Privacy and Identity Theft

A Carnegie Mellon professor demonstrated just how easy it is to find people online if you know what you’re doing. In one study he showed that it was possible to deduce portions of a person’s Social Security Number from nothing but a photograph posted online. The failure of social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter to police “fake news” content such as ads that Russians purchased to influence the 2016 presidential election prompt many to reconsider how “free” information should be.

Consumer behavior impacts directly on major public policy issues that confront our society. OBJECTIVE 2-3

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Other technologies also threaten our privacy even while they make marketing efforts more efficient. Facebook introduced a “Tag Suggestions” feature that uses facial recognition to identify a user’s friends in photos he or she uploads, and automatically suggests nametags for them. Other programs like Picasa also incorporate facial recognition technology. This handy little tool removes the need to keep typing the same friends’ names into photo albums. But is there a dark side to this capability? Because facial recognition analyzes and stores people’s unique facial measurements, it may come with some serious privacy risks. For example, in the near future it will be possible for marketers to identify people as they walk down the street—and link their faces to relevant information such as credit scores or medical records. Some firms already offer smart billboards that detect the gender and age of a passerby and show that person relevant ad messages. For now these boards don’t analyze emotions or other personal characteristics, but what if they could detect a feeling like sadness and offer the person a message about antidepressants?

One of the biggest ethical issues many marketers face today relates to how much they can—or should—know about their customers. Virtually anyone who surfs the internet or who carries a cell phone (especially a smartphone with GPS capability) shares reams of personal information with all sorts of companies (whether they know it or not).

Clearly, we all benefit from technologies that allow companies to precisely tailor their messages to our needs based on the product information we look for. Indeed, industry researchers report that a lot of people actually don’t mind the ads if they are personally relevant. But some consumer advocates argue that we pay a high cost for this convenience. As the director of one consumer group phrased it in a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, “Online consumers are being bought and sold like chattel.”

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Are we for sale? In some sense, yes. If you go on the internet (and who doesn’t today?), it’s likely that someone is carefully tracking your clicks— the search items you Google, the sites you visit, perhaps even the comments you post on Facebook. Your digital actions have actual financial value, because of the industry called real-time bidding ; an electronic trading system that sells ad space on the webpages people click on at the moment they visit them.

In the early days of the internet, advertisers simply bought space on sites that generally matched the demographics of their target audience. Then they showed the same ad to everyone who came to the site—an inefficient approach people in the industry call “spray and pray.” Today that picture has changed as companies develop complex algorithms that predict where consumers with specific profiles (e.g., “Asian Americans who make more than $100,000 a year, live in Los Angeles, and are in the market for a luxury car”) will visit and serve up precisely tailored messages to these customers. By the way, these are not “live auctions” like you might see on eBay; they are conducted automatically on powerful computers that receive several million bids every second. Each auction typically takes less than 30 milliseconds. And because not all customers are as likely to buy or to spend as much as are others, these algorithms attach different values to them so higher value customers command higher auction prices. As the CEO of one of these trading companies explained, “The first impression seen by a high-value person on the opening page of a major newspaper first thing in the morning has a different value than a user from China who is 12 and has been on the Web all day long playing games.” The real-time bidding business is growing rapidly: Analysts estimate that by 2018, the U.S. market alone will reach more than $12 billion.

Identity theft occurs when someone steals your personal information and uses it without your permission. They may charge items on a credit card or perhaps access medical services via your health benefits. Identity

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theft is the most common consumer complaint, according to the Federal Trade Commission. It accounts for almost 20 percent of all problems consumers report. Experts estimate that over 15 million Americans fall victim to identity theft each year, with financial losses exceeding $50 billion. That’s about one in 16 adults! And, as any victim knows, the financial aspects are not the only pain points because cancelling credit cards or otherwise correcting the situation can result in huge hassles.

Identity thieves get more sophisticated every day. They used to be content with stealing wallets and “dumpster diving” to obtain account numbers. Today, we increasingly fall prey to high-tech phishing scams in which people receive fraudulent emails that ask them to supply account information, as well as botnets (a set of computers that are penetrated by malicious software known as malware that allows an external agent to control their actions) that hijack millions of computers without any trace. Data breaches at major companies such as Equifax, Yahoo!, Target, Sony Pictures, and even NASA continue to worry many people.

Locational privacy is a related issue. Every one of us who walks around with a phone transmits his or her approximate location, and those of us with GPS-enabled phones leave nothing to chance. In addition, many cars now have GPS devices that can share their location with a centralized service. We can purchase GPS trackers to keep tabs on our kids, aged relatives, or wayward pets. Some insurance companies offer steep discounts to drivers who use GPS tracking technology. The companies provide a small tracker in the car that reports driving habits and in some cases even whether the driver is cruising through unsafe neighborhoods. Other services allow anxious parents to track a teenager’s driving and provide a “report card” on use of the family car. A school district in Brazil goes a step farther: It requires 20,000 grade school students to wear uniforms embedded with GPS chips similar to those used in pet trackers. The chips automatically send parents a text message as soon as their

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children enter the school grounds, or if their children are more than 20 minutes late. A Texas school district implemented a similar plan though it later abandoned the idea and decided to install surveillance cameras on high school campuses instead.

For all intents and purposes in today’s wired world, consumers can run, but we can’t hide: If someone wants to know where we are or where we’ve been, the data are there for the asking. As with web tracking, there is value here: We can easily identify by looking at hundreds or even thousands of reviews the best sushi place within a block of our current location, or perhaps get a heads up on that policeman with the radar gun who is hiding behind that billboard up the highway. However, this is a mixed blessing if this information gets into the wrong hands. Consumers need to make tough tradeoffs between convenience and constant surveillance.

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Market Access

Many of us take for granted that we are free to shop anywhere we want or that we can easily learn about our purchase options—everything we need is just a click of a mouse away, right? In reality, however, large numbers of people can’t make this claim. For one reason or another their market access (i.e., their ability to find and purchase goods and services) is limited because of physical, mental, economic, or social barriers.

Disabilities Disabled people are the largest minority market in the United States. One in five U.S. adults lives with a disability that interferes with daily life. The Census Bureau reports that there are 54 million adults with disabilities who spend almost $200 billion annually, yet companies pay remarkably little attention to the unique needs of this vast group. Fully 11 million U.S. adults have a condition that makes it difficult for them to leave home to shop, so they rely almost exclusively on catalogs and the internet to purchase products. Many people have limited mobility and are unable to gain easy access to stores, entertainment venues, educational institutions, and other locations. Bodily limitations or disfigurements may result in real or imagined stigmatization, so self-concept and interpersonal relationships may be problematic. People who rely on wheelchairs for mobility often encounter barriers when they try to enter stores, move around the aisles, or enter dressing rooms that are too narrow to accommodate a chair. Others have mental illnesses, such as excessive anxiety in public places. These issues touch many of us; for example, 15 percent of Vietnam and 1991

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Gulf War veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and 20 percent of veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq have received care at a Veterans’ Administration (VA) facility for the disorder since their return home. Large numbers of children also encounter difficulties with market access, whether offline or online.

The good news is that technology holds the potential to improve market access. Here are a few exciting new developments:

The touch screen is a breakthrough for people who have problems with motor skills. They no longer need to manipulate a mouse, keyboard, or pen to use programs. A device like the iPad makes touch-to-speak technology affordable and easy to use. For example, a person who is unable to speak can communicate his or her preferences for meals, activities, and so on just by touching the screen. Other apps amplify sounds for the hard of hearing, or even encourage children with motor skills disabilities to engage in physical therapy. The LookTel Money Reader app makes it possible for blind people to pay for products in cash; it can “read money” and tell the person the value of the bills he or she holds. Dating websites for singles with health problems allow people with an array of disabilities, including paralysis and multiple sclerosis, to find partners. Dating 4 Disabled caters to people with physical diseases, while NoLongerLonely focuses on those with mental illness. Sites like these and others allow users to be blunt and honest about their own issues and what they seek in a partner. One site was created by a man whose brother suffered from Crohn’s disease. He observed, “He was a good-looking boy, but when do you tell a girl that you have a colostomy bag? The first date? The third? There’s no good time.” As the number of people using wheelchairs grows by over two million per year in the United States alone, the market for adaptive clothing that provides a broader range of apparel options grows as well. The

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designer Tommy Hilfiger launched a children’s collection that includes modified closures, adjustability, and alternate options for getting into and out of the garments.

Food Deserts The Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as a census tract where 33 percent of the population or 500 people, whichever is less, live more than a mile from a grocery store in an urban area or more than 10 miles away in a rural area. Healthy food options in these communities are hard to find or are unaffordable. Researchers estimate that in the United States about 23.5 million people live in food deserts.

Some designers are jumping into the growing market for adaptive clothing. Source: ITAR-TASS News Agency/Alamy Stock Photo.

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Limited access to healthy choices can lead to poor diets and higher levels of obesity and other diet-related diseases. More broadly, this food insecurity increases the number of low- and moderate-income families who struggle to purchase the diet they need to sustain a healthy and active life.

