Consumer autonomy in business ethics

Business Ethics Chapter 8 MCQs

The correct answer for each question is indicated by a .
1 Identify the statement that provides a reason why manipulation of consumers is not relevant to marketing ethics:

A) Knowing consumers' psychological profiles through marketing research, their motivations, interests, desires, beliefs, anxieties and fears facilitates manipulation of their behavior.

B) Some marketing practices target populations that are particularly susceptible to manipulation and deception.

C) One need not necessarily deceive a person in order to manipulate him or her.

D) Manipulation doesn't necessarily entail total control over a person; it may simply be a process of subtle direction or management.

E) All of the above.

F) None of the above.

2 Select the practice that is not a form of consumer manipulation:

A) Cigarette advertising aimed at children.

B) Ads aimed at elderly population for such goods as medicare supplementary insurance, casinos and gambling, nursing homes, and funeral services.

C) Researching the criteria that a typical buyer uses to select a particular make and model of automobile.

D) Selling an extended automobile warranty or theft protection products to a customer who is anxious about the whole process of buying an automobile.

3 What statement suggests that the Johnson and Johnson Tylenol ad stating that "last year hospitals dispensed 1times as much Tylenol as the next four brands combined" was suspiciously deceptive?

A) It was a simple statement of a valid claim about the product.

B) It was an effort to call attention to the practice of selling the drug to hospitals at a deep discount.

C) Johnson and Johnson wanted consumers to think that the medical profession and hospitals believed it was the most effective acetaminophen treatment on the market.

D) Johnson and Johnson wanted to show its commitment to lowering medical costs to consumers.

4 Identify the statement that would not support the idea that determining precise standards for what constitutes deception and how best to regulate it is problematical:

A) The primary ethical wrong is in the intent to deceive, to intend to use someone's buying behavior for one's own ends. To prevent this wrong from occurring, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would have to punish on the basis of what it thinks a marketing practice will do to consumers rather that what it actually does to them.

B) It is enough to prevent beforehand harms that deceptive practices might do rather than regulate them after the harms have been done.

C) Regulation might be too strong because it may well turn out that consumers are deceived by relatively trivial marketing practices.

D) Regulation might be too weak if it places the burden on consumers to prove the deception.

5 Select the statement that correctly describes the dependence effect derived from John Kenneth Galbraith's ideas on consumer affluence:

A) Consumers depend on the free market to learn about the products they may need and want.

B) Supply follows and depends on demand; consumers are only getting what they want.

C) Consumer demand depends on what producers have to sell. Demand is a function of supply. Advertising creates wants.

D) Owners of productive capital depend on giving consumers what they want; otherwise they would lose their investment.

6 If consumers are being manipulated by advertising, what are some key ethical implications?

A) Individual autonomy, the central element of Kantian respect for persons, would be violated by the creation of wants.

B) If consumers pursue trivial and contrived products, market exchanges only appear to increase overall satisfaction.

C) Consumer autonomy is violated by advertising's ability to create nonautonomus desires.

D) The economy of the affluent society is contrived and distorted.

E) All of the above.

F) None of the above.

7 Identify the statement that does not challenge Robert Arrington's argument that because marketing doesn't prevent us from renouncing our pre-existing and independent choices, our desires for them must be considered autonomous:

A) Gerald Dworkin's point that if an individual does not or cannot rationally reflect on a first-order desire (one he or she just happens to have at any time), then the fact that he or she doesn't renounce it does not prove conclusively that it is an autonomous desire.

B) Dworkin's further claim that autonomy is a second-order capacity of persons to reflect critically on first order preferences and the capacity to accept or change them in the light of higher order preferences and values.

C) Roger Crisp's claim that we need to know why a first-order desire is accepted, and if not renounced, if it is indeed independent from, say, advertising.

D) Even if some consumer choices are not autonomous, nothing in Dworkin's or Crisp's analysis shows that advertising is responsible for violating autonomy, only that some consumers do not act in a fully self-conscious way.

8 Select the statements reflecting the general sense of vulnerability that is relevant to target marketing:

A) A person is vulnerable as a consumer because he or she is unable in some way to participate as a fully informed and voluntary participant in the market exchange.

B) A person is vulnerable because he or she is the typical customer for a particular product.

C) A person is vulnerable because he or she is susceptible to some physical, psychological or financial harm other than the financial harm from an unsatisfactory market exchange.

D) A person may be seen as vulnerable because he or she belongs to some ethnic group, or is poor, or is a resident of a particular neighborhood.

E) Answers A and B are correct.

F) Answers A and C are correct.

9 Which of the following examples are ways in which persons are vulnerable as consumers because they are vulnerable in some more general sense?

A) Elderly persons vulnerable to injuries and illnesses might be compelled to make consumer choices based on fear or guilt.

B) A grieving family member might make choices for funeral services based on guilt or sorrow.

C) An inner-city resident who is poor, uneducated, and chronically unemployed is unlikely to weigh the consequences of using drugs or alcohol.

D) A person afflicted with a medical condition or disease might feel fear associated with the condition that can lead to uninformed consumer choices.

E) All of the above.

F) None of the above.

10 Select the statements that challenge the idea that marketers cannot be held liable for decisions that any individual makes:

A) Marketing addresses populations, not, as sales do, individuals, so no direct causal connection can be demonstrated between a marketing campaign and an individual's choices to buy a product.

B) If marketing is ineffective in influencing consumer choice, the marketers selling their services to businesses are committing fraud.

C) Any individual may choose not to buy a marketed product.

D) If marketing is effective and does influence consumer choices, it cannot disavow responsibility for the consequences of those choices.

E) Answers B and C are correct.

F) Answers B and D are correct.