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Part Five
Contemporary Business Themes
Part Five of the text consists of an Introduction followed by Chapter 13 –- Marketing; Chapter 14 –-
The Environment, and Chapter 15 –- Globalization.
The introduction to Part Five is highly recommended for getting a quick understanding of the
contemporary concepts covered in the last three chapters of the text.
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Chapter 13 –- Marketing (pp. 491-512)
Chapter 13 starts with a case study (pp. 491 – 505). This case study concerns the company Fingerhut.
If you take a trip to Fingerhut’s website, www.Fingerhut.com, you will see that the website is titled
“Your Shopping Catalog with Low Monthly Payments.” You may also notice that the picture
prominently displayed on the home page of the website is one of an African-American family.
The case study concerns Fingerhut’s policy of providing credit to almost everyone. But this credit
Article: “Persuasive Advertising, Autonomy, and the Creation of Desire” by Roger Crisp (pp. 505 –
512)
In his article, Crisp is arguing that all forms of persuasive advertising are morally wrong on the
ground that they override the autonomy of consumers.
What Crisp is telling us is that some advertisements affect people so fundamentally that the ads
change, manipulate, or create our desires, and that doing this to someone is morally akin to enslaving
that person.
Discussion Questions
1. Your cable company rents you a converter box for $5 a month. You notice you can get one on
eBay for a onetime payment of $35 — do you order it? Why or why not? Is your cable
company ripping you off?
2. You notice a very attractive piece of jewelry in a pawnshop. It is for sale for less than it would
sell for in a jewelry store. You inquire about the piece, and are told its original owner was in
that day to pawn another similar piece to cover this month’s rent, and that the piece you like
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was to cover last month’s rent and went unredeemed, as the customer has lost his job. Do you
buy the piece, or demur and secretly hope its original owner will have an upturn in his future
and be able to reclaim it?
3. You have no interest in a new cell phone, yours is absolutely satisfactory. You see a
commercial for the new iPhone and find yourself standing in line all night in the rain to buy
one as soon they go on sale. Have you been manipulated?
Resources for further study — Film, Literature, and the Web:
FannieMae Foundation, “Financial Services in Distressed Communities: Issues and Answers,”
August, 2001. http://www.fanniemaefoundation.org/programs/financial.PDF (June 19, 2007)
Merikle, Philip M., “Subliminal Perception,” from Encyclopedia of Psychology, Vol. 7, pp. 497-499.
A.E. Kazdin (Ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~pmerikle/papers/SubliminalPerception.html (June 19, 2007)
Columbo: Double Exposure, Richard Quine, Dir., Perfs. Peter Falk, Robert Culp. 1973. The third
Season of Detective Columbo from NBC’s Mystery Movie Series.