Literacy Media literacy refers to a consumer’s ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information in a variety of forms, including print and nonprint messages.

Media literacy empowers people to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, language, and sound. This movement reminds us that we are bombarded with thousands of messages every day that espouse a particular point of view or try to persuade us to buy this or that. It’s our job to critically evaluate this information and not everyone has the skills to do that. This task is even more difficult in the age of Google, where many of us assume that whatever comes up in a Google search or on Wikipedia is completely true and accurate (Hint: not by a long shot). As the tried-but-true phrase says, “Caveat Emptor”—let the buyer beware!

Unfortunately, some of us have an even bigger problem than evaluating the source of a message: We can’t read it in the first place. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that about one in seven U.S. adults are functionally illiterate . This term describes a person whose reading skills are not adequate to carry out everyday tasks, such as reading the newspaper or the instructions on a pill bottle. Almost half of people in the United States read below a sixth-grade level.

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This limitation impedes market access for a couple of reasons: First, the illiterate or “low-literate” consumer is at a disadvantage because he or she encounters difficulty in learning about the best purchase options. Second, this person may experience feelings of shame and embarrassment and avoid market situations where he or she will be forced to reveal the inability to read a label or other written material. Some of these people (whom researchers term social isolates) cope with the stigma of illiteracy by avoiding situations in which they will have to reveal this problem. They may choose not to eat at a restaurant with an unfamiliar menu, for example.

Low-literate consumers rely heavily on visual cues, including brand logos and store layouts, to navigate in retail settings, but they often make mistakes when they select similarly packaged products (for example, brand line extensions). They also encounter problems with numeracy (understanding numbers); many low-literate people have difficulty knowing, for example, whether they have enough money to purchase the items in their cart and unethical merchants may cheat them out of the correct amount of change. Not surprisingly, these challenges create an emotional burden for low-literate consumers, who experience stress, anxiety, fear, shame, and other negative emotions before, during, and after they shop.

Marketing Pitfall At both ends of the income spectrum, consumers are seeking healthier food that is locally produced in order to reduce the high carbon footprint that results from extended shipping. We see a growing demand for so- called superfoods like certain fruits, nuts, and seaweeds that are “calorie sparse and nutrient dense” in order to maximize the bang for the buck, nutritionally speaking. Sometimes we run into problems despite

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the best of intentions. For example, it turns out that those plastic water bottles that people tote around instead of sipping “calorie dense and nutrient sparse” soda aren’t so great after all. Although we may benefit from drinking water instead of sugary beverages, by one estimate the energy (and subsequent climate change) used in the production of these containers is equivalent to filling them one-quarter full with oil. In addition the bottles may be transported thousands of miles on gas-guzzling cargo ships, and then the discarded bottles can take thousands of years to decompose. Recently it has been discovered that the water itself may contain microbits of plastic from the bottle.

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Sustainability and Environmental Stewardship

Almost everyone today is concerned about saving our planet. Worries about climate change, entire species going extinct, widespread exposure to carcinogens and harmful bacteria, and many other issues are front and center. The consumer’s focus on personal health is merging with a growing interest in global health. Some analysts call this new value conscientious consumerism .

A sustainable business model is not just about “do-gooder” efforts that reduce a company’s carbon footprint or the amount of plastic that goes into landfills. Indeed, about six out of every ten companies that convert to a sustainable business model report that they have profited financially as well. A triple bottom-line orientation refers to business strategies that strive to maximize return in three ways:

1. The financial bottom line: Provide profits to stakeholders. 2. The social bottom line: Return benefits to the communities where

the organization operates. 3. The environmental bottom line: Minimize damage to the

environment or even improve natural conditions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines the concept this way: “Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions

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under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations.” Some people refer to this way of thinking as cradle to cradle; the target to aim for is a product made from natural materials that is fully reusable or recyclable so that the company actually uses zero resources to make it.

That is a tough goal, but many organizations work hard to get as close to it as they can—and consumers increasingly take notice. Many of us are much more mindful of these issues when we shop and when we make decisions about the foods we eat, the clothes we wear, the buildings in which we live and work, and the cars we drive. Various surveys conducted recently show that roughly half or more Americans want to buy eco-friendly products. This preference is much stronger among young consumers, where 90 percent say they look at a manufacturer’s reputation for sustainability. And this focus pays off for companies that are listening: Unilever’s portfolio of 18 “sustainable living” brands are growing 50 percent faster than its other brands.

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Airinum is one company that is tapping into a desire for functional yet stylish protective wear as concerns grow about the effects of air pollution on consumers’ health. Source: Photo by Alexander Bello for Airinum www.airinum.com. Copyright Airinum AB.

Because sustainability and related issues such as climate change, pollution, and toxic products are so pervasive, it is important to distinguish this term from another widely used buzzword: Green marketing describes a strategy that involves the development and promotion of environmentally friendly products and stressing this attribute when the manufacturer communicates with customers. Although some specialized companies such as Seventh Generation have successfully built a following around their green products, this strategy has not fared well in recent years. Nonetheless, there still is demand for environmentally friendly products: U.S. consumers spend more than $40 billion a year on them. This estimate includes $29.2 billion for organic food; more than $10 billion for hybrid, electric, and clean-diesel vehicles; more than $2 billion on energy-efficient

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light bulbs; and $640 million on green cleaning products. However, sales are flat or lower than in prior years.

A Ford ad in Brazil promotes conservation. Source: Courtesy of J. Walter Thompson Publicidade LTDA.

Why would this be? We know that consumers increasingly pay more attention to environmental issues, and many even say they will pay more for products that manufacturers produce under ethical conditions (e.g., in humane workplaces and without harmful chemicals). In one typical study, the researchers gave subjects a description of a coffee company that either used or did not use Fair Trade principles to buy its beans. They found that participants were willing to pay an additional $1.40 for a pound of the coffee if it was ethically sourced and were negative about the company if it did not adhere to these principles. The study obtained similar results for shirts that were made with organic cotton.

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Still—as we’ll see in more detail in Chapter 8 —it is common to witness a disconnect between consumers’ attitudes and their actual behavior. As the old saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Despite consumers’ best intentions to “buy green,” we can point to two major reasons for the gap between saying and doing:

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“We consume, but at what price? Let’s become human again. Please donate.” Ad for a Belgian NGO (non-governmental organization) condemning food industry practices such as the feeding of Thai prawns with poison. Source: Christophe Gilbert/Marine Vincent & Pierre Jadot.

First, green products are more expensive because the ingredients tend to cost more than their more conventional counterparts, and transportation costs are higher too because they are sold in smaller volumes than the big brands. Although many consumers profess a desire to buy environmentally friendly products, especially in tough economic times they have a tendency not to back these preferences with their cash. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, it took a lot of the steam out of the green movement. For example, in 2009, S.C. Johnson introduced a line of green products called Nature’s Source and the company spent more than $25 million to advertise them. By 2010 the company slashed the line’s advertising budget to zero.64

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This ad from The Slovak Republic underscores the growing priority consumers place upon organic foods. Source: JANDL marketing a reklama, S.R.O.

Unfortunately, the second reason for the lackluster showing of green products is largely self-inflicted. Greenwashing occurs when companies make false or exaggerated claims about how environmentally friendly their products are. Think about the old story of the “boy who cried wolf ”: Consumers simply don’t believe most of the green claims companies make about their brands. Almost one-fourth of U.S. consumers say they have “no way of knowing” if a product is green or actually does what it claims. Their skepticism is probably justified: According to one report, more than 95 percent of consumer companies that market as “green” make misleading or inaccurate claims. Another survey found that the number of

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products that claim to be green has increased by 73 percent since 2009— but of the products investigated, almost one-third had fake labels, and 70% made green claims without offering any proof to back them up. One survey reported that 71 percent of respondents say they will stop buying a product if they feel they’ve been misled about its environmental impact, and 37 percent are so angry about greenwashing that they believe this justifies a complete boycott of everything the company makes. Greenwashing has impacted many well-known companies. In 2017, Walmart agreed to pay $1 million to settle claims that allege the nation’s largest retailer sold plastic products it misleadingly labeled “biodegradable” or “compostable” in violation of California law.

How can we motivate consumers to practice what they preach? A recent study of more than 2,000 hotel guests suggests that simply allowing consumers to pledge to practice sustainable behaviors increases the likelihood they will follow through. When guests made a specific commitment at check-in to hang their towels for reuse to reduce laundry waste (and received a lapel pin to symbolize their commitment), the number of towels actually hung increased by more than 40 percent. The researchers estimated the savings at one hotel at over $50,000 and nearly 700,000 gallons of water.

