Business Ethics #6 Flashcards
1
Q
Advertising
A
a particular form communication between a seller and potential buyers that is distinguished from other forms of communication because (1) it is addressed to a mass audience rather than to an individual party, and (2) its intent is to persuade this mass audience to purchase the seller’s product(s) or service(s).
2
Q
Benefits of Advertising
A
- Informs consumers of new products or services, as well as product/service improvements
- Helps consumers make informed, prudent choices about products they might purchase
- Stimulates economic growth (selling more product creates jobs)
- Political advertising
• Informs people about the ideas and policy proposals of parties and candidates
• Informs people of new candidates, not previously known to the public
3
Q
Catholic Church’s Concern with Advertising
A
- Advertising impacts how people understand themselves, the world, their values, their ways of choosing, and their ways of believing.
- Advertising does not simply reflect society’s attitudes and values (contrary to the claims of the advertising and entertainment industries). Advertising actually shapes society through the attitudes and values it selectively promotes.
- Advertising can present a distorted image of reality.
4
Q
As advertising’s basic purpose is to inform and persuade
A
“The information provided by the media is at the service of the common good. Society has the right to information based on truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity
5
Q
Deception
A
- Deception exists when (1) an advertiser creates or takes advantage of a false belief about a product, and (2) this false belief substantially interferes with a potential customer’s ability to make rational choice about purchasing the product.
- Misrepresentation and withholding facts betrays the advertiser’s role as a reliable and trustworthy source of information.
- Exaggeration in advertising: Metaphor and symbolic exaggeration in advertising is acceptable as long as (1) the audience can clearly understand that it is exaggeration, and (2) it falls within the limits of recognized and accepted practice.
6
Q
Market Power
A
- Large producers have the financial power to use advertising to introduce their products and to maintain customer loyalty to them. Thus, through advertising the producer gains and maintains market share.
- Other, “smaller” producers do not have the ability to advertise on the same scale and thus have difficulty influencing consumers to try their products.
- As a result, advertising raises barriers against new products being introduced into the market which, in turn, reduces competition.
7
Q
Targeting Children
A
- Children are particularly susceptible to advertisers because they cannot easily distinguish a claim that is truthful from one that is not.
- Children are highly impressionable, they do not have the capacity to critically evaluate the advertisements they see and hear.
- Advertisements aimed at children are inappropriate because …
• They create desires in children that the children do not understand
• They manipulate children into pressuring their parents into purchasing specific products.
• They take advantage of children and treat (exploit) them as a means to the advertiser’s own end, not as ends in themselves
• They intrude upon the parent-child relationship and manipulate this relationship to the producer’s own end.
8
Q
Psychological Effects
A
- Advertising promotes the “phenomenon of consumerism” because it reinforces materialistic values which, in turn, inform people that true happiness is found in material goods.
• “It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards “having” rather than “being,” and which wants to have more … in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself” (John Paul II, On the Hundredth Anniversary, #36)
• “Advertising that reduces human progress to acquiring material goods and cultivating a lavish lifestyle expresses a false, destructive vision of the human person harmful to individuals and society alike” (Ethics in Advertising, #17). - Advertising affects people’s perceptions about themselves. It affects their self-image, self-esteem, and self-confidence.
9
Q
Dependence Effect: Creating Consumer Desires
A
- Physical desires: food, clothing, shelter, etc. These desires are relatively immune to advertising
- Psychic desires: a sense of personal accomplishment, social acceptability and/or equality with others; also subjective feelings of heath and self-beauty, etc. These desires are the focus of advertising.
10
Q
Advertising focuses on psychic desires
A
- Through advertising, producers manipulate people’s “pliable psychic desires” to create demand for products or services that will satisfy these desires.
• “Production is not molded to serve human desires; rather, human desires are molded to serve the needs of production.” - The desires created are often irrational or trivial, and cause people act upon cravings for products that they do not need.
• “Brand-related” advertising seeks to persuade people to purchase specific products based on irrational motives such as brand-loyalty, status, or fashion; not on rational motives such as differences in product quality or price.
11
Q
Human Dignity
A
- Advertising violates human dignity when it deliberately appeals to envy, greed, vanity (status-seeking), and lust. These techniques treat human persons as objects for exploitation and manipulate human weakness. Advertisements can become “vehicles of a deformed outlook on life.”
- Advertising also violates human dignity when it seeks to shock or titillate by exploiting morbid, perverse, or pornographic content. Violence and pornography are easily accessible today, even to children (#13)
- Advertising is used to promote products that are contrary to the Church’s moral norms.
12
Q
Cultural: Advertising in developing world
A
- Fosters anti-American sentiment when Western “values” are imposed on traditional cultures
- Exacerbates socio-economic problems and is detrimental to the poor
• People “seek progress” by satisfying wants that are artificially created by advertisers. Owning Western goods means status in the community, and these goods are a sign to others that one is not materially poor.
• Individuals and entire nations use (waste) resources on “artificial” needs, and neglect genuine development
13
Q
Audience
A
“The audience raises what is perhaps the most troubling problem in advertising ethics: To what extent do consumers possess the capacity to filter out the puffery and bias most advertising messages carry?”
14
Q
Ethical and Moral Norms
A
Fundamental Moral Principle: Everyone engaged in advertising – including publishers, broadcast executives, and “pitchmen” – are morally responsible for what they seek to persuade people to do.
- Truthfulness: Advertising may not deliberately deceive through what it implies, what it says, or what it fails to say.
- Human Dignity: Advertising must respect the human person and his/her right to make free, responsible choices about the products they purchase. Dignity is violated when “lower inclinations” are exploited, or when people’s capacity to reflect and decide about their purchasing decisions is compromised.
- Social Responsibility: Advertisers have a moral duty to express and foster an authentic vision of human development in its material, cultural and spiritual dimensions.
15
Q
Whistle Blowing Definition
A
Informing on another, or making public disclosure of corruption or wrongdoing
