Companies employ advertisements and marketing to improve attention and target their customers to allow for sales of their products effectively. It is the responsibility of each company to uphold ethics when reaching their customers. It is sad that not all of the companies stand by ethical measures to reach their clients. Manipulation and deception is used majorly by these companies to achieve their sales goals. In their desperate attempts to gain customers, some of the companies use unsuitable ways to gain attention(Duhigg, 2012). Ethical target marketing comes up when companies analyze and research consumers to find ways in which individuals can buy their products. However other companies use unethical target marketing. This article discusses ethical target marketing.
According to the article by Charles Duhigg (2012), he cited an example of an angry father who went into a store which sells baby clothing with a coupon that had been sent to her daughter and demanded to speak to the manager. The father was angered that her teenage daughter being in high school was sent coupons for baby clothes (Sravani, 2015). The father of the girl cited that the company was encouraging her to get pregnant. Days later the manager called the father to apologise and it turned out that the girl was indeed pregnant and had not told his father. From this article, the target did not break any privacy. It used internal client information. However, learning something private legally from clients does not mean it is ethically appropriate. Considering public reaction if they find out is important. If such information reaches the public it is inappropriate to shut it down using tactics instead company spokesperson should tell the truth and take a defensive stand and apologize. To avoid running into related problem it is always important to think about all the ethical implications.
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There are ethical implications that can be associated with the case. As it has been shown, when dealing with online conversations, and big data, there comes a question so the integrity of the customers. Customers are required to have their privacy assured. Users should not have their information being able to be used to identify them. When dealing with Big Data analytics, there come four questions that should be asked. One is how employees view offline and online data. Whether they are viewed the same or different. Another question is the entity who is supposed to control the access to data within an organization. The third questions are about the person who owns the data. The data ownership framework needs to be explored so that the ability to transfer ownership should also be known. Also, there is a need to understand that reputation is important in Big Data because every interaction of employees and data will affect the reputation of the company.
In conclusion it is important to accurately predict customer behavior in marketing. Parental guidance is recommended in purchasing decisions for minors.
Work cited
Duhigg, C. (2012). How Companies Learn Your Secrets . Nytimes.com . Retrieved 28 March 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html
Sravani,. (2015). How Companies Learn your Secrets: Must Read List - WiseStep . WiseStep . Retrieved 28 March 2017, from http://content.wisestep.com/companies-learn-secrets-must-read-list/
