 |  An Introduction to Business Ethics Joseph R DesJardins,
College of St. Benedict
Marketing Ethics: Advertising and Product Placement
Chapter Overview| Chapter eight's major focus is on the ethics of advertising and sales and the ethical issues of target marketing. It examines the concept and varieties of consumer manipulation with a special emphasis on how vulnerable people are targeted for abuse, concluding that marketing practices that seek to identify populations who can be easily influenced and manipulated are unethical both because they violate the Kantian injunction never to use persons as mere means and, on the utilitarian view, because they tend to lessen overall happiness.
The issue of regulating deceptive and unfair sales and advertising is treated in detail, looking at the difficulties that arise in trying to determine exactly what form regulation of these practices should take. The question of whether marketing and advertising adversely affect consumer autonomy, whether they can effectively influence consumers' desires and subsequent choices of products in such a way that those desires and choices are no longer autonomous is debated.
Finally, the chapter examines the concept of consumer vulnerability in yet greater detail, stressing how unethical marketing and sales practices may take advantage of that vulnerability in its many forms.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education