Volume 25, Issue 1

What's the Buzz? Undercover Marketing and the Corruption of Friendship

JEANETTE KENNETT

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (an ARC funded Special Research Centre), Australian National University, LPO Box 8260, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia

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STEVE MATTHEWS

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (an ARC funded Special Research Centre), Charles Sturt University, Boorooma Street, North Wagga, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia

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First published: 15 January 2008
Citations: 16
Jeanette Kennett, Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (an ARC funded Special Research Centre), Australian National University, LPO Box 8260, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia. Jeanette.Kennett@anu.edu.au
Steve Matthews, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (an ARC funded Special Research Centre), Charles Sturt University, Boorooma Street, North Wagga, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia. stmatthews@csu.edu.au

Abstract

abstract Undercover marketing targets potential customers by concealing the commercial nature of an apparently social transaction. In a typical case an individual approaches a marketing target apparently to provide some information or advice about a product in a way that makes it seem like they are a fellow consumer. In another kind of case, a friend displays a product to you, and encourages its purchase, but fails to disclose their association with the marketing firm. We focus on this second type of case and argue that the constitutive dispositions of friendship that provide for the development and maintenance of intimacy also render friends especially vulnerable to undercover marketing techniques and so to the exploitation of friendship for commercial ends. We show how this is corrupting both of the friendship and the commercial agent.

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