Marketing to specific groups of consumers, or target marketing, is one of the most important concepts in marketing.
Marketers over the centuries have identified who their customers are and directed their efforts to influence their purchasing decisions. That is your job.
However, in the last 30 years, marketers have begun to identify potential buyers based on a number of factors that make many people uncomfortable. Marketers now target promotions to people of certain age groups, gender, race, marital status, gender preferences, and just about any other category you can put people into.
This causes many consumers and consumer advocates to question the ethics of these promotions:
Is it fair to direct advertisements to children when they do not have the understanding and / or the ability to judge what is being presented to them?
Is it fair to target older people, living on a fixed income, with products that they may not be able to afford?
Should companies be allowed to develop products specifically for ethnic groups?
My answer to each of these questions, except the first, would definitely be Yes.
Why should a company restrict itself from marketing a product to a rationally thinking independent adult?
Don’t I, as an adult, have the ability to determine for myself, with a few exceptions, what I want to buy?
Now if there are mental handicap problems, we have a completely separate problem to tackle.
But, assuming that the consumer can make their own decisions; Shouldn’t I, as a marketer, be able to present information that helps the consumer decide that my product is what they want?
Is it exploitative to attack minorities? Yes, it certainly is. But so is just about any other type of marketing. You are trying to exploit a need, a desire, and definitely a gap in a market that may not have been addressed.
Before the 1960s, most marketing ignored minority ethnic groups and focused on the vast purchasing power of the largest demographic groups. There was an opportunity for companies to target a market, with significant purchasing power, that had not been addressed before. Is that inherently wrong? That’s the way marketing works: find a gap, develop a plan to address the gap, and then market that gap. That is sound business practice. If companies don’t take advantage of their opportunities, they will fail.
Now, nothing I have said above gives companies a free license to do whatever they want, especially when it comes to my one and absolute exception: marketing directed at children and those who cannot be responsible for their Actions. Even as an adult, if I am unable to make a decision as to the soundness of a purchase decision, then it should not be the subject of marketing that may have an unreasonable influence on me; And children are certainly not capable of making that decision. However, as an adult parent, I must take part of the responsibility for purchasing products that are marketed for children. I must educate my children about what is right and what is wrong; what is a desire versus what is a need; what is affordable versus what is not.
Companies that choose to direct their marketing efforts to specific market segments have a responsibility to consider the ethical implications of what they are doing. Socially responsible marketing requires targeted marketing that serves not only the interests of the company, but also the interests of the target audience and the general public.