Page 183 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ethical Issues of Social Marketing

and Persuasion

Minette E. Drumwright and Patrick E. Murphy

Most social marketers start from the assumption that they are doing good.
After all, various definitions of social marketing specify that it focuses on
creating a “social benefit” (Rangan & Karim, 1991, p. 3) by improving the
“personal welfare” of the target audiences and “the welfare of the society of
which they are a part” (Andreasen, 1994, p. 110). What could be unethical
about persuading people to do good? Perhaps it is the very assumption
that social marketing is, by definition, good—at least in the eyes of the
social marketer—that helps explain why the topic of ethics in social mar-
keting has often been given short shrift. Other than a few articles (prima-
rily in the 1980s), ethical issues in social marketing have received little
attention from academics.
This chapter argues that social marketing can raise a host of compli-
cated ethical issues, and that ethical sensitivity is as important, if not more
important, in social marketing as in commercial marketing for a variety of
reasons. Indeed, scholars have argued that more harm is likely to result
from unethical social marketing (e.g., detrimental effects on public health)
than from unethical commercial marketing (e.g., puffery in advertising
consumer products; Murphy & Bloom, 1990). Whenever one engages in
judgments about what is in others’ best interests, significant ethical issues
are likely to arise. To begin with, how does one make such a judgment,
especially in situations when there is little public consensus about what is
good? If the social marketer is wrong about what is good, significant harm