Digital Marketing

Five to ten years ago, if you surveyed all of the people in the United States, you would most likely find that people prefer in-store shopping than shopping online. However, if you ask any single person today in the US that have you shopped online, chances are the answer is a yes. People started shopping online a few years ago as companies such as Amazon.com, Target, and Walmart started to shift their focus to online shopping, and, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged people to shop more online as it’s safer and less time-consuming. In fact, customers are so inclined to online shopping now that “companies realize that if they are not findable on the web, they will have a hard time getting in front of the modern consumer”. However, when we heard the word “digital marketing”, we might be inclined to think of ads we see on Facebook or Youtube or emails from corporations. However, there are many types of digital marketing which include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-per-Click (PPC), Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, and Mobile Marketing. Even though these might be different mechanisms of marketing, but at the end of the day, all of these want traffic to their website which is used to pay the bills of the digital marketers. However, with every new innovation or technology, there are negative aspects as a byproduct of that innovation or technology. For instance, even though people are able to comfortably shop from home, sometimes, the price they have to pay is their information. Information is the single most important factor that’s responsible for the functioning of digital marketing. Today, we will talk about some of the ethical issues associated with the information in terms of your internet identity so that you are better able to recognize these situations and plan in advance to prevent yourself from the negative consequences of these ethical implications.

First Issue

One of the primary ethical implications of digital marketing is the misrepresentation of identities on social media. For instance, “This applies to incidents where employees or social media influencers have marketed a company’s products and services on social media without disclosing their involvement with them.” For instance, “If you endorse a product through social media, your endorsement message should make it obvious when you have a relationship (“material connection”) with the brand.” This above-mentioned guideline is from Federal Trade Commission because if you aren’t disclosing your true intentions behind a certain product advertisement, then you are misleading consumers. Because the consumer isn’t well informed, he can’t make good decisions based on sound judgment as “It’s common for marketers to highlight the best features of their products and downplay the negatives to improve sales.”

Second Issue

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https://www.simplilearn.com/why-digital-marketing-is-important-to-your-organization-article

The other major ethical implication is the consent of the user whether it be through email or some other medium to be contacted. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission has also set guidelines with regards to contacting the consumers. These guidelines include but are not limited to unsubscribing when requested, identifying the emails as an advertisement, not using deceptive subject lines, and letting the consumers know how to unsubscribe from the emails or whatever other medium is used for advertising. These guidelines are intended for the consumers to be protected from the digital marketers, but these can help the marketers in terms of building trust between the consumer and the marketer.

Third Issue

Another important ethical implication of digital marketing is the presence or absence of privacy rights. For instance, “One parallel is the expectation of privacy associated with sending a sealed letter versus a postcard where the message is open to be read by all who handle it. Courts have ruled that there is a limited expectation of privacy in some e-mails29 and that an e-mail message, like a letter, cannot be afforded a reasonable expectation of privacy once that message is received.”

Conclusion

Due to the ever-changing world of technology, we are living in today, it has become vital that we are able to distinguish between marketing that is ethical and marketing that is unethical. The reason behind investing time in learning about these issues is that awareness is the first part of solving a problem. For instance, if people aren’t even aware that how their privacy rights are being infringed upon through social media or digital marketing, how will they ever be able to decide what needs to be done as a result. Therefore, learning about digital technology can benefit us in terms of not only providing us with tools to ward off unethical advertisements but also providing us with tools to understand how the digital world works.