As we saw in Chapter 1 , it is typical to find that a relatively small number of consumers account for a large amount of the action with regard to a certain consumption activity or purchase. This certainly is true when we look at people who walk the walk, in addition to talking the talk, about modifying their behaviors to help the environment. Marketers point to a segment of consumers they call LOHAS —an acronym for “lifestyles of health and sustainability.” This label refers to people who worry about the environment, want products to be produced in a sustainable way, and spend money to advance what they see as their personal development and potential. These so-called “Lohasians” (others refer to this segment as

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cultural creatives) represent a great market for products such as organic foods, energy-efficient appliances, and hybrid cars, as well as alternative medicine, yoga tapes, and ecotourism. One organization that tracks this group estimates that they make up one in four adult Americans and spend about $290 billion per year on sustainable products and services.69

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The Dark Side of Consumer Behavior

A few years ago a crowd assembled for a big holiday sale at a Walmart store in New York. When the doors opened, the crowd trampled a temporary worker to death as people rushed to grab discounted merchandise off the store shelves. A lawsuit filed on behalf of the man’s survivors claimed that in addition to providing inadequate security, the retailer “engaged in specific marketing and advertising techniques to specifically attract a large crowd and create an environment of frenzy and mayhem.” In subsequent years there have been additional incidents of trampling and even gunfire as people frantically jockey for position to scoop up the big sales. Just how far will people go to secure a bargain?

Despite the best efforts of researchers, government regulators, and concerned industry people, sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We think of individuals as rational decision makers, who calmly do their best to obtain products and services that will maximize the health and well-being of themselves, their families, and their society. In reality, however, consumers’ desires, choices, and actions often result in negative consequences to individuals and the society in which they live.

Consumer behavior can be harmful to individuals and to society. OBJECTIVE 2-4

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Some of these actions are relatively benign, but others have more onerous consequences. Harmful consumer behaviors, such as excessive drinking or cigarette smoking, stem from social pressures. The cultural value many of us place on money encourages activities such as shoplifting and insurance fraud. Exposure to unattainable ideals of beauty and success creates dissatisfaction with our bodies or our achievements. We will touch on many of these issues later in this text, but for now, let’s review some dimensions of the “dark side” of consumer behavior.

Consumer Terrorism

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were a wake-up call to the free-enterprise system. They revealed the vulnerability of nonmilitary targets and reminded us that disruptions of our financial, electronic, and supply networks can potentially be more damaging to our way of life than the fallout from a conventional battlefield. Assessments by the Rand Corporation and other analysts point to the susceptibility of the nation’s food supply as a potential target of bioterrorism . More recently, many concerned policymakers, executives, and military commanders have added the prospect of cyberterrorism to the list of pressing concerns, especially in the light of high-profile attacks on the computer systems of large financial institutions such as Equifax.

Even before the anthrax scares of 2001, toxic substances placed in products threatened to hold the marketplace hostage. This tactic first drew public attention in the United States in 1982, when seven people died after taking Tylenol pills that had been laced with cyanide. A decade later, Pepsi weathered its own crisis when more than 50 reports of syringes found in Diet Pepsi cans surfaced in 23 states. In that case, Pepsi pulled off a public relations coup de grace by convincing the public that the syringes

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could not have been introduced during the manufacturing process. The company even showed an in-store surveillance video that caught a customer slipping a syringe into a Diet Pepsi can while the cashier’s head was turned. Pepsi’s aggressive actions underscore the importance of responding to such a crisis head-on and quickly.

Identity fraud is part of the dark side of consumer behavior. Source: Image courtesy Havas Paris; Chief Creative Officer: Christophe Coffre; Art Director: Catherine Labro; Copywriter: Sylvain

Louradour; Photographer: NICK & CHLOÉ; 3D Illustrator: LES ILLUSIONS chez La manufacture; Actress: Agathe Zalasca (agent

Céline)

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Addictive Consumption

A woman in New Zealand apparently died from drinking too much Coca- Cola. Her family said she drank about 2.2 gallons of the beverage every day for years. Prior to her death she had several rotten teeth removed, and she gave birth to a baby who was born without any tooth enamel. The 31-year- old mother of eight died following a cardiac arrhythmia after consuming more than two pounds of sugar and 970 mg of caffeine a day. Coca-Cola noted that the coroner’s report, while singling out its product as a probable cause of death, stated that the company “cannot be held responsible for the health of consumers who drink unhealthy quantities of the product.”

Though we usually equate substance abuse with addiction to alcohol, drugs, or nicotine, it seems we can become dependent on almost anything —there is even a Chapstick Addicts support group with 250 active members! Consumer addiction is a physiological or psychological dependency on products or services. Many companies profit from selling addictive products or from selling solutions for kicking a bad habit.

A Chinese man got so upset about the amount of time his adult son spent playing videogames that he took a novel approach: He hired “digital hit men” in the form of other gamers to kill off all of his son’s characters in the games. How is that for “tough love”? Psychologists compare social media addiction to chemical dependency, to the point of inducing symptoms of withdrawal when users are deprived of their fix. As one noted, “Everyone is a potential addict—they’re just waiting for their drug of choice to come along, whether heroin, running, junk food, or social media.” In

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2018, the World Health Organization classified “gaming disorder” as an official disease.

Indeed, a survey reported one in three smartphone owners would rather give up sex than their phones! And, as many of us realize, this fixation grows by the “enablers” around us as they exhibit the same behavior. Indeed, one study documented that college students are much more likely to pull out their phones when someone with whom they were sitting had just done so. Entrepreneurs are looking at novel ways to “detox” users. One designer created a series of “substitute phones” that help people put down the real thing. They allow people to mimic real actions like swiping, zooming, and scrolling to wean users away. Maybe more of us need this kind of “intervention”—a Gallup survey reported that 41 percent of American smartphone owners check their phone every few minutes. Another survey found that 71 percent of Americans aged 18 and over sleep with their phones. Oops, time for a fix?

Other problems arise when people become overly involved in playing online games or posting on social network sites:

In the United Kingdom, a 33-year-old widowed mother let her two dogs starve to death and neglected her three kids after becoming hooked on the online game Small World. A judge banned her from going on the internet. The woman slept only two hours a night as she played the virtual reality game (in which dwarves and giants battle to conquer the world) almost nonstop for six months. Her children—aged 9, 10, and 13 —had no hot food and “drank” cold baked beans from tins. When the family’s two dogs died from neglect, she left their bodies rotting in the dining room for two months. A U.S. woman pled guilty to a charge of second-degree murder in the death of her three-month-old son. The 22-year-old mother lost her

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temper when her child began crying while she was playing FarmVille on Facebook; she shook the baby until he died. Cyberbullying refers to the “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computer, cell phones, and other electronic devices.” One study reported that one in five middle school students in the United States were subject to cyberbullying. As one seventh-grade girl observed, “It’s easier to fight online, because you feel more brave and in control. On Facebook, you can be as mean as you want.” The problem has gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services even has a website to combat it: Stopbullying.gov.

A government website focuses on the problem of cyberbullying. Source: StopBullying.gov, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Phantom Vibration Syndrome describes the tendency to habitually reach for your cell phone because you feel it vibrating, even if it is off or you are not even wearing it at the time. One researcher reports that 70 percent of people who report heavy usage of mobile devices say they

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experience this phenomenon. The name derives from phantom limb syndrome, a condition in which someone who has lost a limb experiences sensory hallucinations that it is still attached to the body and functioning.

Compulsive Consumption Some consumers take the expression “born to shop” quite literally. They shop because they are compelled to do so rather than because shopping is a pleasurable or functional task. Compulsive consumption refers to repetitive and often excessive shopping performed as an antidote to tension, anxiety, depression, or boredom. “Shopaholics” turn to shopping much the way addicted people turn to drugs or alcohol. One man diagnosed with compulsive shopping disorder (CSD) bought more than 2,000 wrenches and never used any of them. Therapists report that women clinically diagnosed with CSD outnumber men by four to one. They speculate that women are attracted to items such as clothes and cosmetics to enhance their interpersonal relationships, whereas men tend to focus on gadgetry, tools, and guns to achieve a sense of power.

One out of 20 U.S. adults is unable to control the buying of goods that he or she does not really want or need. Some researchers say compulsive shopping may be related to low self-esteem. It affects an estimated 2 to 16 percent of the adult U.S. population. In some cases, the consumer has little or no control over his or her consumption, much like a drug addict. Even the act of shopping itself is an addicting experience for some people. Three common elements characterize many negative or destructive consumer behaviors:

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1 The behavior is not done by choice. 2 The gratification derived from the behavior is short-lived.

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Gambling is an example of a consumption addiction that touches every segment of consumer society. Whether it takes the form of casino gambling, playing the “slots,” betting on sports events with friends or through a bookie, or even buying lottery tickets, excessive gambling can be quite destructive. Taken to extremes, gambling can result in lowered self- esteem, debt, divorce, and neglected children. According to one psychologist, gamblers exhibit a classic addictive cycle: They experience a “high” while in action and depression when they stop gambling, which leads them back to the thrill of the action. Unlike drug addicts, however, money is the substance that hard-core gamblers abuse. We can probably expect the problem to grow as the movement to legalize online gambling in some U.S. states picks up steam (it already is legal in Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey and at least eight other states are looking at it seriously). There is a built-in market for this new format: Analysts estimate more than 170 million people play simulated casino games on social networks, more than triple the number of real money online gamblers.

