Target Marketing is Exploitative

As marketers increasingly develop marketing programs tailored to certain target market

segments in Asia, some critics have denounced these efforts as exploitative. Examples
include marketing cigarettes and alcohol to less-educated Asians, and employing Asian
women to clichéd stereotypes and depicting them inappropriately in ads. Others counter
that targeting and positioning is critical to marketing in Asia and that these marketing
programs are attempts to be relevant to specific consumer group.

Marketing to specific groups of consumers, or target marketing, is one of the most

important concepts in marketing.

Marketers, through the ages, have identified who their customers are, and directed
their efforts at influencing their buying decisions. That is their job.

In the last 30 years though, marketers have begun to identify potential buyers based
on a number of factors, that make many people uncomfortable. Marketers now direct
promotions at those of certain age groups, gender, race, marital status, gender
preferences, and just about any other category you can place people in.

This makes many consumers and consumer advocates question the ethicality of
these promotions:

Is it fair to direct ads at children when they do not have the understanding and/or
capability to judge what is being presented to them?

Is it fair to target ads at elderly, living on fixed incomes, with products that they may
not be able to afford?

Should companies be allowed to develop products that are specifically targeted at

ethnic groups?

My answer to each of these questions, except the first one, would definitely be, Yes.

Why should a company be restricted from marketing a product to an independent,

rationally thinking, adult?

Don't I, as an adult, have the ability to determine for myself, with some exceptions,
what I want to buy?

Now, if there are issues of mental incapacity we have a whole separate issue to
address.

But, assuming that the consumer is able to make their own decisions; shouldn't I as
a marketer be able to present information that will help the consumer decide that my
product is what they want?
Is targeting of minorities exploitative? Yes, it certainly is. But, so is almost every
other kind of marketing. You are trying to exploit a need, a want and definitely a gap
in a market that maybe has not been addressed.

Prior to the 1960's most marketing ignored ethnic minority groups and concentrated
on the vast buying power of larger demographic groups. An opportunity existed for
companies to address a market, with significant buying power, that had not been
addressed before. Is that inherently wrong? That is the way marketing works: Find a
gap, develop a plan to address the gap, and then market to that gap. That is sound
business practice. If companies do not take advantage of their opportunities they will
fail.

Now, none of what I have said above gives companies a free license to do whatever
they want, especially when it comes to my one, very absolute exception: Marketing
to children and those who cannot be held accountable for their actions. Even as an
adult, if I am not capable of making a choice as to the soundness of a buying
decision, then I should not be subjected to marketing that may have unreasonable
influence over me; And children are certainly not capable of making that decision.
However, as an adult parent, I must assume some of the responsibility for buying
products that are marketed to children. I must educate my children about what is
right and what is wrong; what is a want versus what is a need; what is affordable
versus what is not.

Companies who choose to direct their marketing efforts at specific market segments
have a responsibility to consider the ethical implications of what they are doing.
Socially responsible marketing calls for target marketing that serves not only the
company's interests, but also the interests of those targeted and the public in
general.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Stephenson

Playboy head called 'coward' in marketing-to-kids

dust-up
Legislator's motion accuses adult magazine of aiming 'sexualized
merchandise at children'

For a magazine that prides itself on showing just about everything, one thing it won't
be showing next month is up.

Christie Hefner, daughter of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and chairwoman and chief
executive of Playboy Enterprises International, has refused an invitation to appear
before the Scottish Parliament to give evidence to the equal opportunities committee
holding December hearings on "sexualized imagery and children" and to explain why
her company's bunny logo is used on products attractive to children.

That has some lawmakers accusing her of cowardice, reports Scotland on Sunday.

The planned hearings follow a number of recent incidents of leading UK stores selling
items inappropriately aimed at children: Woolworth's "Lolita" bed for little girls, BHS'
"Little Miss Naughty" underwear and Tesco's pole-dancing kits advertised on its
website's toy section.

Playboy was drawn into the controversy in May by a spontaneous protest by York
vicar, Father Tim Jones, who pulled down a display of pencil cases and notebooks
bearing the bunny logo at a local stationary story.

"I told the assistant manager who was on duty at the till that I was going to be
launching a protest at the shop, and I went over to where the Playboy material was
on the shelf alongside the Winnie The Pooh and Mickey Mouse material, and I started
tossing it on the floor away from where people were," Jones, 40, told the York Press
at the time.

The minister also asked store patrons to sign a petition protesting "the intrusion of
commercial brands such as Playboy into goods and services targeting children."

"The long-term intention of this strategy is to encourage children to see the Playboy
bunny as a friendly child-appropriate brand, preparing them for early commercial
acceptance of Playboy pornographic merchandise," Jones said.

"This constitutes a kind of 'institutional grooming' of children for their commercial

exploitation by the powerful sex industry. This institutional grooming may be indirect
but it is not accidental. It is deliberate, intentional, cynical and wicked, and must be
resisted."

Playboy blamed the stationary story for the problem:

"We were surprised to discover that Playboy stationery has been so inappropriately
positioned. Playboy's target audience is 18 to 34-year-olds so we clearly did not
authorize, nor approve, the placement of our product next to such well-known
children's characters. Our licensee and its distributor were also unaware of this
placement. We will be reviewing this situation immediately," a spokesman said.

In September, 20 members of the Scottish Parliament offered a motion charging

Playboy with "manipulative, dangerous and exploitative" practices to "target
sexualized merchandise at children."

"Such morally corrupt marketing practices contribute to the desensitization of society

to pornography and the continuing inequality and exploitation of women," read the
motion offered by Elaine Smith MSP.

In light of the much publicized protest by Jones and the action by the MSPs, Christie
Hefner herself responded by letter, defending the company:
"Although I have not been contacted directly, this is an allegation I take seriously,
and I want to underline to the Scottish parliament ... that Playboy does not market
its products to children."

Hefner described the adult magazine, founded in 1953, as "part of America's popular
cultural landscape" and a "social and political forum for some of the most influential
figures of our time." Its target audience, she insisted, was "trend-conscious men and
women aged 18-35."

"I have seen the considerable media coverage of the Rev. Tim Jones's protest," she
wrote. "His actions and words, as well as a motion tabled by Elaine Smith MSP
referring to Playboy, incorrectly suggest our merchandise is targeted at children."

After Hefner interjected herself into the matter, an invitation was extended to appear
before the committee to defend her company. Playboy has since informed the
lawmakers it will send no one and the company says it has nothing to contribute to
the discussion.

"I think it's cowardly," said Sandra White, a member of the committee. "The
committee wrote to Christie Hefner because she had complained to us and made an
issue of this. Playboy drew attention to themselves.

"Now, when they could be giving their side of the story, they've decided to turn tail
and run. I'm pretty disappointed because I would have liked to hear them explain
why things like Playboy pencil cases are on sale in ordinary stationery counters."

The "thing" being marketed is usually a product, service, brand, organization or ideal. The "subjects" are
usually a targeted group based on age, sex, location or wealth. In each of the four steps marketers use
mass media to facilitate their marketing efforts and influence the buyer decision processes. To some critics,
marketers' ability to alter consumer behavior is powerful and frightening. An organization (U.S. spelling) or
organisation (U.K. spelling) is a formal group of people with one or more shared goals. ... In mathematics,
the term ideal has multiple meanings. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mass media is a term used to denote,
as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience
(typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ...

Critics acknowledge that marketing has legitimate uses in connecting goods and services to the consumers
who want them. Critics also point out that marketing techniques have been used to achieve morally dubious
ends by businesses, governments and criminals. Critics see a systemic social evil inherent in marketing (see
 No Logo, Bill Hicks, or Marxism). Marketing is accused of creating ruthless exploitation of both consumers
and workers by treating people as commodities whose purpose is to consume. Jump to: navigation, search
Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German
philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...

Most marketers believe that marketing, like any other technology, is amoral; it can be used for good or evil,
but the technique itself is not amenable to ethical analysis.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Criticism-of-marketing

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~nshah/fashioncrimes/Sexploitation.html

Should Advertising Aimed at Children be Allowed? The

Debate
Context
A great deal of advertising on television is aimed at children, promoting not only toys
and sweets but also products such as food, drink, music, films and clothing to young
consumers from toddlers to teenagers.

pros
It is not ethical to target children with
advertisements, as they are not yet able to
distinguish advertising from actual
programming in the way adults can. This
means that advertising aimed at children is
misleading and unfair. It is also clearly
effective, as otherwise advertisers would not
spend hundreds of millions of dollars each
year targeting children who are not yet able
to resist their sales pitch.
Advertising specifically to children is
unethical because they have little or no
money of their own and have to persuade
their parents to buy the products for them.
Rather than advertising directly to parents,
companies use a "nag and whine" campaign
that leads to bad feeling between parents and
cons
Children are not naïve innocents, but canny
consumers who can distinguish very young
between advertisements and programmes, and
understand that advertisements can be
misleading. This essential learning process is
actually developed through exposure to
advertisements. It is also assisted by
responsible parenting that does not just dump
children down in front of the television, but
spends some time watching with them and
discussing what is seen.
Advertising has no magical power to create
unnatural desires for material possessions.
Children who nag are simply badly brought up.
Poor parenting and undisciplined children
cannot be solved by banning advertising, as
children have many influences upon them
which can stimulate their desires for toys, etc.,
children. They rely on pester power to make
adults spend money they don’t have on
things they don’t want to buy, and which
their children may well only play with for a
few hours. Advertising which presents
products to children as "must-have" is also
socially divisive, making children whose
parents cannot afford them appear inferior,
and creating feelings of frustration and
inadequacy, as well as leading families into
debt.
Advertising aimed at children brings
negative social consequences, as much of it
is for food and drinks that are very unhealthy.
Encouraging gullible children to consume so
much fatty, sugary and salty food is unethical
because it creates obese, unhealthy
youngsters, with bad eating habits that will
be with them for life. Society also has to pay
a high price in terms of the extra medical
care such children will eventually require, so
the government has a direct interest in
preventing advertisements which contribute
to this problem.
This measure stands alone but has a good
precedent in the restrictions placed in most
countries upon advertising tobacco and
alcohol. It also takes a stand against
increasingly exploitative marketing
campaigns that ruthlessly target children. In
the USA marketing companies are already
offering schools free televisions in exchange
for their students being forced to watch a
certain amount of programming and
advertisements each day, and selling
marketing data on those children. It is time
that childhood was protected from such
commercialisation.
Exploitative advertising brainwashes
children into becoming eager consumers and
capitalists. Multinational companies
deliberately encourage them to be
materialistic so that they associate happiness
with purchasing power and the possession of
particular goods. A study recently found that
children in Sweden, where marketing
campaigns to the under-12s are banned,
wanted significantly fewer toys than children
in Britain, where there are no restrictions.
particularly their friends. It is also untrue that
children have no spending power of their own;
many children under 12 receive pocket money
and teenagers are often able to earn a little
themselves. Learning to manage money is part
of growing up, and advertisements help them
to choose what they would like to save up for.
Children naturally like foods that are rich in
fats, proteins and sugar; they give them the
energy they need to play energetically and
grow healthily. It is true that eating only such
foods is bad for people, but this is again a
problem of bad parenting rather than the fault
of advertising. And of course, if advertising to
children were banned, then governments
would not be able to use this means of
promoting healthy eating, road safety,
hygiene, and other socially useful messages.
This measure sets a bad precedent which is
likely to result in ever more restrictions upon
the freedom of expression. Children watch
many programmes that adults also enjoy, and
some adults are also particularly suggestible;
should we then extend this ban to all television
advertising. And why stop at television when
children are also exposed to radio, cinema, the
internet and billboards in the street as well?
Perhaps companies should also be banned
from sponsoring entertainment and sporting
events for children, and prevented from
providing free branded resources for schools.
On the other hand, any restrictions will be
impossible to enforce as television is
increasingly broadcast by satellite across
national borders and cannot easily be
controlled - nor can the internet.
Banning advertisements is a severe
restriction upon freedom of speech. Companies
should be able to tell the public about any
legal products, or innovation will be restricted
and new companies will find it hard to market
their products successfully in the face of
established rivals. Children also have a human
right to receive information from a wide range
of sources and make up their own minds about
it. They are far from being brainwashed by
advertisements, which form only a small part

Broadcasting is increasingly diverse, with
state-funded, commercial and subscription
channels all available in most countries.
Restricting advertising a little will not make
much difference to revenues of commercial
broadcasters, and they can be regulated to
ensure that they continue to offer a good
standard of children’s programming.
Programme quality is likely to improve as
much children’s television these days involves
considerable product-placement and
advertising tie-ins, which result in poor
programmes and unimaginative formats.
of their experiences; family, friends, school
and other television programmes are much
more important and all give them alternative
views of the world.
Advertisements are the means by which most
television stations are funded. If advertising to
children is banned, then broadcasters will stop
showing children’s programmes, or greatly
reduce their quality and quantity, which is
clearly not in the public interest. State
broadcasters funded by a license fee, such as
the UK’s BBC, and specialist subscription
channels that are also not dependent upon
advertising revenue would both welcome
restrictions upon the ability of commercial
broadcasters to compete with them in
children’s programming. As competition is the
best means of improving choice, diversity and
quality, their lobbying on this issue should be
disregarded. Nor does advertising only benefit
commercial broadcasters, consumers also
benefit. Greece has banned advertising of
toys, and this has led to a more limited
selection of toys being sold in Greece.
Children’s magazines rely upon advertising to
be affordable - logically under this proposal
they should be prevented from doing so, and
so effectively shut down.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TARGET

