Notes on Globalization: Brenkert's Stuff

Notes: Brenkert’s “Marketing, the Ethics of Consumption, and Less-Developed Countries”


I. Introduction

The “missionary” analogy: just as Christian missionaries came to the “New World” and sought to persuade and coerce Native Americans to accept what they believed was the one true religion and way of life – Christianity -- so contemporary marketers go into Less Developed Countries (LDCs) to persuade and coerce them into accepting what they believe is the one true view of the world and way of life – the contemporary West’s view of “commerce and marketing, economic development, and the consumer society.”

The shallow, indequate conception of marketers with respect to their responsibilities to LDCs: they think that the only relevant ethical issues with respect to dealing with LDCs are those having to do with things like “bribery, corruption, gift-giving, entertainment, market freedom, and international human rights”

The author’s criticism of the above conception: an adequate account of the ethical responsibilities to LDCs much go much deeper than that. It must also deal with issues regarding the influence of marketers on the culture and way of life of LDCs.

Topic: The moral responsibilities of marketers toward LDCs.

Thesis: “Marketers...have a moral responsibility to market products to LDCs in a manner that is ...appropriate to their cultural, economic, and social situation, ...[and] also meet[s] other demands on behalf of the integrity of their cultures.” (532)

Broader implications of the thesis: it has implications for the more general topic of the ethics of “the transfer of marketing practices of one society to another society, when the use of such practices is to promote consumer societies in the mode of their own society and culture.”

II. Marketing, Consumer Societies, and the Ethics of Consumption

Brenkert’s coneception of ‘Marketing’ , for the purposes of this article: advertising and other promotional components of marketing, as well as product development, research, and forms of distribution.

First key point: The techniques and concepts of the above aspects of marketing are not neutral, but are “value-laden and metaphysically charged”.
Some of the values that marketing presupposes:
-consumption is good and abstention is bad
-consumption is essential to happiness, acceptance, and status
-individual freedom is just the lack of restraint
-denying oneself of satisfying one’s desires is pointless; one should engage in instant- gratification whenever one feels like it.
-one’s behavior should be guided primarily by considerations of self-interest and the satisfaction of individual wants and needs
–people are inherently acquisitive
-marketers should pursue market growth relentlessly, even if it requires undermining social conventions and boundaries, customs, and traditions

Some of the metaphysical presuppositions of marketing:
-people are defined by what they possess and consume; a person’s “sense of self comes from what that person possesses.”
-people are essentially consumers; people can’t flourish as human beings unless they live a life of acquiring consumer goods.

Second key point: Most non-Western cultures don’t accept the above values; nor do they accept the above metaphysical assumptions about human beings and human flourishing.

For example, many cultures accept the following values:
-human fulfillment and human nature is only discovered when one renounces one’s material possessions.
-self-denial is required for living a happy, healthy life

But if so, then engaging in West-style marketing involves undermining the underlying beliefs and values of LDCs, and replacing them with the beliefs and values of the consumer-oriented societies of the West.

Consumer societies presuppose an “ethics of consumption”, which consists in the following theses:
-Products are for individual satisfaction. More satisfaction is better than less satisfaction, and immediate gratification is better than delayed gratification.
-There is a close connection between consumerism and self-esteem. A person’s identity is bound up with the products she owns or uses. Human happiness and welfare depends in large part upon the consumption of goods.
-Individuals have a right to choose freely among all the products produced. Thus, the free market plays a central role in the ethics of consumption. This implies restricted government intervention.
-Material success is a dominant goal in a consumer society.
-Products are acquired by the exchange of money. Their price captures their interchangeability. Consumers need have little knowledge of how or where the objects they consume are produced.
-The world is a collection of resources whose primary value lies in their use for consumption according to the preceding precepts.

Therefore, marketing to LDCs involves the introduction of the ethics of consumption, and its corresponding vision of “the good life” as the consumer lifestyle to such countries. Such an ethic and vision of the good life often differs radically with that of the LDCs in which it is introduced.

Thus, marketing involves modifying societies and cultures accordingly.

But if so, then the question arises: what moral responsibilities, if any, do marketers have to the societies and cultures they affect?


III. The Contradictory Positions of Business Ethicists

-The contradictory position of philosophical business ethicists:
-philosophical business ethicists tend to be ethical universalists. That is, they believe that there are moral values and principles that apply to all people. Call this the “first dimension” of ethical principles.
-However, they also allow for some moral values and principles that only apply to individual cultures, and which other cultures might reject. Call this the “second dimension” of ethical principles. Philosophical ethicists argue that marketers should respect this second ethical dimension in LDCs.
-Brenkert argues that such ethicists ignore a “third dimension” of ethical principles, viz., the effect of Western marketing and business activities on the culture and society in which they take place.
-The problem is that such ethicists argue that it is morally permissible for marketers to engage in marketing in ways that undermine an LDCs second dimension of ethical principles: they fail to see that there is a third dimension of ethics, and that it can undermine principles of the second dimension in an LDC
-Thus, they hold to a contradictory business ethic.

-The contradictory position of marketing business ethicists:
-marketing business ethicists tend to be ethical relativists. That is, they think that ethical codes vary from culture to culture, and that a person should obey they ethical code of any given society to which they go.
-Applying this to marketers, they say that marketers should engage in behaviors and activities that are consistent with the ethical code in which they are marketing.
-However, Western marketing practices tend to undermine the undermining beliefs and values that exist in the LDCs in which they engage in marketing (recall the “ethics of consumption”, and how it often conflicts with the ethics of LDCs)
-Thus, the hold to a contradictory business ethic: one which both encourages that marketers both conform to and fail to conform to the ethical codes of LDCs.