3 The person experiences strong feelings of regret or guilt afterward.

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A French organization combats the sexual abuse of children by online predators. Source: Courtesy of Innocence en Danger.

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Consumed Consumers

Consumed consumers are people who are used or exploited, willingly or not, for commercial gain in the marketplace. Here are some examples:

Prostitutes—Expenditures on prostitution in the United States alone are estimated at $20 billion annually. These revenues are equivalent to those in the domestic shoe industry. Organ, blood, and hair donors—There is a lively global red market for body parts. By one estimate, you could make about $46 million if you donated every reusable part of your body (do not try this at home). In the United States, millions of people sell their blood. A lively market also exists for organs (e.g., kidneys), and some women sell their hair to be made into wigs. Bidding for a human kidney on eBay went to more than $5.7 million before the company ended the auction (it’s illegal to sell human organs online . . . at least so far). The seller wrote, “You can choose either kidney. . . . Of course only one for sale, as I need the other one to live. Serious bids only.” Here is the retail price for some typical red market transactions in the United States (often much cheaper elsewhere):

A pint of blood: $337 Hair (for extensions): $308 Cornea: $24,400 Heart: $997,700

Babies for sale—Several thousand surrogate mothers have been paid to be medically impregnated and carry babies to term for infertile couples. A fertile woman between the ages of 18 and 25 can “donate” one egg

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every three months and rake in $7,000 each time. Over eight years, that’s 32 eggs for a total of $224,000. In one case in Germany, police arrested a couple when they tried to auction their eight-month-old son on eBay. The parents claimed that the offer, which read “Baby— collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long” was just a joke.

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Illegal Acquisition and Product Use

In addition to being self-destructive or socially damaging, many consumer behaviors are illegal as well. Analysts estimate the cost of crimes that consumers commit against business at more than $40 billion per year. A survey the McCann-Erickson advertising agency conducted revealed the following tidbits:

Ninety-one percent of people say they lie regularly. One in three fibs about his or her weight, one in four about income, and 21 percent lie about their age. Nine percent even lie about their natural hair color. Four out of 10 Americans have tried to pad an insurance bill to cover the deductible. Nineteen percent say they’ve snuck into a theater to avoid paying admission. More than three out of five people say they’ve taken credit for making something from scratch when they have done no such thing. According to Pillsbury’s CEO, this “behavior is so prevalent that we’ve named a category after it—speed scratch.”

Consumer Theft and Fraud Who among us has never received an email offering us fabulous riches if we help to recover a lost fortune from a Nigerian bank account? Of course, the only money changing hands will be yours if you fall for the pitch from a so-called advance-fee fraud artist. These con artists have successfully scammed many victims out of hundreds of millions of dollars. However, a

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small but intrepid group of “counterscammers” sometimes give these crooks a taste of their own medicine by pretending to fall for a scam and humiliating the perpetrator. One common strategy is to trick the con artist into posing for pictures while holding a self-mocking sign and then posting these photos on internet sites. Both online and offline, fraud is rampant.

Stealing from stores is the most common scam. Someone commits a retail theft every five seconds. Shrinkage is the industry term for inventory and cash losses from shoplifting and employee theft. This is a massive problem for businesses that gets passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices (about 40 percent of the losses can be attributed to employees rather than shoppers).

Indeed, shoplifting is fastest-growing crime in the United States. A comprehensive retail study found that shoplifting is a year-round problem that costs U.S. retailers $60 billion annually. The most frequently products stolen are tobacco products, athletic shoes, logo and brand-name apparel, designer jeans, and undergarments.

And what about shoppers who commit fraud when they abuse stores’ exchange and return policies? Some big companies such as Guess, Staples, and Sports Authority use new software that lets them track a shopper’s track record of bringing items back. They are trying to crack down on serial wardrobers who buy an outfit, wear it once, and return it; customers who change price tags on items, then return one item for the higher amount; and shoppers who use fake or old receipts when they return a product. Retail analysts estimate that about $2 billion of merchandise that shoppers return after the holiday season alone is for fraudulent reasons.

Counterfeiting , where companies or individuals sell fake versions of real products to customers (who may or may not be aware of the switch),

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accounts for more than $461 billion in global losses annually. Many of us think of counterfeiters as guys who sell faux designer handbags or watches on the street, but in fact the problem is much more widespread—and often deadly. About 200,000 people in China die per year because they ingest fake pharmaceuticals.

Anticonsumption Some types of destructive consumer behavior are anticonsumption ; events in which people deliberately deface or mutilate products and services. Anticonsumption ranges from relatively mild acts like spray- painting graffiti on buildings and transit vehicles to serious incidences of product tampering or even the release of computer viruses that can bring large corporations to their knees. It can also take the form of political protest in which activists alter or destroy billboards and other advertisements that promote what they feel to be unhealthy or unethical acts. For example, some members of the clergy in areas heavily populated by minorities have organized rallies to protest the proliferation of cigarette and alcohol advertising in their neighborhoods; these protests sometimes include the defacement of billboards promoting alcohol or cigarettes.

MyLab Marketing Visit www.pearson.com/mylab/marketing for Marketing Metrics questions available only in MyLab Marketing.

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Chapter Summary Now that you have finished reading this chapter, you should understand why:

1. Ethical business is good business. Business ethics are rules of conduct that guide actions in the marketplace; these are the standards against which most people in a culture judge what is right and what is wrong, good or bad. Marketers must confront many ethical issues, especially ones that relate to how much they make consumers “want” things they don’t need or are not good for them. A related issue is materialism, which refers to the importance people attach to worldly possessions, and the role of business in encouraging this outlook.

2. Marketers have an obligation to provide safe and functional products as part of their business activities. It is both ethically and financially smart to maximize customer satisfaction. In some cases, external bodies such as the government or industry associations regulate businesses to ensure that their products and advertising are safe, clear, and accurate. Consumer behavior researchers may play a role in this process and those who do transformative consumer research (TCR) may even work to bring about social change. Companies also play a significant role in addressing social conditions through their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and social marketing campaigns that promote positive behaviors.

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3. Consumer behavior impacts directly on major public policy issues that confront our society. Our relationships with companies and other organizations are complex and many issues that impact quality of life relate directly to marketing practices. These include the trade-off between our privacy and the ability of companies to tailor their offerings to our individual needs. Other issues revolve around market access because many people are unable to navigate the marketplace as a result of disabilities, illiteracy, or other conditions. In addition, our fragile environment requires a commitment to sustainable business practices that attempt to maximize the triple bottom-line that emphasizes financial, social, and environmental benefits.

4. Consumer behavior can be harmful to individuals and to society. Although textbooks often paint a picture of the consumer as a rational, informed decision maker, in reality many consumer activities are harmful to individuals or to society. The “dark side” of consumer behavior includes terrorism, addiction, the use of people as products (consumed consumers), and theft or vandalism (anticonsumption).

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Key Terms Adaptive clothing , 47

Anticonsumption , 58

Bioterrorism , 53

Botnets , 45

Business ethics , 34

Cause marketing , 43

Compulsive consumption , 56

Conscientious consumerism , 48

Consumed consumers , 57

Consumer addiction , 54

Consumerspace , 35

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) , 43

Corrective advertising , 41

Counterfeiting , 58

Culture jamming , 42

Cyberbullying, 55

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Cyberterrorism , 53

Economics of information , 38

Food desert , 47

Functionally illiterate , 48

Green marketing , 49

Greenwashing , 52

Identity theft , 45

Locational privacy , 45

Lohas , 53

Market access , 46

Marketplace sentiments , 38

Media literacy , 48

Phantom vibration syndrome , 56

Phishing , 45

Real-time bidding , 45

Recommerce , 62

Red market , 57

Serial wardrobers , 58

Shrinkage , 58

Slacktivism , 43

Social marketing , 43

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Social media addiction , 54

Superfoods , 48

Sustainability , 49

Transformative consumer research (TCR) , 43

Triple bottom-line orientation , 49

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Review 2-1 What are business ethics, and why is this an important topic? 2-2 The economics of information perspective argues that advertising is important. Why? 2-3 State two important criticisms of marketing and provide the pros and cons for each. 2-4 Give two examples of important legislation that relate to U.S. consumers. 2-5 Define social marketing, and give an example of this technique. 2-6 What is the primary difference between transformative consumer research and other kinds of consumer research? 2-7 Why is market access an important aspect of consumer well- being? What are some important reasons why consumers can experience limited market access? 2-8 What is greenwashing, and why is it a problem for marketers?

