7.5 Ethics and online marketing communications
Owing to the borderless nature of the internet, online marketing communications pose an increasing number of ethical issues that can be difficult to control. These include:
- intrusiveness, e.g. spam (unsolicited emails compiled from lists of addresses without recipients’ consent), banner or ‘pop up’ advertisements
- deceptive or disguised marketing, such as commercial websites posing as information sites about, for example, healthcare
- manipulation of online forums, e.g. anonymous messages praising a company’s own products posted on internet opinion forums
- violations of privacy
- cookies which enable marketers to track consumers’ use of internet sites with users’ consent (except strictly necessary cookies)
- requests for personal information, e.g. the collection of personal information from children is of particular concern.
- marketing of dangerous or offensive products or material
- children’s access to inappropriate material.
The placement of online advertisements by third parties can raise ethical issues. The cola manufacturer Pepsi discovered this when one of its adverts was placed on the internet site streetfightvidz.com. Pepsi’s advert, encouraging viewers to ‘Win £1000 with your video clips and show us how much you love Pepsi’, appeared alongside video footage of a violent street fight between two boys that showed one of them collapse covered in blood (Gourlay, 2007). Pepsi had paid a third party to place its advertisements online and had not known its advertisement had been placed on this site.
In Activity 8, you will explore the consequences of misusing customer data and sending unsolicited text messages to customers without acquiring their consent.
Activity 8 Ethical issues: privacy invasion
Read the article ‘Just Hype fined for sending 1.7m ‘nuisance’ texts’. It explains how the fashion retailer, Just Hype, was fined after sending customers unwanted texts. Once you have finished reading, answer the questions below.
- Article: Just Hype fined for sending 1.7m ‘nuisance’ texts [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
- i.Why is it wrong to send customers unwanted direct marketing texts?
Discussion
Here the key ethical issue is the fact that these messages are sent to customers without their consent. On Just Hype’s website page, there was a box designed to collect customer’s telephone numbers. Although the website mentioned that customers would only be contacted about their order, that was not the case, and about 1.7 million text messages were sent to customers, with more than 100,000 texts offering a free face mask in exchange for installing their application.
Just Hype, like many other legitimate companies, offer their customers the ability to opt-out from receiving calls, emails, text messages etc. However, this procedure, and the information about marketing messages they send through texts, could be made clearer on their website. If the customers are not able to proceed with their purchase without entering a phone number, then that is likely to create some problems. Organisations should always obtain permission from their customers to send them direct marketing texts.
- ii.Do you think the fine is proportionate, and why?
Discussion
You might think that £60,000 is potentially less than Just Hype spent on sending the 1.7 million text messages and, quite possibly, less than what they earned. Perhaps larger penalties would be a more effective deterrent for companies sending unsolicited messages.
Other people might say that sending texts or emails is not so different from sending junk mail through the post. Junk mail tends to go straight into the recycle bin without being read. From this perspective, you might think there is nothing wrong with getting a free mask from Just Hype for downloading their app, especially as Hype is involved in some great charity endeavours that result in the profit being donated to the NHS. However, the rule says that when a customer has opted out of receiving marketing messages, it is illegal to send messages to them without their consent.