Marketing and the Vulnerable

George G. Brenkert

Business Ethics Quarterly, 1998, vol. 8, issue S1, 7-20

Abstract: Contemporary marketing is commonly characterized by the marketing concept which enjoins marketers to determine the wants and needs of customers and then to try to satisfy them. This view is standardly developed, not surprisingly, in terms of normal or ordinary consumers. Much less frequently is attention given to the vulnerable customers whom marketers also (and increasingly) target. Though marketing to normal consumers raises many moral questions, marketing to the vulnerable also raises many moral questions which are deserving of greater attention.This paper has three objectives. First, it explores the notion of vulnerability which a target audience might (or might not) have. I argue that we must distinguish those who are specially vulnerable from normal individuals, as well as the susceptible and the disadvantaged - two other groups often distinguished in marketing literature. Second, I contend that marketing to the specially vulnerable requires that marketing campaigns be designed to ensure that these individuals are not treated unfairly, and thus possibly harmed. Third, I maintain that marketing programs which violate this preceding injunction are unethical or unscrupulous whether or not those targeted are harmed in some further manner. Accordingly, social control over marketing to the vulnerable cannot simply look to consumer injury as the measure of unfair treatment of the vulnerable.

Date: 1998
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