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Consumer Behavior Challenge

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Discuss

2-9 Internet addiction has been a big headache in South Korea for several years, where 90 percent of homes connect to cheap, high- speed broadband. Many young Koreans’ social lives revolve around the “PC bang,” dimly lit internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner. A government study estimates that up to 30 percent of South Koreans younger than 18 are at risk of internet addiction. Many already exhibit signs of actual addiction, including an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever-longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms such as anger and craving when they can’t log on. Some users have literally dropped dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. How big a problem is internet addiction here in the United States? Should parents and educators actively police how much time kids spend online, or if they do so are they preventing young people from interacting with their peers in the ways they want? 2-10 Should scientists who study consumer behavior remain impartial, or is it appropriate for them to become involved in the topics they research like those who adhere to the transformative consumer research perspective? 2-11 Today many consumers pursue a “decluttering lifestyle.” Should marketers encourage this trend toward simplicity even though it stresses buying less stuff that marketers sell? What marketing opportunities do you foresee if this trend spreads? 2-12 Because of higher competition and market saturation, marketers in industrialized countries try to develop third-world

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markets. Asian consumers alone spend $90 billion a year on cigarettes, and U.S. tobacco manufacturers push relentlessly into these markets. We find cigarette advertising, which often depicts glamorous Western models and settings, just about everywhere—on billboards, buses, storefronts, and clothing—and tobacco companies sponsor many major sports and cultural events. Some companies even hand out cigarettes and gifts in amusement areas, often to preteens. Should governments allow these practices, even if the products may be harmful to their citizens or divert money that poor people should spend on essentials? If you were a trade or health official in a third-world country, what guidelines, if any, might you suggest to regulate the import of luxury goods from advanced economies? 2-13 The chapter discusses the practice of serial wardrobing, where people return an outfit after they wear it for a special occasion such as a formal. What do you think of this practice? Is it okay to use an expensive product once and then get your money back? 2-14 A case involving the Wendy’s fast-food chain made national headlines when a woman claimed she had found a finger in her bowl of chili. The restaurants became the butt of jokes (some said they served nail clippers with their food instead of forks), and sales dropped dramatically at the company’s franchises. This forced layoffs and reduced hours for many employees—until the woman was arrested for fraud. Consumers commonly file lawsuits against companies to claim damages if a product or service didn’t work as expected. In some cases, the defendant just settles the suit to make it go away because it costs more to mount a defense than to just pay damages. Are there too many frivolous lawsuits? Does our justice system adequately meet the needs of both consumers and companies in how it awards damages? 2-15 Nonprofit organizations routinely rely on generous corporate donations, and it’s common to name facilities after benefactors. The

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Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio is no exception; its name recognizes the insurance company’s $50 million donation. Now the hospital added the Abercrombie & Fitch Emergency Department and Trauma Center and there is also the Limited Too & Justice Main Lobby. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood opposes this partnership. The group’s director commented, “Abercrombie & Fitch is really among the worst of corporate predators. A company with such cynical disregard for children’s well-being shouldn’t be able to claim the mantle of healing . . . . And, personally, I find it very concerning that they named their hospital after an insurance company.” What do you think? Is this over the line, or does it matter where the money comes from as long as the end result is beneficial? 2-16 From time to time advertisers use dark humor to get their messages across, as when a lonely calorie, repairman, or robot considers suicide. Or, an ad may imply that shoppers are “mentally ill” if they pay retail prices. Are these appeals a legitimate way to communicate a message; if so, under what circumstances?

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Apply

2-17 Will consumers trade lower prices for less privacy? Car owners now can let insurance companies monitor their driving, using a new technology, in exchange for lower rates. Customers who sign up for Progressive’s TripSense program get a device the size of a Tic Tac box to plug into their cars. The device tracks speed and how many miles are driven at what times of day. Every few months, customers unplug the device from the car, plug it into a computer, download the data, and send the data to the company. Depending on results, discounts will range from 5 to 25 percent. In Great Britain, a major insurer is testing a program called Pay as You Drive. Volunteers will get a device the size of a large smartphone installed in their cars. The gadget will use global positioning satellite technology to track where the car goes, constantly sending information back to the insurance company. Cars that spend more time in safer areas will qualify for bigger discounts. Of course, the potential downside to these efforts is that the insurance companies may be able to collect data on where you have driven, how long you stayed in one location, and so on. Conduct a poll of ten drivers of various ages in which you describe these programs and ask respondents if they would participate to receive a discount on their insurance premiums. What reasons do they give pro and con? 2-18 Many college students “share” music by downloading clips. Interview at least five people who have downloaded at least one song or movie without paying for it. Do they feel they are stealing? What explanations do they offer for this behavior? Try to identify any common themes as a result of these interviews. If you were devising

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an ad campaign to discourage free downloading, how might you use what you have learned to craft a convincing message?

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Case Study Marketing Responsibly: Patagonia Redefines What It Means to Be Transparent and Authentic

Marketing faces challenges and criticism on many fronts. Apparel and sporting goods company Patagonia has recently been in the spotlight because of its work to change perceptions about the role of marketing.

For over 40 years, Patagonia has supplied well-heeled adventurers with all the gear they need to brave hiking in the Great North Woods, the jungles of Africa, or the wilds of the suburbs! Products include everything from fleece jackets and sleeping bags to smoked salmon. Patagonia’s commitment to corporate social responsibility is embedded in its culture and has spawned initiatives focused on energy conservation, fair trade, recycling, and consumerism. In 2011, they even ran an ad on Black Friday saying “Don’t Buy This Jacket,” encouraging their customers to “buy less and reflect” before they made a purchase.

In an effort to lower the costs of production, the company has joined many other apparel providers in moving their production offshore. A consequence of this strategy is a reduced amount of control over how the laborers who assemble their products are treated and paid. To address this issue, Patagonia helped found the Fair Labor Association, an organization that provides an objective perspective on member companies’ labor practices. Since 2007, Patagonia has worked diligently, along with Verite, a nongovernmental organization that works on labor issues to make improvements in the practices of the company’s first-tier suppliers. Through these efforts, it was able to reduce the number of first-tier suppliers from 108 to 75, which improved the company’s ability to have more control over how these companies treat workers.

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However, in 2011 Patagonia’s own extensive audits uncovered new supply chain problems with human trafficking, forced labor, and exploitation. They are now trying to go beyond the gains made in their previous work with the first-tier suppliers. Their new focus is on suppliers buried more subtly in the complicated apparel supply chains: mills and suppliers of raw materials. Patagonia has also asked Verite to help with additional audits.

Why has a company so committed to fair labor practices had so many problems conquering this issue? A major problem is the very nature of the apparel supply chain, which is unwieldy and complicated, and spreads around the globe. Patagonia’s experience demonstrates the challenges of treating workers fairly at every step of the production process, even when a company has a very public and sincere desire to do so.

Clearly, the company has a lot at stake because its branding identity is so closely tied to its leadership in social responsibility. This may be particularly true with millennials, a key part of Patagonia’s customer base and a generation that research indicates is particularly concerned about companies being good corporate citizens.

Patagonia’s efforts seem to be paying off in both social good and in revenues. CEO Rose Marcario, who leads the corporate social responsibility (CSR) charge, has seen sales improve fourfold during her decade-long tenure. Following a decision to give away all of its 2016 Black Friday sales to environmental organizations, the company signed up 24,000 new customers. According to Marcario, “Doing good work for the planet creates new markets and makes [us] more money.”

In addition to its work on fair labor practices, Patagonia has pursued other CSR (corporate social responsibility) projects. The company launched an initiative focused on the reuse of clothing, in the first move into what is being called recommerce . Their Worn Wear program includes options to

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repair older garments or trade them in for new ones. The used clothing is also resold in the Worn Wear section of Patagonia stores and online. This program helps to meet sustainability goals and also provides a lower cost option for the brand sometimes derisively called “Patagucci.” Another initiative, Patagonia Action Works, pairs Patagonia customers with activist groups. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard says it is “like a dating site” to bring together individuals and grassroots environmental groups.

Patagonia continues to make CSR a priority, including the difficult struggle to monitor and actively work to improve conditions throughout every level of its supply chain.

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Discussion Questions

MyLab Marketing If your instructor has assigned these, go to the MyLab to complete these writing exercises.

CS 2-1 Do you believe that consumers consider a brand’s supply chain ethics when they purchase apparel? Do consumers bear any responsibility for the ways in which laborers in the apparel industry are treated? CS 2-2 Since Patagonia is a higher priced apparel offering, should the company simply move production back to the U.S.? Would you be willing to pay a premium for clothing made in the U.S. where laborers would be protected by U.S. laws? What other factors related to corporate social responsibility should Patagonia consider when it makes the onshore/offshore decision? CS 2-3 How could the efforts of companies like Patagonia affect CSR efforts in other companies in its industry or in related industries?

2-19 A hot button topic right now involves efforts to curb child obesity by encouraging advertisers to limit the messages they send to kids about foods that are high in sodium, saturated fat, and added sugars. Under new federal rules, even the scoreboards in high school gyms will have to advertise only healthy foods. Several large cities including New York City and Philadelphia have tried to prevent the sale

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of large sizes of sugary drinks to fight obesity. Public health advocates hail these attempts, whereas others argue that they would transform the United States into a “Nanny State” that imposes on our freedom to choose to consume whatever we would like. Should city, state, and federal governments dictate what (legal) products people should consume, even when the population’s health is at stake? 2-20 Companies and organizations in the United States spend billions of dollars to acquire and manage data on consumers such as credit information and transaction histories. Well-off consumers obviously hold great attraction to marketers because they have greater buying potential. Today companies have the ability if they choose to offer a more attractive deal to higher-value customers to win their business. The flip side of this process is that potentially they can discriminate against low-income people who won’t qualify for lower prices. And in most cases companies don’t permit consumers to access their database to learn what they know about them. Is it fair to stratify consumers in this way so that some get access to more attractive options than others?

