Prof Scofied
Malotaibi
class_7_-_marketing1.pptMarketing and Business Ethics
Micro and Macro Ethical Issues
Consumer Welfare
The provision of products and services of appropriate quality that are presented to prospective buyers in an honest and comprehensive manner to ensure to a reasonable degree the safety, well-being, and satisfaction of those customers.
3 Conditions for ethical legitimacy
- Kantian Respect for autonomy
- Utilitarian mutual benefit
Consent is voluntary & informed
The parties truly benefit
The impacts of others not directly involved are ethical
What are examples of unethical marketing and advertising?
The Ethics of Consumer Production and Marketing
- Product injuries
- Deceptive selling practices
- Shoddy product construction
- Products that immediately break down
- Warranties that are not honored
- Cultural effects of advertising
- Hyperconsumption
Inappropriate/unethical Marketing?
- Spectre Studios selling dolls depicting serial killers (Jeffrey Dalmer, Ted Bundy, etc.)?
- “point-and-shoot” video games?
- Nestle Infant Formula in developing countries?
Deception From the
Design Stage
- Need more, not less - Oil of Olay
- Notice something missing? -Campbell’s Soup, OJ 1.89l… now ice cream too (down to 1.65l)
- Quantity surcharge
Inappropriate/unethical Marketing?
Predictive dialing by telemarketers?
Planned obsolescence?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc4yko5WMEc
Portrayal of women/girls?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz5IRdFIpvA
Andy Rooney's Tips for
Handling Telemarketers
- Three little words: "Hold On, Please..."
- For those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end: hit your # button on the phone 7 times as quickly as possible
- Junk mail help: return "ads" in pre-paid envelopes with your payment or put fliers in pre-paid envelopes.
Inappropriate/unethical Advertising?
- Benneton ad depicting body with HIV stamped on it?
- O$ down, walk away without paying?
- PETA’s ‘Got…Beer?’ publicity campaign?
- Children and advertising (Kellogg’s example)
Deceptive, Misleading, Manipulating, or Just Marketing?
- Where is the information?
- Omitting critical facts and ideas
- Degrees of truth-telling/lying
- Image vs reality
How do the various ethical theories apply to manipulation in advertising?
Overconsumption
What are the ethical issues?
Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP)
- Some have suggested that the Dominant social paradigm (DSP) of consumption/mass consumption is central problem of western civilization
- and that we need to turn to values of local community and sustainability.
(Hawken; Korten; Schumacher; Suzuki, …)
Consumption Culture
- “The example of the Beanie Babies and happy meals along the highway”
- P&G “selling through the grapevine”
- Build a Bear Workshop (birthday parties in general)
- In lifetime average person watches 1 year of advertising
- 42% 3 year-olds have a tv in their bedroom (Mother and Baby)
- Michael Jordan’s $10 billion brand value
- “The Field Trip Goes Retail” and “The Mother of All Malls”
- American Girl Dolls & Doggie Hotels
Consumption Culture
- Blurring of sacred and profane – objects become sacred, relationships are commercialized
- Religion of consumerism
- Exploiting pity for commercial purposes
- People as brands, products as living
Consumption Culture
“The triumph of advertising is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.”
Horkheimer & Adorno,
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Religion of Consumerism
“Barbie is religion for girls” (Fortune article)
“People do everything to buy it…People think it is a real miracle” (Avon Brazil).
Consumption Conundrums
- Relationship between consumption and happiness is weak
- Primary goal of national economic policy, yet very real limits to global consumption – mathematical impossibility of all having what we have
- The Economics of Happiness
