Ethical Decision-Making by Consumers: The Roles of Product Harm and Consumer Vulnerability
The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of perceptions of product harm and consumer vulnerability on ethical evaluations of target marketing strategies. We first established whether subjects are able to accurately judge the harmfulness of a product through labeling alone, and wh...
| Autor principal: | |
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| Otros Autores: | |
| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Gargar...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Publicado: |
2007
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| En: |
Journal of business ethics
Año: 2007, Volumen: 70, Número: 3, Páginas: 247-264 |
| Otras palabras clave: | B
target vulnerability
B vulnerable consumers B ethical evaluations B Consumer vulnerability B vulnerable groups B sin products B product harm |
| Acceso en línea: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Sumario: | The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of perceptions of product harm and consumer vulnerability on ethical evaluations of target marketing strategies. We first established whether subjects are able to accurately judge the harmfulness of a product through labeling alone, and whether they could differentiate consumers who were more or less vulnerable. The results suggest that without the presence of a prime, subjects who depended on implicit memory or guess were able to detect differences in “sin” and “non-sin” products and consumer vulnerability, but were far less likely to be able to distinguish among high and low levels of product harm and consumer vulnerability. The inability to accurately identify high and low levels of product harm and consumer vulnerability impacted their perceptions of the ethicality of target marketing strategies, such that only four out of 18 target marketing strategies were judged as unethical. Thus, our findings contradict previous research that found subjects judged many more of the integrated strategies as unethical [Smith and Cooper-Martin, J Market 61(1997) 1]. Our results suggest that assessing ethical evaluations of strategies varying in product harm, and consumer vulnerability may only be relevant if consumers can accurately identify product harm. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0697 |
| Obras secundarias: | Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9109-2 |