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Notes 1. www.ecolabelindex.com/. 2. www.scjohnson.com/en/commitment/focus-on/greener-products/ greenlist.aspx; www.wholefoodsmarket.com/eco-scale-our-commitment. 3. Sarah Landrum, “Millennials Driving Brands To Practice Socially Responsible Marketing,” Forbes (March 17, 2017), www.forbes.com/sites/sarahlandrum/2017/03/17/millennials-driving-brands-to- practice-socially-responsible-marketing/#3104b354990b. 4. Michael R. Solomon, Conquering Consumerspace: Marketing Strategies for a Branded World (New York: AMACOM, 2003). 5. National Religious Partnership for the Environment, www.nrpe.org/. 6. William Leiss, Stephen Kline, and Sut Jhally, Social Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products, and Images of Well-Being (Toronto: Methuen, 1986); Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: William Morrow, 1977). 7. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, Mariner Books; 40th Anniversary ed. edition 1998. 8. Vance Packard (1957), quoted in Leiss et al., Social Communication, 11. 9. Raymond Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays (London: Verso, 1980). 10. Leiss et al., Social Communication. 11. George Stigler, “The Economics of Information,” Journal of Political-Economy (1961): 69. 12. Leiss et al., Social Communication, 11. 13. Emily Steel, “How to Handle ‘IHateYourCompany.com’: Some Firms Buy Up Negative Domain Names to Avert ‘Gripe Sites,’” Wall Street Journal (September 5,

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2008), http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB122057760688302147; www.webgripesites.com/. 14. Ariel Sabar, “In Case of Missing Trousers, Aggrieved Party Loses Again,” New York Times (June 26, 2007), www.NewYorkTimes.com. 15. Mary C. Gilly and Betsy D. Gelb, “Post-Purchase Consumer Processes and the Complaining Consumer,” Journal of Consumer Research 9 (December 1982): 323– 328. 16. Ryan Parker, “Cover Girl Issues Statement After Protesters Alter NFL ‘Game Face’ Ads, LA Times (September 16, 2014), www.latimes.com/fashion/alltherage/la- ar-cover-girl-nfl-ads-protest-the-league-20140915-htmlstory.html. 17. Ahir Gopaldas, “Marketplace Sentiments,” Journal of Consumer Research 41, no. 4 (2014): 995–1014. 18. Gary L. Clark, Peter F. Kaminski, and David R. Rink, “Consumer Complaints: Advice on How Companies Should Respond Based on an Empirical Study,” Journal of Services Marketing 6 (Winter 1992): 41–50. 19. Alan Andreasen and Arthur Best, “Consumers Complain—Does Business Respond?” Harvard Business Review 55 (July–August 1977): 93–101. 20. Thomas M. Tripp and Renaud Legoux, “When Customer Love Turns into Lasting Hate: The Effects of Relationship Strength and Time on Customer Revenge and Avoidance,” Journal of Marketing 73 (November 2009): 18–32. 21. Bruce Cooil, Timothy L. Keiningham, Lerzan Aksoy, and Michael Hsu, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Customer Satisfaction and Share of Wallet: Investigating the Moderating Effect of Customer Characteristics,” Journal of Marketing 71 (January 2007): 67–83. For a study that looks at consumer variables moderating this relationship, cf. Kathleen Seiders, Glenn B. Voss, Dhruv Grewal, and Andrea L. Godfrey, “Do Satisfied Customers Buy More? Examining Moderating Influences in a Retailing Context,” Journal of Marketing 69 (October 2005): 26–43. 22. “Voice of the Consumer Not Leveraged,” Center for Media Research (February 3, 2009), www.mediapost.com; Ramona Sukhraj, “How to Keep a Customer Happy—And Why Marketers Should Care!” Impact (May 2, 2017), www.impactbnd.com/blog/the-importance-of-keeping-your-customers-happy.

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23. Robbie Brown, Kim Severson, and Barry Meier, “Cruise Line’s Woes Are Far From Over as Ship Makes Port,” New York Times (February 14, 2013), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2013/02/15/us/carnival-cruise-line-ship-triumph-towed- into-port.html. 24. Binyamin Appelbaum and Jim Tankersley, “The Trump Effect: Business, Anticipating Less Regulation, Loosens Purse Strings,” New York Times (January 1, 2018), www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/us/politics/trump-businesses-regulation- economic-growth.html. 25. Robert V. Kozinets and Jay M. Handelman, “Adversaries of Consumption: Consumer Movements, Activism, and Ideology,” Journal of Consumer Research 31 (December 2004): 691–704; cf. also Paul C. Henry, “How Mainstream Consumers Think about Consumer Rights and Responsibilities,” Journal of Consumer Research 37, no. 4 (2010): 670–687. 26. Natasha Singer, “A Birth Control Pill That Promised Too Much,” New York Times (February 10, 2009), www.NewYorkTimes.com. 27. Jack Neff, “NAD to Charmin: No Bare Bear Bottoms: P&G Must Show Some Pieces of TP on Bruin’s Bums,” Advertising Age (August 12, 2010), http:// adage.com/article/adages/advertising-p-g-show-pieces-charminbears/145379/. 28. “Adbusters,” Adbusters Media Foundation, www.adbusters.org. 29. Victoria Uwumarogie, “Robin Thicke Concert Met With Protesters Who Still Say ‘Blurred Lines’ Promotes Rape,” Madame Noire (March 5, 2014), http:// madamenoire.com/406804/robin-thicke-concert/; James C. McKinley, Jr., “Reebok Drops Rick Ross After Protest Over Lyrics,” New York Times, (April 11, 2013), http:// artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/reebok-drops-rick-ross-after-protest- over-lyrics. 30. K. Kristofferson, Katherine White, and J. Peloza, “The Nature of Slacktivism: How the Social Observability of an Initial Act of Token Support Affects Subsequent Prosocial Action,” Journal of Consumer Research 40, no. 6 (2014): 1149–1166. 31. Shelia Shayon, “Cause Marketing Does Affect Brand Purchase,” Broad Channel (August 26, 2011), www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2011/08/26/ Cause-Marketing-Does-Affect-Brand-Purchase.aspx; Diego Hildebrand, Yoshiko DeMotta, Sankar Sen, and Ana Valenzuela. “Consumer Responses to Corporate

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Social Responsibility (CSR) Contribution Type,” Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 44(4) (2017): 738–758. 32. Julie L. Ozanne and Bige Saatcioglu, “Participatory Action Research,” Journal of Consumer Research 35 (October 2008): 423–439. 33. Cf. Philip Kotler and Alan R. Andreasen, Strategic Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991); Jeff B. Murray and Julie L. Ozanne, “The Critical Imagination: Emancipatory Interests in Consumer Research,” Journal of Consumer Research 18 (September 1991): 192–244; William D. Wells, “Discovery-Oriented Consumer Research,” Journal of Consumer Research 19 (March 1993): 489–504. 34. Quoted in Chuck Raasch, “‘Conscientious Consumption’ Survives Recession,” USA Today (November 29, 2012), www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/28/giving-back-post-great- recession/1634703/; www.causemarketingforum.com/site/c.bkLUKcOTLkK4E/b.6443937/k.41E3/Back ground_and_Basics.htm; Adam Kleinberg, “Brands from KFC to Gucci are Jumping on the Cause Marketing Bandwagon,” Advertising Age (June 6, 2014), http:// adage.com/article/agency-viewpoint/marketing-hot-pay-good/293537/. 35. Chloe Albanesius, “Social Security Numbers Revealed . . . With Facial- Recognition Software?” PC (August 1, 2011), www.pcmag.com/article2/ 0,2817,2389540,00.asp. 36. Natasha Singer, “Face Recognition Makes the Leap from Sci-Fi,” New York Times (November 12, 2011), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2011/11/13/business/face- recognition-moves-from-sci-fi-to-social-media.html; Molly St. Louis, “How Facial Recognition is Shaping the Future of Marketing Innovation,” Inc. (February 16, 2017), www.inc.com/molly-reynolds/how-facial-recognition-is-shaping-the-future-of- marketing-innovation.html. 37. Karl Greenberg, “Fewer People Find Social Ads Annoying,” Marketing Daily (December 10, 2012), www.mediapost.com/publications/article/188850/fewer- people-find-social-ads-annoying.html?edition=54351#axzz2Ekc0H7Ua. 38. Quoted in Natasha Singer, “YOU FOR SALE: Your Online Attention, Bought in an Instant,” New York Times (November 17, 2012),