-The underlying assumption that both types of ethicisits accept, and which generates the contradiction: ethics and economics don’t overlap. But this assumption is false, as we have just seen.

IV. Criticisms of Marketing in LDCs (The Central Section of the Paper: Brenkert’s Argument)

-Preliminaries: four points of clarification
-1: Brenkert is not arguing that changing the culture and society of an LDC is inherently wrong, or that we shouldn’t bring modern goods to such societies. Indeed, marketers have positively benefitted societies in many ways. Rather, he is concerned solely with (a) the ways in which marketers transform the cultures of LDCs, and (b) the questionable ethical character of changing them in ways that conform to the Western consumerist culture.

-2: He is not arguing that marketing to LDCs is wrong because cultures are unique, and that the mere altering of a unique culture is inherently wrong. Indeed, he thinks that certain sorts of change are often desirable, and that cultures are dynamic, not static. He is also not saying that all aspects of a culture are beyond moral criticism. Rather, his focus is on LDC cultures that already conform to basic, “international moral norms, but which differ from Western consumer cultures”.

-3: He assumes that cultures are things that may be “worthy of respect, for its own intrinsic value.” Since cultures are structures in which groups of people shape and define their humanity, sense of place, and meanings, to destroy or alter a culture is potentially to destroy or alter something of inherent value. Therfore, marketers should be concerned with respect for culture.

-4: Respect for culture requires at least the following four conditions:
-i: Understanding: one can’t respect a culture that one doesn’t understand (e.g., its values and assumptions about human flourishing)
-ii. Nondisruption: Respect for culture requires that marketers not undermine or otherwise hinder important cultural values and goals.
-iii. Consideration: Respect for culture requires that marketers include values of the culture of an LDC in marketing decisions. Also, they shouldn’t make decisions that would alter or hinder such values.
-iv. Moral bounds: Respect for culture must be consistent with behavior that conforms to international moral norms.

-The question clarified, in light of the preceding: its focus is on “those marketing activities that may impinge upon and undercut the values of distinct cultures, for these affect the self-understanding and definition of people in the other society in ways that fail to show them respect.”

-The criticisms:
-1: The “homogenization” objection: Western marketing homogenizes the moral identities of LDCs, so that they all conform the Western consumerist morality (recall the “ethics of consumption”). “When these cultures are altered such that people come to see themselves as consumers whose wants and needs require Western-style products and levels of consumption, the value of their own culture wanes.”
-Marketers foster the ethics of consumption in LDCs
-The people in that culture thereby come to desire levels that are unattainable and unsustainable in their culture.
-Also, the ethics of consumption was not originally valued by the indigenous people of the LDC
-“This approach to marketing does not take seriously the people or cultures it modifies. Instead, it treats the cultures of such societies and individuals simply as means or vehicles, which may be used, or must be overcome, to promote the economic ends of marketers.”

-2: The “unfulfillability” objection: Western marketers promote “a form of society and a set of aspirations that people in LDCs will not be able to fulfill.”
-The quantity and quality of Western-style consumer goods and services cannot be universally enjoyed, since the world lack the requisite level of natural resources.
-But if so, then marketers are cultivating desires and aspirations in the people of LDCs that will necessarily remain frustrated.
-Also, , even if we had enough natural resources for everyone to enjoy the luxuries of the West, the vast majority of people will never have the requisite income or credit to enjoy such things.
-This shows disrespect to LDC cultures by failing to promote attainable forms of economic development.
-Finally,. Marketers should show respect to LDC cultures by respecting their value of frugality, and not see it as an obstacle to be removed.

-3: The “undercutting indigenous values and replacing them with questionable values” objection: When marketers promote the ethics of consumption in LDCs. They “indercut important traditional sources of meaningfulness, while offering forms of meaning in consumption that have proven to be of questionable value in the Western countries.”

-“The consumer’s fallacy”: the claim that we do not even begin to live until we have the right or approved kind of food bought in a good store, fashionable clothing, and a cave as good as our neighbors….We live when we have as many of these and other goods as our fortune will allow or our stratagems create.”

-the faulty basis of the fallacy: the assumption that “happiness is a function of the goods we possess and the things we consume.”

-why the consumer’s fallacy really is a fallacy: ordinary observation confirms that most people who pursue life with this assumption at the center are unhappy, unfulfilled, and unsatisfied.

Conclusion: “If the preceding objections are acceptable, it follows that marketers do indeed have moral responsibilities to market products to LDCs in a manner that is not only appropriate to their cultural, economic, and social situation, but which also meet other demands on behalf of the integrity of their culture(S).”

V. Implications for Marketers

-Obligation to preserve cultural values of LDCs
-Obligation not to insist on/force entry of a marketer into a culture that resists it for reasons of cultural preservation. Also, obligated to not stand in the way/interfere if a culture attempts to adopt measures to preserve their culture.
-“Marketers require an account of the compatibility (or incompatibility) of their activities with the culture of the societies in which they are active” (533) This involves:
-“identifying the essentials of that culture” (533)
-“attempting to anticipate the consequences their activities will have on them” (533)
-Marketers have an obligation to know which features of a culture are permissible to change, and which aren’t.