Chapter 9 Marketing Ethics: Advertising and Target Marketing
Chapter Nine: Marketing Ethics: Advertising and Target Marketing
Review Questions
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 from 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 non-autonomous desires. Do you have any desires that you
would characterize as non-autonomous? What is the difference between first-order and
second-order desires?
6. To what degree do you think that modern marketing has created a dysfunctionally
affluent economy in which irrational and trivial consumer demand 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?
Chapter Nine – Marketing Ethics: Advertising and Target Marketing
Discussion Questions
1. How many people in your class have credit cards? How many different cards, on average, does
each person possess?
2. How did you come to posses these credit cards? Did you initiate the application, or were you
solicited for it? How difficult was it to qualify for credit?
3. How many people pay off their bill each month?
4. How many people know the interest rate on their card? How many know the credit limit? Can
anyone explain the condition under which the credit card company can change the interest rate?
5. How many can explain what would happen if they are late with a payment? Does anyone
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