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www.NewYorkTimes.com/2012/11/18/technology/your-online-attention-bought-in- an-instant-by-advertisers.html. 39. Natasha Singer, “YOU FOR SALE: Your Online Attention, Bought in an Instant,” (November 17, 2012). “Real-time bidding digital display advertising spending in the United States from 2012 to 2018 (in billions of U.S. dollars),” Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/245716/rtb-digital-display-ad-spending-in-the-us/. 40. “Identity Theft Action Plan, Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency,” www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/what_is_id_theft_/12993/ident ity_theft_statistics/587724; “Identity Theft,” Federal Trade Commission, www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/feature-0014-identity-theft; “Identity Theft Victim Statistics,” www.identitytheft.info/victims.aspx,; “Hacker ‘Botnet’ Hijacked Online Searches,” Phys.org (February 7, 2013), http://phys.org/news/2013-02- hacker-botnet-hijacked-online.html; Nicole Perlroth, “Hackers in China Attacked the Times for Last 4 Months,” New York Times (January 30, 2013), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/chinese-hackers-infiltrate-new- york-times-computers.html. 41. Bob Sullivan, “Identity Theft Hit an All-Time High in 2016,” Credit.com (February 1, 2017), http://blog.credit.com/2017/02/identity-theft-hit-an-all-time- high-in-2016-165414/. 42. Taylor Armerding “The 17 Biggest Data Breaches of the 21st Century,” CSO (January 26, 2018), www.csoonline.com/article/2130877/data-breach/the- biggest-data-breaches-of-the-21st-century.html; Leslie Shapiro, “Anatomy of a Russian Facebook Ad,” Washington Post (November. 1, 2017), www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/russian-ads-facebook- anatomy. 43. “Save Money on Car Insurance Through GPS Tracking, LiveView GPS” (February 9, 2012), www.liveviewgps.com/blog/save-money-on-car-insurance- through-gps-tracking/; http://www.motosafety.com/. 44. Mariella Moon, “Uniforms with Microchip Notify Parents If Their Children Skip School,” Mashable (March 26, 2012), mashable.com/2012/03/26/uniforms-with- microchip; Will Oremus, “Texas School District Drops RFID Chips, Will Track Kids

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With Surveillance Cameras Instead,” Future & Tense (July 17, 2013), www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/17/texas_northside_school_district_ drops_rfid_tracking_privacy_not_the_main.html. 45. “Nearly 1 in 5 People Have a Disability in the U.S., Census Bureau Reports,” U.S. Census Bureau (July 25, 2012), www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellaneous/cb12-134.html; Susannah Fox, “Americans Living with Disability and Their Technology Profile,” PewInternet (January 21, 2011), http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Disability.aspx; Terry L. Childers and Carol Kaufman-Scarborough, “Expanding Opportunities for Online Shoppers with Disabilities,” Journal of Business Research 62 (2009): 572–578. 46. Michael R. Solomon, Kel Smith, Nadine Vogel, and Natalie T. Wood, “Virtual Freedom for People with Disabilities,” Society for Disability Studies, Philadelphia (June 2010). 47. Zoe Fox, “4 Ways iPads Are Changing the Lives of People with Disabilities,” Mashable (July 25, 2011), http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/ipads-disabilities/. 48. www.looktel.com/moneyreader, accessed February 4, 2018. 49. Quoted in Karen Barrow, “Difference Is the Norm on These Dating Sites,” New York Times (December 27, 2010), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2010/12/28/health/28dating.html; www.dating4disabled.com/; http://www.nolongerlonely.com/. 50. Ellen Stohl, “ Adaptive Clothing Shakes Up the World,” New Mobility (March 1st, 2017), www.newmobility.com/2017/03/adaptive-clothing-shakes-up- world/; “A Clothing Line Specifically for Wheelchair Users,” Canvas8 (August 24, 2016), www.Canvas8.Com/Signals/2016/08/24/Wheelchair-Fashion.Html. 51. “Healthy Food Financing Initiative,” Office of Community Services, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (January 18, 2011), www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/resource/healthy-food-financing–initiative-0. 52. “Superfoods,” Food Matters, www.foodmatters.com/superfoods. 53. Mary-Luise Blue, “What is the Carbon Footprint of a Plastic Bottle?” Sciencing (April 25, 2017), https://sciencing.com/carbon-footprint-plastic-bottle- 12307187.html; “The Story of FIJI Water—A Green and Fair Product?” Sinking Islands

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(September 22, 2014), https://sinkingislands.com/2014/09/22/the-story-of-fiji- water-a-green-and-fair-product/. 54. National Association for Media Literacy Education, http://namle.net/ publications/media-literacy-definitions. 55. Robert Roy Britt, “14 Percent of U.S. Adults Can’t Read,” Live Science (January 10, 2009),  www.livescience.com/3211-14-percent-adults-read.html. 56. Natalie Ross Adkins and Julie L. Ozanne, “The Low Literate Consumer,” Journal of Consumer Research 32, no. 1 (June 2005): 93–105. 57. Natalie Ross Adkins and Julie L. Ozanne, “The Low Literate Consumer,” Journal of Consumer Research 32, no. 1 (2005): 93; Madhubalan Viswanathan, José Antonio Rosa, and James Edwin Harris, “Decision-Making and Coping of Functionally Illiterate Consumers and Some Implications for Marketing Management,” Journal of Marketing 69, no. 1 (2005): 15. 58. Emily Burg, “Whole Foods Is Consumers’ Favorite Green Brand,” Marketing Daily, www.mediapost.com. 59. “5 Lessons from the Companies Making Sustainability More Profitable Than Ever,” Fast Company Co.Exist (February 5, 2013), www.fastcoexist.com/1681339/5- lessons-from-the-companies-making-sustainability-more-profitable-than-ever. 60. Quoted in “What Is Sustainability?” United States Environmental Protection Agency,” www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm. 61. “Americans Expect Brands to be Consistently Eco-Friendly,” Canvas8 (January 29, 2018). 62. Jack Neff, “As More Marketers Go Green, Fewer Consumers Willing to Pay for It,” Advertising Age (September 24, 2012), http://adage.com/article/news/ marketers-green-fewer-consumers-pay/237377/. 63. Remi Trudel and June Cotte, “Does It Pay to Be Good?” MIT Sloan Management Review 61 (Winter 2009): 61–68. 64. Stephanie Clifford and Andrew Martin, “As Consumers Cut Spending, ‘Green’ Products Lose Allure,” New York Times (April 21, 2011), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2011/04/22/business/energy- environment/22green.html.

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65. Wendy Koch, “‘Green’ Product Claims Are Often Misleading,” USA Today (October 26, 2010), http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/10/green- product-claims. 66. Mark Dolliver, “Thumbs Down on Corporate Green Efforts,” Adweek (August 31, 2010),   www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/client/e3i84260d4301c885f91b2cd8 a712f323cf; Sarah Mahoney, “Americans Hate Faux Green Marketers,” Marketing Daily (March 25, 2011), www.mediapost.com/publications/? fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=147415&nid=125122. 67. Jessica Lyons Hardcastle, “‘Greenwashing’ Costing Walmart $1 Million,” Environmental Leader (February 3, 2017), www.environmentalleader.com/2017/02/ greenwashing-costing-walmart-1-million/. 68. Katie Baca-Motes, Amber Brown, Ayelet Gneezy, Elizabeth A. Keenan, and Leif D. Nelson, “Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field,” Journal of Consumer Research 39, 2013, no. 5: 1070–1084. 69. “The Era of Ethical Consumerism is Here: How to Market to LOHAS Consumers Ethos” (July 21, 2017), http://blog.ethos-marketing.com/blog/how-to- market-to-lohas. 70. Aditi Mathur, “Black Friday Turns Deadly; Hundreds Left Unconscious, Injured and Trampled,” International Business Times (November 29, 2011), www.ibtimes.com/black-friday-turns-deadly-hundreds-left–unconscious-injured- trampled-graphic-videos-375868; Jack Neff, “Lawsuit: Marketing Blamed in Wal- Mart Trampling Death,” Advertising Age (December 4, 2008), www.adage.com; www.Freerepublic.Com/Focus/F-News/2142920/Posts. 71. Kenneth E. Nusbaum, James C. Wright, and Michael R. Solomon, “Attitudes of Food Animal Veterinarians to Continuing Education in Agriterrorism,” paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Animal Disease Research Workers in Southern States, University of Florida (February 2001). 72. Chris Allen, “Cyber-Terrorism: The Next Logical Threat to Come from IS,” SC Media UK (July 20, 2017), www.scmagazineuk.com/cyber-terrorism-the-next-logical- threat-to-come-from-is/article/675965/.

