Organizations around the world use numerous strategies to ensure that they remain competitive and profitable in the face of increased competition. One of the main strategies that modern organizations use is intensive, segmented, and continuous digital marketing. In this case, companies are able to mine targets customers’ information, which they then use to come up with a client profile. These companies use cookies to track digital platform users so that they can identify the target customers demographics as well as preferences. As a result, the target customer gets advertisements that are likely to match their buying behaviors. While this strategy is an efficient marketing strategy, it creates an ethical dilemma as it is considered as an intrusion to personal privacy. The use of the Kidders Approach helps decision makers in finding the right balance regarding the justification and acceptability of their actions.
Description of an ethical issue
The mining of individuals’ digital platforms information for marketing purposes is a widespread trend, which is associated with ethical implications. The companies can get any kind of information including the sensitive and confidential ones including race and medical history. The companies then use this information to profile the individuals whom they automatically turn into potential customers (Lungu, 2017). The problem with marketing is the fact that the advertisements are not solicited for which then becomes an intrusion into one's digital space and time. The main ethical concern, in this case, is the fact that there is a probability of selling the mined information to third parties (Arli, 2017). As a result, only a few individuals will benefit from this information while disadvantaging the millions of individuals who must contend with the unsolicited and annoying adverts. Here one can establish that the digital information miners are not guided by the utilitarianism ethical theory to justify this practice.
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Problem Statement
Digital platforms users risk being exposed to scrupulous organizations that are only after profiting from the information without considering their impacts on the users. In the recent past, there has been a rise in the scandals emanating from illegal use of individuals digital information. The most popular of these scandals is the Cambridge Analytica where personal information of over 80 million Facebook users was harvested (Steimer, 2018). The data firm had hired an outsider researcher who claimed that the information would be used for academic purposes. The data firm not only collected personal information for consenting Facebook users but also their friends. Mark Zuckerberg established that Facebook had loose policies, which allowed for access to users information by third parties (Schneble, Elger, and Shaw, 2018). This form of data mining is considered as unethical since the collected information could have been misused. Following this unfortunate turn of events, Facebook ought to enhance its privacy policy to guard against third party companies that may infringe its client's sensitive information. Facebook accepted the fact that it has loose policies that would allow the third party to harvest user profiles through the contact information.
Problem Analysis Using Kidder’s Ethical Decision-making Framework
Consumer profiling is becoming an increasingly ethical issue owing to the high probability of selling the consumers information to third parties. In this case, an individual has no control over how their personal information will be used once they log into the digital platforms (Nasr, Nagaty and Senousy, 2014). For this reason, it is important to consider the Kidders approach to ethical decision to analyze the issue of consumer profiling. This ethical framework, which was developed by Rushworth Kidder, consists of nine steps approach to making decisions in ethical dilemmas.
Step 1 Recognize that there is a moral issue
In this step, it is important to determine whether consumer profiling is a moral issue or merely a social convention. In this case, it is clear that customer profiling is a moral issue as it does not allow for individuals consent or a say in how their information is to be used. The organizations simply use the information to advance their marketing needs without considering the implications of the unsolicited marketing messages.
Step 2 Determine the actor
The actors, in this case, are the digital platforms who share the users’ personal information with third party vendors for the purposes of getting monetary compensation. The users visit these sites with the hope of getting the best digital space information only to realize they have been profiled (Jansenns, Nijsten, and Van Goolen, 2014). An individual who commented on a digital platform that he or she prefers one product ends up getting tons of unsolicited adverts from other companies.
Step 3 Gather the relevant facts
This stage implies the importance of determining what happened, the timelines and who was responsible for the ethical dilemma. Researchers who misled Facebook users into thinking that the research was academic-oriented occasioned the issue of consumer profiling as in the case of Cambridge Analytica. However, the moment they participated in the quiz, the researchers mined their friends’ data something the users could not control owing to loose Facebook policies.
Step 4 Test for right-versus-wrong issues
The issue of consumer profiling can be considered a moral temptation considering the positive impact it may have on companies’ profitability and competitiveness. The need to collect clients’ personal information is not morally wrong as it happens in other spheres including healthcare and governance. However, consumer profiling becomes morally wrong when the information is used for other purposes that intrude to one's privacy.
Step 5: Test for right-versus-right paradigms
The consumer-profiling dilemma fits well within the short-term vs. long-term paradigm in that the organizations, which mine data, are only concerned with the present as opposed to the future. These organizations understand that they have to raise the volume of their sales now to be competitive (Sugiura, Wiles, and Pope, 2016). These organizations are not concerned with the long-term implications of misusing personal data such as legal and social outcomes
Step 6 Apply the resolution principles
The resolution principle that is mostly applicable in the consumer-profiling dilemma is rule-based or categorical imperative. This principle asserts that rules exist for promoting order and justice. The companies should use the consumers’ personal information only for the outlined purposes to create an orderly society. Individuals who feel that companies are using their personal information for other purposes may boycott products and digital platforms.
