Question Hypothesis: Marketing works by making people dissatisfied with their life, then offering them a product that will relieve their dissatisfaction (for a price). If this is true, then it would seem that marketing always reduces a consumer's quality of life, because it leaves them either dissatisfied or paying for a product they wouldn't have needed if it weren't for the marketing. Hence, marketing harms consumers. How then, can marketing ever be ethical?

Accepted:
January 21, 2011

Comments

There are surely cases like the one you describe. But far more frequently, I would think, marketing gets people to switch to a product that costs about the same and is about equally good. In those cases, marketing still imposes a net loss on consumers because its cost gets factored into the price: the consumers of washing powers, cereals, and cars pay for the ads. But the individual firm can often not avoid advertising because it'll then lose market share and will eventually go out of business. In such a context firms can probably not be expected to desist unilaterally, but they can be asked perhaps to reduce their advertising when their competitors are willing to do likewise (insofar as this is consistent with anti-trust/competition laws).

There are also clear counter-examples to your hypothesis: marketing for really new or much improved products. Here the consumer is already dissatisfied (for example, with his sexual functioning) and the consumption of the new product, though it sets him back financially, relieves this dissatisfaction. Or a consumer is not as satisfied as she might be and later is very grateful that she learned of the opportunity to pass the Christmas break in sunny Mexico, spending no more than she would have spent at her usual winter destination.

On the whole, I agree with you that marketing is not worth the large amounts we as a society spend on it. But one needs a little more than your simple argument to reach this conclusion, and the conclusion does not easily lead to the further judgment that those who pay for the marketing of their products or those who work in the advertising industry are always acting unethically.