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73. Betty Mohr, “The Pepsi Challenge: Managing a Crisis,” Prepared Foods (March 1994): 13. 74. www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/12/coca-cola-soda- death/1912491/?morestories=obnetwork. 75. www.experienceproject.com/groups/Am-Addicted-To-Chapstick/34083. 76. Sam Laird, “Dad Hires Hit Men to Kill Son—in Video Games,” Mashable (January 9, 2013), http://mashable.com/2013/01/09/dad-son-video-games/. 77. Erik Sass, “Woman Kills Baby for Interrupting FarmVille,” Social Media & Marketing Daily (October 28, 2010), www.mediapost.com/publications/? fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=138502&nid=120184. 78. Lulu Chang, “Gaming Disorder is Now Officially a Mental Condition, According to the WHO,” digitaltrends (December 25, 2017),  www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/ who-gaming-disorder/. 79. Bob Al-Greene, “Late-Night Gadget Use Damages Your Sleep Cycle,” Mashable (November 19, 2012), http://mashable.com/2012/11/19/gadgets-sleep/. 80. Emily Price, “Cellphone Addiction May Be Contagious, Study Finds,” Mashable (October 3, 2012), http://mashable.com/2012/12/03/cell-phone-addiction- contgious/. 81. “Fake Substitute Phones Help Curb Smartphone Addiction,” Canvas8 (December 18, 2017), www.canvas8.com/signals/2017/12/18/substitute- phones.html, accessed January 26, 2018; May 06, 2016. 82. Alexandra Ma, “A Sad Number Of Americans Sleep With Their Smartphone In Their Hand,” Huffington Post (June 6, 2015), www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/ 29/smartphone-behavior-2015_n_7690448.html. 83. Chris Pollard, “A Cruel World,” The Sun (U.K.) (September 13, 2010), www.diigo.com/cached? url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesun.co.uk%2Fsol%2Fhomepage%2Fnews%2F31352 78%2FMum-addicted-to-Small-World-neglected-kids-and-let-dogs-starve-to- death.html. 84. Quoted in http://cyberbullying.us/. 85. Quoted in Jan Hoffman, “Online Bullies Pull Schools Into the Fray,” New York Times (June 27, 2010), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2010/06/28/style/28bully.html?

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pagewanted=1&_r=0&emc=eta1. 86. www.stopbullying.gov, accessed February 6, 2018. 87. Matt Petronzio, “Do You Suffer from These 4 Tech Afflictions?” Mashable (June 1, 2012), http://mashable.com/2012/06/01/tech-addiction/? WT.mc_id=en_top_stories&utm_campaign=Top%2BStories&utm_medium=email&ut m_source=newsletter. 88. Derek N. Hassay and Malcolm C. Smith, “Compulsive Buying: An Examination of the Consumption Motive,” Psychology & Marketing 13 (December 1996): 741– 752. 89. Nancy M. Ridgway, Monika Kukar-Kinney, and Kent B. Monroe, “An Expanded Conceptualization and a New Measure of Compulsive Buying,” Journal of Consumer Research 35, no. 4 (2008): 622–639; Thomas C. O’Guinn and Ronald J. Faber, “Compulsive Buying: A Phenomenological Explanation,” Journal of Consumer Research 16 (September 1989): 154. 90. Curtis L. Taylor, “Guys Who Buy, Buy, Buy,” Newsday (October 6, 2006); Jim Thornton, “Buy Now, Pay Later,” Men’s Health (December 2004): 109–112. 91. Georgia Witkin, “The Shopping Fix,” Health (May 1988): 73; see also Arch G. Woodside and Randolph J. Trappey III, “Compulsive Consumption of a Consumer Service: An Exploratory Study of Chronic Horse Race Track Gambling Behavior,” working paper #90-MKTG-04, A. B. Freeman School of Business, Tulane University (1990); Rajan Nataraajan and Brent G. Goff, “Manifestations of Compulsiveness in the Consumer-Marketplace Domain,” Psychology & Marketing 9 (January 1992): 31– 44; Joann Ellison Rodgers, “Addiction: A Whole New View,” Psychology Today (September–October 1994): 32. 92. www.onlinepokerreport.com/bill-tracker/. 93. Spencer E. Ante and Alexandra Berzon, “Gambling Industry Bets Virtual Money Turns Real,” Wall Street Journal (December 20, 2012), http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732473130457819174106 4162164.html. 94. Helen Reynolds, The Economics of Prostitution (Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1986).

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95. Patrick Di Justo, “How to Sell Your Body for $46 Million,” Wired (August 2003): 47. 96. Amy Harmon, “Illegal Kidney Auction Pops Up on eBay’s Site,” New York Times (September 3, 1999), www.NewYorkTimes.com. 97. Scott Carney, “Inside the Business of Selling Human Body Parts,” Wired (January 31, 2011), www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_redmarkets/2. 98. Di Justo, “How to Sell Your Body for $46 Million.” https://people.well.com/ user/justpat/bodyparts.pdf. 99. Reuters, “German Parents Offer Baby on eBay,” New York Times (May 25, 2008), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2008/05/25/world/europe/25ebayby.html. 100. “Advertisers Face Up to the New Morality: Making the Pitch,” Bloomberg (July 8, 1997). 101. Nicole Leinbach-Reyhle, “New Report Identifies US Retailers Lose $60 Billion a Year, Employee Theft Top Concern,” Forbes (October 7, 2015), www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleleinbachreyhle/2015/10/07/new-report-identifies-us- retailers-lose-60-billion-a-year-employee-theft-top-concern/#56223ee680eb. 102. Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry, National Retail Federation, 2015, https://nrf.com/sites/default/files/Images/Media%20Center/NRF%20Retail%20Retu rn%20Fraud%20Final_0.pdf. 103. “Counterfeit Goods: A $461 Billion Problem, CBS News, (April 18, 2016), www.cbsnews.com/news/counterfeit-goods-a-461-billion-problem/; Leo Burnett, “Behind New System to Blunt Counterfeiting in China ‘1-Tag’ Lets Consumers Authenticate Products and Avoid Potentially Hazardous Ripoffs,” AdAge Global (January 31, 2011), http://adage.com/article/global-news/leo-burnett-creates- system-stop-counterfeiting-china/148571/. 104. Martin Fackler, “In Korea, A Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession,” New York Times (November 18, 2007), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2007/11/18/Technology/18rehab.html. 105. “Woman in Wendy’s Finger Case Is Arrested,” New York Times (April 22, 2005), www.NewYorkTimes.com. 106. Natalie Zmuda, “Children’s Hospital in Hot Water Over Corporate Sponsorships, Critics Dismayed by Association with Racy Retailer Abercrombie &

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Fitch,” Advertising Age (March 12, 2008), www.adage.com. 107. Kevin Maney, “Drivers Let Big Brother in to Get a Break,” Ethics (August 9, 2004): 1B. 108. Gillian White, “All Your Clothes Are Made With Exploited Labor,” The Atlantic (June 3, 2015), www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/patagonia-labor- clothing-factory-exploitation/394658/. 109. Ibid. 110. “Packs And Gear,” Patagonia Corporate Website, www.patagonia.com/shop/luggage. 111. “Corporate Responsibility,” Patagonia Corporate Website, www.patagonia.com/corporate-responsibility.html. 112. Patagonia, “Don’t Buy This Jacket, Black Friday, And the New York Times,” Patagonia Blog (November 25, 2011), www.patagonia.com/blog/2011/11/dont-buy- this-jacket-black-friday-and-the-new-york-times/. 113. Ibid. 114. “Working With Factories,” Patagonia Corporate Website, www.patagonia.com/working-with-factories.html. 115. Gillian White, “All Your Clothes Are Made With Exploited Labor,” The Atlantic (June 3, 2015), www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/patagonia-labor- clothing-factory-exploitation/394658/. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid. 118. Casey Sublett, “Patagonia Consumer Profile,” https://patagoniabrandaudit.weebly.com/consumer-profile.html. 119. Jeff Beer, “How Patagonia Grows Every Time It Amplifies Its Social Mission,” Fast Company (February 21, 2018), www.fastcompany.com/40525452/how-patagonia-grows-every-time-it-amplifies- its-social-mission. 120. Ibid. 121. Melissa Anders, “Patagonia Steps Up Environmental Activism With ‘Dating Site’ For Grassroots Projects,” Forbes (February 7, 2018),

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www.forbes.com/sites/melissaanders/2018/02/07/patagonia-steps-up- environmental-activism-with-dating-site-for-grassroots-projects/#154ad433556a. 122. “Michelle Obama announces new rules for advertising junk food at schools,” New York Daily News (February 25, 2014), www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/michelle-obama-announces-new-rules- advertising-junk-food-schools-article-1.1701140; www.nannystate.com/; Janet Adamy, “Tough New Rules Proposed on Food Advertising for Kids,” Wall Street Journal (April 29, 2011), http://professional.wsj.com/article/ NA_EP_PUB:SB10001424052748704330404576291091782255946.html. 123. Natasha Singer, “A Vault for Taking Charge of Your Online Life,” New York Times (December 8, 2012), www.NewYorkTimes.com/2012/12/09/business/company-envisions-vaults-for- personal-ddata.html.

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Section 1 Data Case Analyzing the Athletic Shoe Market

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Background

You are the marketing analyst for an online athletic shoe store. To date, your company has done little formal marketing research about athletic shoe buyers in the United States. Using