Step 7 Investigate the "trilemma" options
The concerned parties that are the digital platform users and organizations can come to an agreement. The agreement will be important, as they will help the organizations to come up with customer-made commercial adverts. On the other hand, the consumers will have more say in the kind of advertisements they want like in the current case where they get unsolicited and intrusive adverts. The compromise will eventually lead to a win-win situation, which is a more favorable outcome.
Step 8 Make the decision
This step is the most crucial step as it helps the decision maker to reflect on, revisit, decide, and act on the most applicable option. In the case of consumer profiling, the organizations must allow the digital platform users more say in how they use their information (Sundbury-Riley, and, Kohlbacher, 2016). Currently, the organizations have all the say and the users become mere recipients of whatever comes their way. There is a need to enforce strict regulations that allow users to sue companies that breach privacy policies.
Step 9 Revisit and reflect on the decision
This last step allows decision makers to revisit the decision they made and reflect on how well it is working to deal with the dilemma. This process allows the decision makers to determine whether the decision is sustainable and the lessons learned so far.
Impact of the Ethical Decision
The decision to have strict regulations that give consumers more say into whether they prefer to have advertisements or not has several impacts for individuals and organizations. Consumers will be assured that their personal information will not be sold to third parties, as it is these third parties that infringe on consumers digital privacy. Moreover, the decision to allow consumers to decide whether to have adverts or not will increase their confidence in the organizations (Mehta, 2018). Technically, the consumers will feel that they have more say about what the organizations can and cannot do with their personal and sensitive information. On the other hand, the organizations are likely to have lessened advertisement revenue as they rely on passive consumers to sell the information to third parties. Nonetheless, organizations that are careful about how they use their consumers’ personal information are more likely to have increased consumer loyalty (Kim, Barasz, and John, 2019). The increased consumer loyalty, in turn, translates to higher sales and fewer social and legal challenges.
Application of Utilitarian Theory to the Issue of Consumer Profiling
Consumer profiling falls well within the confines of utilitarianism as envisaged by John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. This theory establishes that an action is moral, right, and acceptable if it benefits the greatest number of people (Kim and Kim, 2017). The same cannot be said about consumer profiling by marketers. These marketers harvest personal information for millions of users for competitiveness and profits. In the heart of the organizations, marketing is the need to raise their revenues without caring it impacts on the overall population. Consumers who are keen on getting the best out of their digital space have to contend with tons of unsolicited adverts and recommendations. This scenario happens just because the few organizations are even willing to sell their clients personal information to third parties for extra revenue. In this case, consumer profiling does not fall within the utilitarianism theory, as it does not promote benefits to the greatest number of people but the few organizations.
References
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Jansenns, K., Nijsten, N., & Van Goolen, R. (2014). Spam and marketing communications. Procedia Economics and Finance , 12 ( 2014 ),265-272.
Kim J., Kim. C. (2017). Three perspectives about the ethical value in the advertising business. International Journal of Journalism & Mass Communication , 4(124), 1-6.
Kim, T., Barasz, K., & John, L. K. (2019). Why am I seeing this ad? The effect of ad transparency on ad effectiveness. Journal of Consumer Research , 45(5), 906–932.
Lungu N. (2017). The limits and ethics of consumer profiling. In: Thomas A., Pop N., Iorga A., & Ducu C. (Eds) Ethics and Neuromarketing ( pp 157-169). Berlin: Springer.
Mehta, N. (2018, March 7). Give Consumers The Ads They Want. Forbes. Retrieved on 27 June 2019 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/03/07/give-consumers-the-ads-they-want/#7526e1ec18ba
Nasr, R. M., Nagaty, S., & Senousy, M.B. (2014). Survey and challenges of mining customer data set to enhance customer relationship management. International Journal of Computer Applications, 107(13), 34-40.
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Sugiura, L., Wiles, R., & Pope. C. (2016). Ethical challenges in online research: Public/private perceptions . Research Ethics , 13(3-4), 184-199.
Steimer, S. (2018, January 5). The Murky Ethics of Data Gathering in a Post-Cambridge Analytica World. American Marketing Association. Retrieved on 27 June 2019, from https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/the-murky-ethics-of-data-gathering-in-a-post-cambridge-analytica-world/
Sundbury-Riley, L., & Kohlbacher, F. (2016). Ethically minded consumer behavior: Scale review, development, and validation. Journal of Business Research, 69(8), 2697-2710.
