• Question: what are your opinions on the ethical issues of some marketing programs and advertisements of companies? Do you think some advertisements are an exploitation of human behavior and, in a certain sense, controlling our actions?

    Asked by anon-304047 on 7 Dec 2021.
    • Photo: Madeleine Steeds

      Madeleine Steeds answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      I think particularly social media platforms are guilty of this. The ‘infinite scrolling’ features are designed to make you stay on the platform and a lot of the targeted adverts are from knowing what you’ve said. Someone in my office mentioned getting googly eyes for the coffee machine and he had adverts for googly eyes for a month after. There’s definitely some scary features that exploit people’s behaviour which isn’t ethical in my opinion.

    • Photo: Alex Baxendale

      Alex Baxendale answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      You’re absolutely right with the exploitation of human behavior. Marketing techniques look to tap into the most common ways that people process information, pay attention, remember and so on. Little jingles that play in adverts are intended to get stuck in your head, and they work really well. I can tell you what year the Battle of Hastings happened because of a Hastings Direct advert I watched 10 years ago.
      A lot of media have picked up on anger getting reads, so they shift their reporting in ways that drive people to engage with their product (and thus make money). This is why we see a LOT of negative things in the news, but not a lot of positive things – because one of the two sells a whole lot more.
      I find some of the things that are done to be fine, the musical jingles are innocent and ultimately don’t force our behaviour – I never used Hastings Direct , so their catchy jingle didn’t convince me. But the media example I find to be extremely unethical, where a lot of outlets will lie and twist things to cause outrage simply to generate money for themselves. Whether the manipulation of information (as a product) is highly likely to control our actions I do not know, but the intent of it is certainly very unfortunate

    • Photo: Clare Wood

      Clare Wood answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      Advertising / marketing is about persuasion and in many case they use psychology to engineer interest and consumption – the question of whether its ethical where people are then financially profiting from it, or profiting from pulling on people’s vulnerabilities, or profiting at the expense of folk who can’t afford it is one they dont consider I suspect. But I have concerns about these practices, certainly.

    • Photo: Natali Bozhilova

      Natali Bozhilova answered on 15 Nov 2021:

      Marking programmes and advertisements of companies are designed to generate profit. In that sense, the key aim of these programmes is to sell as many products as possible without considering the individual person’s situations. A sale’s person would always aim to enhance the benefits of the product and understate the negatives of the product. Such an approach can be considerate unethical to a degree.

      However, marketing programmes do not ever force anyone to make a particular choice. Each one of us can decide whether they need this product or not as well as whether the advertising reflects the true state/benefit of the product. In that sense, we cannot claim that advertising is an exploitation of human behaviour or controlling actions. More likely, advertising can increase exposure, which can make a certain product more recognisable. High familiarity might increase the likelihood of buying the respective product. However, high familiarity does not always lead to more purchases. In a nutshell, there are many factors involved in human decisions, which cannot attribute them all to marketing strategies.

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