Authors: Shlomo Sher
Publish Date: 2011/02/11
Volume: 102, Issue: 1, Pages: 97-118
Abstract
A longstanding debate exists in both academic literature and popular culture about whether noninformative marketing tactics are manipulative However given that we tend to believe that some marketing tactics are manipulative and some are not the question that marketers their critics and consumers need to ask themselves is that of how to actually determine whether any particular marketing tactic is manipulative and whether a given manipulative tactic is in fact immoral This article proposes to operationalize criteria that can be used by marketers for making such determinations and attempts to provide some clarification toward our under standing of the concept of manipulation and the conditions for the moral acceptability of manipulative marketing practices It argues that a marketing tactic is manipulative if it is intended to motivate by undermining what the marketer believes is his/her audience’s normal decisionmaking process either by deception or by playing on a vulnerability that the marketer believes exists in his/her audience’s normal decisionmaking process Such a tactic is morally objectionable on several grounds which make it morally impermissible unless outweighed by sufficient “redemptive” moral considerations
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