Advertising and Target Marketing
1. Distinguish between manipulation, deception, and a lie. Does the ethical wrong with these practices depend most directly on the consequences or on the intent?
2. Distinguish between ethically acceptable means of influencing another and ethically improper means to influence another. Apply your answer to the case of pharmaceutical ads.
3. Explain how the FDA’s standards of deception and unfairness are related. How might an advertisement be both deceptive and unfair?
4. What things does advertising do for consumers? What does advertising do to consumers? In what ways has advertising done anything to you?
5. Distinguish between autonomous and non autonomous behavior. Explain the difference between autonomous and nonautonomous desires. Do you have any desires that you would characterize as nonautonomous? What is the difference between fi rst-order and second-order desires?
6. To what degree do you think that modern marketing has created a dys- functional affluent economy in which irrational and trivial consumer de- mand has replaced personal and social needs?
7. Explain two ways in which a consumer could be described as vulnerable. What factors might make a person vulnerable in each sense? What are the ethics of marketing to the vulnerable?
