Target Marketing: Ethical Implications Of Target Marketing

Ethical Implications of Target Marketing What is target marketing? To understand ethical implications of target marketing, an understanding of target marketing must first be defined. Target marketing is nothing more than designing marketing advertisement around the intended customer of the product (Melvin, 2011). When a new product is developed, research must be performed to determine the customer, by evaluating the potential individuals that would be the likely users of the product. Many corporations develop products that are intended for different groups. These groups can be segmented by they age, geographic, demographic, race, religion, gender, and many more different groupings (Melvin, 2011). The manufacturer markets their products directly towards the intended customer. Ethics or the lack of ethics is brought into the corporations marketing process when the marketing is too aggressive towards that group of individuals.

Children

Children are typically being targeted for advertisements, especially food chains that use to promote their

These marketing campaigns that targets overweight people into thinking they can lose 10 pounds in a week. Can it be done? Yes and no would be the answer. A person can lose 10 pounds in water weight in a week (MacDonald, 2009). Unfortunately, the water weight will not stay off permanently. To lose actual fat weight a person must take in less calorie consumption. An average person would have to reduce their intake below that of an average individual to burn the fat that they have stored away with an average of 9 calories per each gram of fat (MacDonald, 2009). Just to lose a pound of fat, they would need to eliminate 3600 calories (MacDonald, 2009). A person, at their normal weight to be able to maintain that weight must limit their intake to 1800 calories a day (MacDonald, 2009). For someone to lose a pound, that would mean fasting for two