Consumerism and Non-Rational Persuasion in Marketing and Advertising: A Perspective from Business Ethics

Abstract

Business is an economic activity of making, buying, selling or supplying goods or services. Marketing and Advertising are the two important business practices that enable the contact between the seller and the buyer for a market transaction of goods and services. Both parties in the transaction of goods and services prefer to give up something of value in return for something that they value more. However, in the competitive business world, the marketers do at times overstep the ethical boundaries to achieve the market transaction. In view of this, I have made an ethical assessment of some issues in marketing and advertising pertaining to the need for free and fair market transaction that gets disrupted because of manipulative and deceptive practices in general and non-rational persuasion of children through television advertisements in particular