“Marketing, Consumerism, Materialism and Ethics: the Modern Marketing Conundrum”

Good afternoon/morning ladies and gentlemen. Consumerism is defined by the English oxford dictionary as continual expansion of one's wants and needs for goods and services. Bruce Dawes’ poems “Televistas” and “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” critique the powerful and persuasive influence that companies have on our society.

Name: Loo Zheng Xian, George 13th September 2011 Marketing Ethics: A Response to Roger Crisp Introduction In his article “Persuasive Advertising, Autonomy, and the Creation of Desire”, Roger Crisp discusses his views on the issue of persuasive advertising. His overarching argument is that persuasive advertising ‘overrides the autonomy of consumers’ and he concludes that ‘all forms of a certain common type of advertising (i.e. persuasive advertising) are morally wrong’. In my response to this article, I will adopt an ethical viewpoint towards my analysis of various points raised by Crisp. Viewing Crisp’s argument from a Kantian perspective, the deprivation of autonomy stemming from persuasive advertising would be deemed as unethical. From a

The consumer ethical perspective can be defined by the “self-image”. The consumer would adopt ethical consumption as much as the ethical issues have become important to their self-identity. The consumer not always makes decision according to the Theory of Reasoned Action/Theory of Planned Behavior rather is also driven by value to other and self-identification.

The amount of consumerism that happens every day of our life is something people in society may never think of. Consumerism is everywhere in our societies. .Consumer culture is the value of where our thoughts are on the buying and selling of goods or services and how we use the resources that we consume. In the article “Devil Takes Visa” on consumer culture, Clapp would say everything people do is becoming consumeristic, from going to church or going to school we are consumers. Consumer culture is all around and all through us whether we believe it or not we are constantly being consumers of many products and services. Americans are constantly consuming and it’s something I wouldn’t agree more on. I’ve never really stopped and thought about

were branded to the bone. They always understood that they were selling brands before product. They had their eyes fixed on global expansion.

This case study analyzes the experiences of Courtland Kelley at General Motors (GM). Courtland Kelley a third generation GM worker put his job on the line by pushing the GM managers and executives to fully respond to the safety issues found while working as a safety inspector at the company. Kelley along with his supervisor Bill McAleer first discovered the issues while auditing GM cars at rail yards across the country, a spot check of vehicles before the cars were cleared to be delivered to the dealers. McAleer was taken off the audit as a result, who subsequently sued the company seeking whistle-blower protection. The case was eventually dismissed by a judge in favor of GM. The judgement only increased Kelley’s

Is consumerism good? Anyone living in modern day society may think so. We can easily look around and witness all of the conveniences that consumerism grants us. Appliances help to alleviate our work load, electronics nullify any dull moments with instant entertainment, and the latest fashion trends of strictly the top brands allow us to be the envy of our peers. So, is consumerism good? That’s the central question addressed within the essays The Happiness Conspiracy, Needing the Unnecessary, and The Grill-Buying Guide.

Advertising and the availability of financing brought about a consumer revolution. The new consumer products appealed to people’s social ambitions. Very few of the products were necessities, but eventually, participating in the consumerism culture became a standard for judging one’s value; rather than religion, character or social standing as it had been before the 1920s.

Consumerism is a phenomenon that has been dominant in all societies for an extremely long time. It causes people to excessively purchase goods and consume things excessive to their actual needs. “A consumer is a person or thing that consumes” (Dictionary.com). Consumerism can be defined as a belief that an expanding consumption of goods is an advantage to the county’s economy. Today people are practically brainwashed to buy more than what they need in order to keep the economy afloat. No one thinks twice about why they are buying things or maybe even what they need. Consumerism has a big impact on our country, good or bad.

•Too many product types were launched at the same time with little differentiation and too much technology for the consumer to understand and digest.

“For seven years the Ford Motor Company sold cars in which it knew hundreds of people would needlessly burn to death.”

Consumerism is a description of society’s lifestyle in which many people embrace to achieve their goals by acquiring goods that they clearly do not need (Stearns, 7). The idea that the market is shaped by the choice of the consumers’ needs and wants can be defined as a consumer sovereignty (Goodwin, Nelson, Ackerman, Weisskopf, 2). This belief is based on the assumption that the consumer knows what it wants. Contrary to this logic, marketers convince us that the consumer does not know what they want. The consumer has to be told what they want or be persuaded by advertising items in a matter that demonstrates the reason a product makes their life easier or will improve their life instantly. As one of the most successful entrepreneurs,

The aim of this paper is to understand the movement for ethical consumption and reflect on its scope on the constitution of a new consumer culture, and its role in the “public space”.

Businesses have been relatively passive in investigate their in marketing ethics and are still operating according to traditional business models and process that do not reflect consumer interests and ethical implications of their activity often continue afterthought and are yet to be thoroughly incorporated into management decision-making. The contingency framework can accelerate this pre-emptive approach to ethical decision-making. To embed ethics into firms planning and strategy formulation process , marketers should learn from consumers ethical evaluation of their marketing techniques (Smith and Cooper-Martin 1997). An “ethical execution of the marketing program. In addition to financial , market, and competitive objectives, marketers should include consumer concerns and ethical integrity as important criteria for management decision making . Furthermore, ethics must be matched throughout the marketing planning process from product development, market selection , advertising and promotion execution.

Process-orientated framework, analyzing ethical problems in terms of the categories used by marketing specialists; Research, price, promotion, placement Specific issues in marketing ethics: