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Ethical Decision-Making by Consumers: The Roles of Product Harm and Consumer Vulnerability

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Abstract

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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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Research Enhancement Grant awarded by the College of Business, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. The authors share equally in the authorship of this paper.

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  1. Department of Marketing, Meinders School of Business, Oklahoma City University, 2501 N. Blackwelder, Oklahoma City, OK, 73106, USA

    Jeri Lynn Jones

  2. Department of Management and Marketing, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Drive, 78412, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

    Karen L. Middleton

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Correspondence to Jeri Lynn Jones.

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Jones, J.L., Middleton, K.L. Ethical Decision-Making by Consumers: The Roles of Product Harm and Consumer Vulnerability. J Bus Ethics 70, 247–264 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9109-2

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