Digital Marketing

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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, in recent years you might find those results to be reversed. In 2020, U.S. consumers spent $861.12 billion dollars buying items online and the U.S. ecommerce grew forty-four percent. The covid-19 pandemic has altered online shopping habits and shifted society towards more digital dependence. Companies such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart have picked up on these trends and they are transforming their online retail and improving their digital marketing. Currently, more companies are starting to realize that if they are “not findable on the web” they will not be able to reach the modern consumer. People are starting to prefer shopping online rather than shopping in person for several reasons. Not only is online shopping more convenient, but there tends to be better comparison prices and less expenses involved. Consumers also appreciate the privacy and discreteness of ecommerce shopping. Digital marketing tactics play on these shifting habits and have become much more than simple facebook ads and disposable corporation emails. Today, there are many types of digital marketing including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-per-Click (PPC), Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, and Mobile Marketing . Even though these are different mechanisms of marketing, all of these platforms want traffic to their website to pay the bills of the digital marketers. The shift to online shopping has led companies to exploit consumers by selling their personal information in exchange for them falling for their digital marketing techniques and shopping comfortably from their home.

First Issue: Identities on Social Media

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: Consent

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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: Privacy Rights

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.