These questions should be used to help you understand the reading
assignments prior to class, indicating the planned directions for
class discussion. The readings or class might not provide direct and
concrete "answers" to some of these items simply because many of
these questions do not have a single concrete answer. However, they
are not intended to give a study guide for exams.
The Prime Direction (from the syllabus):
All in-class discussions, test answers and homework assignments must
be approached from perspective of business decision makers who are
people working in organizations, people who are presumed to not be dishonest, bigoted, lazy or dumb. There are a few topics of business
criticisms and marketing practice that keep coming up during the
term. The discussion areas addressed would deal with questions such
as these: Sustainability and Environment
Protection {return
to syllabus}
What is the reason FTC's is concerned with "green" marketing?
Applying the Prime Direction, why do business professionals
fail to seek opportunities of climate change?
What is the key marketing question for sustainability?
How might certain "loopholes" be filled in the pharmaceutical
industry regarding the prescribing of a drug that is designed to
treat one illness to treat something else?
When pharmaceutical sales representatives visit doctors, they
used to leave behind various advertising specialties,
promotional products such as pens, note pads or coffee mugs with
the brand name written on it. Why do critics of pharmaceutical
sales want the products banned?
Only the U.S. and New Zealand currently allow marketing of
prescription drugs directly to consumers. Does it encourage
doctors to prescribe drugs that might not be needed or does it
make for more informed consumers?
Is there another way for pharmaceutical sales companies to
market their drugs to doctors other than advertising and
personal selling?
Are the problems associated with supplement sales solved by
the labeling only having to read: "Not to be taken to treat or
cure any disease only as a supplement to your daily diet"?
For products such as cigarettes, alcohol or other items
considered "unhealthy," there is the conflict of a legal product
that won't be banned, so critics attack the marketing, while
there are free speech rights for honest advertising. So is there
a solution for companies or government?
The advertising landscape is awash in advertising for weight
loss products by both positive honest firms as well as companies
that prey on gullible consumers, so what can those honest firms
or government hope to do about it?
What might be some future implications of the supplement
industry not being regulated by the FDA?
Who should be responsible for controlling advertising for
alcohol companies? How should they control such as advertising?
Whose responsibility is it to monitor children from watching TV
and seeing these commercials?
Are financial services today intentionally aiming to make it
impossible for their customers to know what they are buying?
Are credit card companies responsible for protecting college
students from the dangers of credit?
Is it socially irresponsible to issue credit cards to college
students when you know both that current college students will
have greater incomes in the future and that college students
will use the cards irresponsibly?
I. What Interests Consumers and the Consumers' Interests
Topic 1. History of
Consumers in the Marketplace {return
to syllabus}
In each "wave" of consumer activism, the focus of
"protection" was different, as to what drove the movements. What
was being protected in the early 1900s? during the 1930s?
What is the difference between protecting the customer and
protecting competition? Or to put it another way, how is
protecting competition consumer protection?
Why would marketing people want there to be some regulation
of corporate truth and marketing honesty?
Why did government entities such as the FDA or the FTC come
about and why were they supported by the businesses they were
going to regulate?
What were the books by Kallet & Schlink? Chase &
Schlink? Upton Sinclair?
Consider the soft drink or breakfast cereal industries: are
these businesses really "competitive" in the 1900 sense?
What is the basic focus of the modern marketing perspective
and what does it mean when it is "misplaced"?
How is environment protection a consumer issue?
Who was Rachel Carson? Ralph Nader? (Yes, I know Nader
is still alive, but our interest is on who he was from
1964-1980, not the perpetual presidential candidate you've seen
in the 21st century.)
What are SLAPP suits and how do they show problems of unequal
marketplace power between companies and people?
Long before she ran for Senate, Elizabeth Warren made a
proposal for financial services regulation similar to that
proposed by Chase & Schlink for consumer goods (in topic 1).
How are they the same?
How do power relationships between consumers and American
businesses affect the flow of information to consumers?
What are some intrinsic limitations for market forces, and
marketing decisions, to make certain that companies best serve
consumer interests?
Are the downloads and supportive consumer responses for Dave
Carroll's protest song against United Airlines evidence of the
power of consumers with today's social media, or does it merely
highlight a problem?
Why (and how) do companies that are dominant in a product
category lose their marketing focus?
The "St. Phineas" article suggests that it would be better for
a car dealer to focus on honest selling? From the perspective of
the dealership, is this necessarily true?
