The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty - Pearson

Chapter 2 Sustainable marketing: marketing ethics and social responsibilitypricing, promotion and packaging. Deceptive pricing includes inflationary price comparisons where‘factory’ or ‘wholesale’ prices are falsely advertising a large price reduction from a falsely high retaillist price. Deceptive promotion includes practices such as misrepresenting the product’s features orperformance, or ‘bait and switch’ where customers are lured to the store for a bargain that is out ofstock, then sold a higher-priced item. Deceptive packaging includes exaggerating package contentsthrough subtle design, not filling the package to the top, using misleading labelling or describingsize in misleading terms. To be sure, questionable marketing practices do occur, as in the followingexample.DFS sell well-designed sofas and armchairs at competitive prices. It has long been seen asone of the UK’s most reliable financial performers in the retail sector, the retail sector’slargest spender on advertising and the country’s largest furniture retailer. Its advertising isbland, consistent and discount oriented. In spring 2007 DFS promoted ‘50% off the Eclipsecollection’; ‘designer sofas half price’; ‘Bex, previous price £1698, half price £798; Opus, previousprice £1155, half price £498’. Of course, not all the products on sale are half price, but there willbe an equally generous-looking offer advertised all year round. As well as being well stockedwith sofas, the warehouse-sized stores have enthusiastic salespeople who eagerly pounce oncustomers entering the store and are usually able to offer enticing financial deals to help thembuy their living room suite. It is all legal but . . . . 3Deceptive practices have led to legislation and other consumer-protection actions, as in thefollowing example.European Council Directive 93/35/EEC paves the way for far-reaching changes to cosmeticslaws. The legislation controls the constituents of cosmetic products and accompanyinginstructions and warnings about use. It also specifies requirements for marketing of cosmeticproducts, including product claims, labelling, information on packaging and details about theproduct’s intended function. Where a product claims to remove ‘unsightly cellulite’ or make theuser look ‘20 years younger’, proofs must be documented and made available to the enforcementauthorities. These laws also require clear details specifying where animal testing occurred on boththe finished product and its ingredients. In recognition of the increased public resistance to animaltesting, a limited EU ban on animal testing for cosmetic ingredients has been in force since 1998.Despite regulations, some critics argue that deceptive claims are still the norm. The toughestproblem is defining what is ‘deceptive’. For instance, an advertiser’s claim that its powerfullaundry detergent ‘makes your washing machine ten feet tall’, showing a surprised home-makerwatching her appliance burst through her laundry room ceiling, isn’t intended to be takenliterally. Instead, the advertiser might claim, it is ‘puffery’ – innocent exaggeration for effect.One noted marketing thinker, Theodore Levitt, claims that some advertising puffery is boundto occur – and that it may even be desirable:There is hardly a company that would not go down in ruin if it refused to provide fluff,because nobody will buy pure functionality ....Worse,it denies ...people’s honestneeds and values. Without distortion, embellishment and elaboration, life would bedrab, dull, anguished and at its existential worst. 469