Business Ethics

Phil 215 – Essay (Question 1)

The prevalence and influence of advertising over our lives has changed immensely throughout the years. One of the biggest concerns regarding advertising is the use of puffery, which is the “practise of making exaggerated, highly fanciful, or suggestive claims about a product of service” (June 18, Slide 9). Although legal, the ethicality of the usage of puffery and similar advertising techniques and whether or not they amount to manipulation and behaviour control is a highly controversial topic. I believe that puffery and other advertising techniques are not a form of manipulation and behaviour control and I will explain why advertisers use motivational research to influence consumers at a level below consciousness and how this does not result in manipulation.

Puffery, along with other advertising techniques, is not a form of manipulation and behaviour control because they do not violate human autonomy. The notion of autonomy contains four components, the first one being autonomous desires. Puffery does not prohibit our ability to control our own desires nor does it lead us to act on desires that are not truly our own. The decision to pursue the desires is entirely in our control. When we act on a desire, it is because our first-order desires line up with our second order desires, making that desire our own and therefore, an autonomous desire (June 20, Slide 9). Even in situations where an individual is given a first-order desire by an advertisement, if it conflicts with his/her second-order desire, he/she will not pursue that desire. On the other hand, if an individual accepts that a desire was induced by an advertisement, it is in the individual’s control to act on the autonomous desire. This is evident in cases where an individual continuously purchases a product without dissonance (Arrington, 7). This is the result of an autonomous desire, rather than a form of manipulation and behaviour control from puffery and other advertising...