Deceptive marketing: how to fight it.

Hi readers,

Today I want to talk about a concrete project in the field of marketing ethics, run by the University of Pavia: if you are interested, just have a look at Protect Yourself From Deceptive Marketing Practices.

Universitiamo - logo of the campaigns run by the University of Pavia

This project aims at protecting consumers from irresponsible marketing techniques, especially from those targeting children. Kids are often manipulated by marketing campaigns, consequently inducing parents to buy what advertising tells them to. The project is focused on food & beverages field, since it is one of the main areas in which children are targeted, and one of the most dangerous ones, too. In fact, marketing can promote wrong eating habits and products that are detrimental for children’s health: consumers should be educated, in order to bypass the kind of marketing which promotes these products.

The project is based on:

• a detailed analysis of customers’ eating habits and their exposure to marketing practices
• study of virtuous and vicious marketing cases
• in-depth interviews with experts in the field of irresponsible marketing
• focus groups with parents (shoppers) to identify their problems and needs

Of course, this project needs funds to be enacted, and in a period of economic crisis people may think that spending money on such a project would be useless.

That is wrong: learning how to avoid evil marketing is learning how to spend your money in a better way. Keeping away from treacherous marketing campaigns is crucial, because it prevents you from being exploited by irresponsible marketers, who leverage on your children to reach you and make you one of their consumers. At the same time, choosing virtuous companies induce even irresponsible ones to change their strategy and converge on a more ethical marketing.  

Nowadays, customers do have the power: if your shopping habits are ethical, firms will get more and more ethical as well. 

Carlotta Neuenschwander