Marketing stands out as the business practice most readily
criticized for taking advantage of consumers, while public
activists or government agencies often turn to marketing
restrictions as the solutions to all sorts of modern problems.
Why does marketing always get blamed? How does the basis for a
marketing orientation (the theory behind it, not the
perspective itself) help explain that the critics don't
understand what marketing can or can't accomplish?
What are the three reasons that marketing professionals can't
claim that the marketing perspective of "satisfying consumer
needs" means that marketing practice itself should considered
ethical and moral?
What does it mean when that a regulatory agency is "captured"
by the regulated business and how does this relate to the times
a business group lobby for industry wide regulations? What does
the business stand to gain from increased regulation?
First proposed by Elizabeth Warren in 2008, how is the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau an example of 1930s style
consumer protection applied to a modern problem?
What forces work against companies taking a societal
marketing orientation instead of one that is focused on
individual consumers?
To a person outside a business context, such a government
regulator or a consumer protection activist, many business
decisions might seem to be an example of misfeasance or, at
best, non-feasance. Why are these people willing to make these
sorts of decisions even when they would not do similar actions
in other parts of their life?
Why are the "millions of downloads" of Dave Carroll's protest
song, "United Breaks Guitars," is a misleading indicator of
consumer power via the Internet (and it is not that people still
fly United, since he eventually did get his redress when they
finally said they'd pay for a new guitar).
II.
Applications & Lost Opportunities of a Marketing Orientation Topic 4. The "Lost" Marketing Perspective {return to syllabus}
Why and when can companies be successful when they follow a
production orientation?
Are there instances when a production orientation might serve
consumers' interests?
Think of examples of products which contain unnecessary
features or don't have feature combinations that you intuitively
think should be desirable. If it is so obvious to you, why do
manufacturers do this?
Not everyone traveling across the Auburn campus or going into
buildings are young and totally fit, so stairs or heavy doors
are a problem. And even for people without problems, doors and
landscaping seem to ignore the paths that people walk. (a) think
of some examples where the design of buildings and landscaping
seems to ignore a basic marketing perspective, even in very
newly built areas, and (b) explain why the users of the campus
are ignored in landscape and building designs.
Why do many electronic firms take an
engineering-over-marketing mentality?
What is the root cause of having a poorly trained service
employees?
What is "Relationship marketing" and does the gathering of
information for this purpose necessarily lead to the desired
results?
As a service department manager,
is it possible to eliminate unhappy customers - not kill them,
but make them happy?
From a pragmatic perspective of advertising professionals,
what does the word "creative" mean?
Why do sexy or funny or star studded or very entertaining
advertising messages fail to do the marketing job?
Why do so many advertising campaigns seem to focus on getting
attention for the advertisement but not the advertising object?
Advertising is often used as a way to counteract so-called
"problem behaviors" (e.g. illegal drug use, road rage, date
rape). Is advertising an effective way of fighting these
behaviors?
Why do so many public safety advertising campaigns that
appeal to audience fears fail to persuade people to change
behaviors?
Explain the fault of this logic for the popular faith in
social cause advertising as well as those that blame advertising
for all purchasers of cigarettes or other criticized product:
"Advertising must manipulate consumer choice or else companies
would not spend all that money on it?"
People like to blame advertisements for various problems or
social ills. For example, to reduce cigarette consumption,
cigarette company advertising and sales promotions are attacked.
Advertising for high performance cars, trucks or motorcycles are
blamed for reckless driving by young drivers. Does advertising
really have this power, or maybe, there is something else that
engenders the complaints?
How do the governmental agencies (such as FDA or FTC)
succeed, and conversely, how do they fail to serve the
consumers' interest?
In terms of the consumers' interest, what is the difference
between the FTC having to prove actual deception versus a
potential or capacity to deceive?
A syllabus states: "Students will learn more in this course
than any other course in their major." If it was an advertising
claim, what are the two conditions under which this statement
would not be considered deceptive by any government regulations
or competitor law suits?
The readings describe a newspaper ad for a car offering two
different sale options which (we assume) was to entice buyers,
so why were advertised terms incomprehensible to people with
advanced degrees in finance?
The FTC is the primary body regulating marketing activities
in many business areas and the Commissioners are considered
experts on marketing. What is the basis for that expertise?
Who are traditionally the types of people that make up our
government's regulatory agencies? What point of view do these
people bring to the job and how does that influence the
regulations they compose?
