Is Marketing Manipulation?
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Is Marketing Manipulation?
Marketers have the power to manipulate one into believing in things they didn’t believe in before, and to this end, it can be said that marketing is manipulative. Manipulation is a common practice in daily life, both in private, public, or commercial spaces; it has a unique prevalence in marketing. Professor Cass Sunstein (2016) of Harvard Law School believes that marketing is a form of manipulation or at least has some forms of manipulation. He defines manipulation as something that fails to appeal to someone’s cognitive ability for reflective and deliberative choice. Since marketing involves persuasion that can sometimes be intense, then it can pass for manipulation.
However, Wertenbroch, (2016). a marketing scholar thinks that marketing is not manipulation, and academics and practitioners of marketing should be proactive in changing this assumption. He argues that manipulation from a psychology perspective involves the use of deceptive and abusive tactics to influence behavior. This is a departure from marketing since the use of deceptive and abusive tactics in marketing is considered illegal and unethical.
Reference
Sunstein, C. R. (2016). Manipulation, Welfare, and Dignity: A Reply. Journal of Marketing Behavior, 1(3-4), 351-361.
Wertenbroch, K. (2016). From the editor: Manipulation and marketing: the elephant in the room. Journal of Marketing Behavior, 1(3-4), 209-212.