It is unethical to market to children or other vulnerable members of the society or even use misleading advertising. Advertising is a crucial component in media culture has over the past couple of years underwent a screening process used in evaluating ethics. Most businesses nowadays do not follow the code of advertising and marketing communications to children. They tend to exploit the simplicity and innocence of children to believe in what they are advertising. Nowadays, businesses have realized that consumers determine the truthfulness of the message being conveyed through advertisement instead of the quality and worthiness of the product being advertised (Adnan, 2018). Children do not have a full understanding of the commercial world; thus, they cannot make a rational decision.
The message of talking to children and vulnerable members of the society during their development is considered wrong as it exploits their innocence. The job of marketers is to achieve maximum awareness and make huge profits. Children have more influence when it comes to adult purchases of items, mostly in fast food sectors, which focuses their advertisement on children. Utilizing the non-consequentialists theory judges the wrongness or rightness of a certain action on property intrinsic to action but not to its consequences (Singla et al. 2016). Marketers do not ignore children mostly in the competitive food sector, where advertising features children in most of the adverts displayed in that sector. This means that any advertising that features children’s basic needs like concern, love, and friendship would not only target children but rather a natural course that will get more responses from the targeted markets.
According to the ethics of care, there is a need for children to be given special care given the fact that they are vulnerable to influences displayed through advertisements. A framework that involves both Utilitarian and Kantian ethics is crucial to make sure that children are not likely to suffer any negative consequences brought by marketers. According to Grebmer and Diefenbach, marketers do not fully communicate with their target markets. That is why it is important for them (marketers) to focus on the way they communicate with their target markets during advertisements (Grebmer and Diefenbach, 2020 ). It is important to note that advertisements tend to exploit the inability of children to make rational decisions. Vulnerable members in the society also do not have a say when it comes to advertising as they follow whatever marketers advise them to do.
Marketing ethics does not go well without decisions in which marketing practitioners tend to make on ethical questions, which mostly arises when some segment in the public or a group of stakeholders feels that the actions that the marketers have chosen are morally inappropriate. The personal values of children are compromised through advertising for the quest for increased profit in the organization. In these situations, marketers mostly think about the business only and take actions that are right for this business, thus neglecting their ethical values when it comes to advertising.