Restrictions on marketing practices are sometimes used as an
effort to address the public demand for some product categories
(e.g. cigarettes; alcoholic beverages; guns; prescription
drugs). Is this an effective way of influencing generic demand
products?What is the difference in Colorado that retail
advertising could increase generic demand for marijuana?
How do lawyers and government officials know that no
consumer believes advertising puffery and that no one is ever
deceived by it?
What is the general formula for risk and how would it be
applied to breast implants?
Name some of the basic problems with assessing an actual
consumer risk?
In communicating risk, why isn't it a straight forward issue
of just telling the public the facts?
Why are useless warnings put on
product labels?
In terms of the law, what is the
difference in consumer protections between supplements and
drugs?
Why does the public's perception of
risk from dangerous products (e.g. cigarettes, alcoholic
beverages, guns, motorcycles or hang gliders) differ from that
of experts?
Why would marketing a "safer" cigarette not be a good idea
for a cigarette company, in that how would it be harmful to the
company to make such an effort?
In the case of supplements, what are their benefits and why
do people buy them? Do people know they are dangerous, but
still buy them?
What role does the FDA have in the current market for dietary
supplements?
III. When Serving Consumers' Needs
Isn't What Consumers Need
Topic 8. Business Self-regulation {return to syllabus}
What U.S. laws limit
the power of business self-regulation to influence practices of
its members and thereby limits their power in protecting the
consumers' interest?
Given the limitation
of #1, why did the Comics Code Authority have such an impact on
the medium in the 1950s and 1960s?
What historical
fact prevents the distilled spirits self-regulatory group from
claiming that their code kept all hard liquor advertising off
television and radio from 1933-1996? What is the real reason
why commercials for brands of distilled products (e.g. gin,
vodka) not seen on any U.S. English-speaking broadcast
television networks or large-market television stations prior
to 1996?
Why is the CBBB's
NAD/NARB effective in controlling advertising deception and why
don't they review complaints of offensive advertising?
After the 2002 FTC
Workshop on deceptive weight loss advertising claims, how did
the Commission get the media vehicles to do more to block
advertisers who wished to make those claims?
Why were the critics of the racially
offensive advertising that appeared in Jet magazine wrong to
assert that such advertising would not happen if
African-Americans (the publication's readers for over six
decades) were involved advertising decision making?
What historical fact prevents
Distilled Spirits Council of the United States from claiming
they kept brand advertising of distilled products (e.g. gin or
vodka) off U.S. radio and TV vehicles from 1933-1996 and what
was the real deterrence for the advertisers making greater use
of broadcast media vehicles?
After two decades advocating blanket
deregulation of financial markets, stating that
"self-regulation would eliminate the need for government
oversight, Alan Greenspan went before Congress in 2008 to
state surprise at the error of his expectations. (The
deregulation he fought for was heavily blamed for causing big
parts of meltdown that initiated the Great Recession.) Why
didn't self-regulation take over and make government
regulations unnecessary?
Topic 9. Marketing Abused {return to syllabus} In this topic, it would be easy to
attribute problems to the dishonest motivations of the decision
makers bent on seeing what they can get away with doing. And yet,
that easy way out hides a deeper understanding of the context of
decision making which leads to marketing being abused. Once you
call them "evil" or otherwise label them as aberrations among
managers, you lose the ability to see the trap you could easily
fall into yourself in a similar context. So for discussion and
answering the questions, you still should adhere to the Prime
Direction.
Discuss the difference between immoral and amoral decisions
and what does it mean to say the marketplace is amoral?
In what cases could marketing actually help to maximize
profits but also cause a business to lose customers at the same
time?
For what reasons other than avoiding lawsuits or government
actions do businesses consider being socially responsible
important?
Lyprinol and Cellasene were two 1990s new product brands in
New Zealand and Italy, respectively, with a strong consumer
interest in purchase. Why shouldn't they be sold?
Harley Davidson defended itself from a personal injury law
suit by admitting earlier advertising was possibly misleading,
and Tropicana challenged a Minute Maid comparison ad by, in
effect, claiming their own claims weren't quite true. (note:
H-D's claim was literally true, just not true against the
plaintiff's interpretation. The orange juice claim would be true
only in certain times of the year by a technical message
interpretation that would probably be beyond typical consumers'
understanding.) Why did they do this and why did they still win
their cases?
Why do journalists and law makers consider it important that
consumers can tell which parts of the content is news-editorial
and what is advertising?
