By Lynn Khaddaj | Staff Writer

In the 1970s, the digital era allowed us to facilitate our work. With all the benefits that arose with this age, some issues tagged along on the way. Today we are facing many privacy issues within the marketing industry concerning the abuse of these technologies.

Ethical marketing promotes honesty, fairness, and responsibility when advertising a particular product. Within the principles of ethical marketing, a company must remain truthful with its customers and protect their privacy and personal information (Marketing Schools, 2020). In addition, marketers should respect the customer’s autonomy, i.e., not influencing or manipulating the customer (Wertenbroch et al., 2020). Unfortunately, with the adaptation of digital marketing, some of these principles are not being followed by companies.

Marketers are using new technologies to attract customers and get customer insights. The online data of a person can give the marketers all the needed information to form sound marketing research. Furthermore, Metadata allows marketers to extract meaningful information from online sites and social media applications (Brennan, 2017). While gathering data, there is a high risk of endangering the customer’s privacy; applications like WhatsApp, Facebook, Google Maps, and Spotify all rely on Metadata to track the users. Facebook, for example, collects 70% of our data, such as our IP address, the advertisements we’ve clicked on, the browser we’re using, and our browsing history. It uses this information to recommend ads we would be interested in, which may lead to the misuse of the data information (Nield, 2020).

Privacy is an ongoing issue, as people feel they have lost control over their personal information in the digital era. Retailers, for example, study anonymized transaction data that help them understand the tastes of the customers. While doing so, it is crucial to preserve the user’s anonymity since both public and private entities use this digital data as a source of novel insights.

Some companies mainly rely on the utilitarian philosophical views concerning the conflict of collecting transactional data between consumers and companies. They justify using customers’ data by providing lower prices, better targeting, and high-quality products. However, this creates problems since the misuse of personal information can harm consumers, displease them, and go against their autonomy. Consumers must consider the need for legal and regulatory frameworks to protect and ensure ethical usage of their personal data.

Marketers also manipulate customers’ emotions as they introduce new products. M. Ryan Calo states that the new technologies will allow exploitation of the customers’ vulnerability or lack of awareness. By manipulating their emotions, the companies can sell or influence the consumption of their products. As Erwin Ephron said, “If you notice, it’s bad. But if you don’t notice, it’s worthless,” which shows that companies and marketers continue to use manipulation in their ads despite knowing that it goes against ethical digital marketing principles.

In addition, marketers are not transparent about their products. They might hide some information on their website or might not include the disadvantages of a specific item in their ads. Moreover, some companies use influencers to target their audience. Some laws enforce influencers to let their followers know that this post is an ad; they usually state on Instagram, for example, #AD or #GIFTED. Unfortunately, some Arab companies and Arab influencers don’t note that they are getting paid to advertise this product, as they are not transparent about their actual opinion. Nour Arida, for example, a Lebanese influencer, posts several photos wearing clothing from brand “Alo” while tagging the brand but fails to mention that this is a sponsored post in any of her images. In the Arab world, the laws concerning transparency aren’t fully tracked, which leads to unethical digital marketing.

In conclusion, ethical issues such as lack of transparency, manipulation, and privacy must be controlled to protect the consumer’s rights and ensure an honest, healthy relationship between the consumer and the company.