MARKET AND NONTARGET
MARKET EFFECTS
Target marketing refers to the identification of a set of buyers
sharing common needs or characteristics that a company decides
to serve (Kotler, Armstrong,&Starr, 1991). It has arguably
been the driving force behind the success of many
well-known brands (e.g., Pepsi, Mercedes-Benz, Miller Lite)
and provides the basis of a predominant branding strategy, the
user positioning approach, in which the brand is closely associated
with a particular user or customer (e.g., Maybelline and
the girl next door). Underlying the use of target marketing is
the premise that those who are targeted, or spoken to, will
have strong affinity for the brand (Aaker, 1999).Anumber of
researchers have examined how various target markets (e.g.,
older consumers, women, African Americans) arrive at the
higher levels of affinity for the brand. For example, research
has shown that racial similarity (Whittler, 1989), role congruence
(Meyers-Levy, 1989), labeling (Tepper, 1994), intensity
of ethnic identification (Williams & Qualls, 1989), shared
cultural knowledge (Brumbaugh, 1997), and ethnic salience
(Deshpande & Stayman, 1994) all evoke positive effects
among the target market. This research has generally demonstrated
that the process by which target marketing operates is
driven by consumers’ inference of similarity between some
characteristics of the advertisement (e.g., source pictured,
language used, lifestyle represented) and characteristics of
the consumer (e.g., reality or desire of having the represented
lifestyle; Gronhaug&Rostvig, 1978). Thus, persuasion is enhanced
by a match between the characteristics in the advertisement
and those of the consumer, relative to when there is
no such match (Whittler, 1989; Whittler & DiMeo, 1991).
In contrast, negative nontarget market effects may occur
when the cues in an advertisement are incongruent with some
characteristic, need, belief, or value of the consumer. For example,
when an advertisement source has characteristics that
differ from those of the viewer (e.g., when the advertisement
features individuals from a group of which the viewer is not a
member), these favorable effects should not accrue. Rather,
viewers in the nontarget market may perceive dissimilarity
between themselves and the intended target in the advertisement
(as conveyed through source or nonsource targeting
cues). As a result, individuals may infer that their tastes and
preferences are different from that of the intended target and
thus fail to adopt the favorable attitude toward the advertisement.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals viewing
an advertisement that has not been designed to appeal to their
market segment are likely to view the advertisement as distracting
or irritating (Star, 1989), may feel ignored or neglected
(Greco, 1989), or even become alienated or offended
(Lipman, 1991). Thus, nontarget market effects are marked
not by a failure to achieve favorable target market effects, but
rather a decreased preference for an advertisement by people
who believe they are not the target of the advertisement.1

CHAPTER 6 :- ANALYZIMG CONSUMER

MARKETS
MARKETING DEBATE—Is Target Marketing Ever Bad?
As marketers increasingly develop marketing programs tailored to certain target market
segments, some critics have denounced these efforts as exploitative. For example, the
preponderance of billboards advertising cigarettes, alcohol, and other voices in low-
income
urban areas is seen as taking advantage of a vulnerable market segment. Critics can be
especially harsh in evaluation marketing programs that target African Americans and
other
minority groups, claiming that they often employ clichéd stereotypes and inappropriate
depictions. Others counter with the point of view that targeting and positioning is critical
to
marketing and that these marketing programs are an attempt to be relevant to a certain
consumer group.
Take a position: Targeting minorities is exploitative versus targeting minorities is a sound
business practice.
Suggested Responses:
Pro: When marketers use their advance knowledge of specific target markets, such as
minorities that preys upon the target market’s weaknesses and lack of information, then
marketing can be said to be exploiting the said target market for gains. Marketers should
always be aware that information is a powerful tool that has to be used responsibly and
prudently. Products and services that cater to minorities that cause adverse health effects
or
pejorative social action(s) because of their usage need to be marketed in a socially
responsible
way. Just because a marketer has information on the buying habits, social styles,
motivation,
perception, and purchase criteria specific to a target market does not automatically permit
the
marketer to use this information freely.
Con: Marketers do not create social systems nor does marketing create social ills.
Marketers
cannot assume the responsibility for lack of personal choice, lack of information or
knowledge,
and the lack of personal responsibility. It is the role of marketing to deliver to the target
market the goods and services they want and need. Marketing is “amoral” in its delivery
of
information to target markets and the target markets must decide for themselves the use
or
non-use of the products marketed. Using advanced research methods to uncover
motivation,
purchase intent, post-purchase usage, and the like is sound business practice and the
marketer
owes its stakeholders the responsibility to use this information that increases sales.