When might
marketing decisions maximize profits but also cause a business
to lose customers at the same time, and how could this be the
result of "ignorance"?
Why do people fear marketing tools, sometimes even more than
the marketing of dangerous products? Even if marketing was clear
and honest, would it still face critics?
Clearly, the author of the article is not concerned that
consumers are harmed by the emerging efforts of "stealth
marketing" other than the native advertisers "buying" favorable
news coverage. Why not?
Why is the advertising of some legal products so controversial
and why do the critics focus on marketing as the culprit? It
could be said that the often-misunderstood distinction between
generic and brand demand fuel the critics' fears - what does
that mean?
Controversial products are legal when purchased by
responsible adults, so should concerns for protecting children
be a valid basis to restrict products for adults?
People cite a 1950s movie theater test of
subliminal advertising that reported significant sales of Coke
and popcorn. What does the popular memory of this test fail to
include and why does fear of subliminal advertising in
magazines, movies, or television programs require belief in
the existence of a vast conspiracy of silence by the business
community?
Why is market segmentation criticized [or
blamed] for the "destruction" of U.S. culture?
What is the difference between the
now-legal marijuana markets in Colorado or Alaska and the
market for cigarettes such that marijuana sellers' marketing
could increase generic demand even though brand marketing does
not have that impact on U.S. cigarette sales? (Even though the
marijuana sales are retail, they are still engaging in
brand-oriented marketing by of the store or of it's special
product versions.)
What is the term used to describe the
demographic groups when companies selling criticized products
target women, African-Americans or Hispanics and why is it
insulting to these people? [You have to state what is the
word, what the term means, and then explain why it is an
insult to use it as a general description of these people.]
Why is important in laws and regulations of
the mass media that consumers are able to discern the
difference between content created or bought by a media
vehicle and content that someone paid the vehicle for the time
or space in which the message appears? Is that important for
consumers in the twenty-first century?
Aside from the societal marketing orientation of an earlier
topic, why (or when) should there be exceptions to seeing
consumer needs as being the same as consumers' interests?
Aside from political fund raising abuses, what are the
potential problems marketing (or marketing research) being a
driving force in political decisions?
How is leadership lost when a political candidate uses a
marketing strategy to gain an upper hand on their
opponents?
Even in situations where negative political ads would swing
the election for a candidate, why would this be undesirable?
How can the misuse or abuse of marketing detract from the
overall message and image of a product?
It was pointed out early in the semester that consumer
activist or business critics often are not a company's
consumers. Does responding to critics sometimes send a business'
marketing strategy or the plans of a regulatory agency in the
"wrong" directions?
How did the experience in New Zealand with school choice,
allowing parents to choose which school their children attend,
hurt education as a whole?
Some say that students should be treated as the customers of
their colleges. What problems might this "misplaced"
relationship cause?
The miniscule difference article presents a
problem for the advertising manager even though they found a
way for the desired advertising slogan to be true. The message
communicated product quality needs and the current customers
would still get their familiar soda flavor, so what was her
problem?
What check in the marketplace should
prevent direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising from
leading to consumers' drug misuse, and with this check in
place, why would more information in patients' hands be
undesirable?
IV. Other
Applications of a Marketing Perspective Topic 12. Segmentation, Communications &
News Management {return
to syllabus}
What should be the difference between
publicity and public relations and why does this lead to bad PR
decisions?
Why are efforts at PR driven "press
management" doomed to fail?
Why are "do not call lists" a service
to honest telemarketing companies and why would direct mail
companies welcome a similar anti-junk mail regulation?
Why is it a bad idea for a company to
try to match the marketing managers with the demographic profile
of their target markets? [remember the Prime Direction]
Why can the modern targeted agencies
be considered as the advertising business' version of the Negro
Leagues that were found in baseball pre-Jackie Robinson in that
they work against the greater diversity of full service
agencies?
Why is the Lowder Hall IT office
wonderful while the campus' central service falls short? [Do not
reference email, that tale is archaic, but what was generally
true of these offices from a marketing perspective in 2002 is
still true today.]
After the deadly tornadoes in Illinois
last Fall, lives were saved from storm warnings, but others
didn't seem to hear them. For the latter group, why not?
Why are people who might be unable to
move fast more likely to be endangered by work vehicles going in
reverse?
From the tale of people who lived in
central Pennsylvania, why might they answer the local census
worker at the door and why does this matter for the rest of the
state, or maybe the nation?
Why do people sometimes return their
randomly-generated automobile license tags?
