Many firms are striving to improve their environmental positions by presenting their environmental efforts to the public. To do so, they are applying green marketing strategies to help gain competitive advantage and appeal to ecologically conscious consumers. However, not all green marketing claims accurately reflect firms’ environmental conduct, and can be viewed as ‘greenwashing’. Greenwashing may not only affect a company’s profitability, but more importantly, result in ethical harm. Therefore, this research extends past greenwashing studies by examining additional influences on (...) and outcomes of perceived greenwashing. To do so, we conducted two studies, an interview study with consumer product and consulting firms, as well as an experiment examining consumers interacting with a company website. For these studies, we used multiple methods, including interviews, questionnaires, and neurophysiological techniques. We found that perceived greenwashing relates not only to environmental and product perceptions, but also to consumers’ happiness while interacting with the website. We also found that website interactivity relates to perceived greenwashing, environmental and product perceptions, and to the amount of interaction with the website. We conclude by discussing managerial and ethical implications for research and practice. (shrink)

This paper argues that product and advertisement are neither completely dependent nor completely independent. The advertisement of a bad product cannot be good. The advertisement of a good product is not necessarily good. In the case where consumer sovereignty cannot be assumed, the goodness of an advertisement depends solely on the goodness of the product. In the case where consumer sovereignty can be assumed, the goodness of an advertisement depends first on whether the product is good, and if so, whether (...) the advertisement preserves individual autonomy. (shrink)

Gamification is an increasingly common marketing tool. Yet, to date, there has been little examination of its ethical implications. In light of the potential implications of this type of stealth marketing for consumer welfare, this paper discusses the ethical dilemmas raised by the use of gamified approaches to marketing. The paper draws on different schools of ethics to examine gamification as an overall system, as well as its constituent parts. This discussion leads to a rationale and suggestions for how gamification (...) could be regulated and/or controlled by more informal codes of conduct. The paper ends by outlining a practical framework which businesses can use to evaluate the potential ethical implications raised by their own gamified marketing techniques. (shrink)

Consumer autonomy is a fundamental topic for marketing ethics scholars. Nonetheless, autonomy’s philosophical treatment may have compromised its conceptual clarity. After reviewing the relevant ethics literature on consumer autonomy, the benefits of formally defining consumer autonomy are illustrated, and a novel formalization is adapted from potential performance theory mathematics. The goal is to transfigure a hitherto amorphous topic via a mathematical formalization that defines true autonomy, actual autonomy, reliability of wills, and reliability of product choice. The crucial and surprising result: (...) an action that decreases true autonomy can increase actual autonomy if that action engenders a sufficient increase in one or both types of reliability. Relating the insights from the formalization to the long-standing debates in consumer autonomy suggests fruitful avenues for future research. (shrink)