Is Target Marketing Ethical?

Marketing to exact groups of consumers, or target marketing, is one of the most leading concepts in marketing.

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

Target

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

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

Is it fair to direct ads at children when they do not have the comprehension 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 associates be allowed to design products that are specifically targeted at ethnic groups?

My respond to each of these questions, except the first one, would assuredly be, Yes.

Why should a company be restricted from marketing a stock to an independent, rationally thinking, adult?

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

Now, if there are issues of reasoning 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 facts that will help the consumer determine that my stock is what they want?

Is targeting of minorities exploitative? Yes, it authentically is. But, so is roughly every other kind of marketing. You are trying to exploit a need, a want and assuredly 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 opening existed for associates to address a market, with valuable buying power, that had not been addressed before. Is that inherently wrong? That is the way marketing works: Find a gap, design a plan to address the gap, and then market to that gap. That is sound company practice. If associates do not take benefit of their opportunities they will fail.

Now, none of what I have said above gives associates a free license to do anyone 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 development 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 authentically not capable of development that decision. However, as an adult parent, I must assume some of the accountability 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 exact market segments have a accountability to reconsider 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 group in general.

Is Target Marketing Ethical?