For Peer Reviewhomepages.se.edu/cvonbergen/files/2012/11/Social... · 2014. 10. 11. · Spotswood,...

For Peer Review

Social negative option marketing: A partial response to one

of Spotswood, French, Tapp and Stead’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions”

Journal: Journal of Social Marketing

Manuscript ID: JSOCM-06-2014-0036.R2

Manuscript Type: Conceptual Paper

Keywords: Marketing, Message framing

Journal of Social Marketing

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Social negative option marketing: A partial response to one of Spotswood, French,

Tapp and Stead’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions”

“Because social marketers are not (usually) elected by the public (though they may work for people who are), they require some justification to answer the charge that their social marketing activities are not simply the efforts of one group trying to impose its ways on other people” (Brenkert, 2002: 19).

Spotswood, French, Tapp and Stead (2012) in a recent issue of this journal offer seven

questions that articulate some of their concerns about social marketing. While the questions are

highly interrelated, the first question discussed by Spotswood et al. (2012: 165) is the focus of

this paper:

“Should social marketers use implicit (rather than explicit) behavior change techniques?”

The academic debate on the ethical dimensions of social marketing has been evolving

since the late 1970s when Murphy, Laczniak, and Lusch (1978: 195) noted that

“Today, politicians, charities and symphony orchestras are promoted like the newest dish detergent.”

These authors developed a typology of social marketing programs that attempted to address

questions like the ethics of using such marketing to promote the value judgments of special

interest groups like the Sierra Club, the Hemlock society, or pornographers. In a subsequent

empirical study, Laczniak, Lusch, and Murphy (1979) asked both academics and practitioners

about the ethical issues of using marketing techniques to sway social opinion and found that

there was concern that social issues should not be promoted through modern marketing methods.

In fact, Laczniak et al. (1979: 35) asked:

“Is the increased involvement of marketing specialists in the pro- motion of ideas, personalities, and organizations a beneficial development from the standpoint of U. S. society? … What

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constitutes a “good” (or bad) product or idea? … How can possible abuse of social marketing be controlled?”

These questions become more salient as marketing exchanges are mediated through

digital technology and where socially “virtuous” selections can be programmed by “choice

architects” who help to “shape” the situations in which people encounter choices, often through

the use of defaults. These “nudges” are choices often created by government behavioral insight

units that are helping form the publics’ choices toward a default which is in the publics’ best

interest (Cornwall, 2014). In a similar vein, Shove (2003) suggested that the only choice really

offered through involuntary “choice editing” is where the alleged socially undesirable (but

importantly not illegal) options are simply edited out (see Lang and Gataher, 2009).

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper is to address one of Spotswood et al.’s (2012) “uncomfortable

questions” by considering negative option marketing, or defaults, a practice in which a

“customer’s silence or failure to take an affirmative action to reject goods or services or to cancel

the agreement is interpreted by the seller as acceptance of the offer” (Federal Register, 2003, p.

4670) in the context of social marketing. Then Hunt-Vitell’s (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of

Marketing Ethics is used to evaluate negative option social marketing (NOSM) against President

Kennedy’s (1962) Consumer Bill of Rights and the American Marketing Association’s (2014)

statement of marketing ethics. In addition, this paper examines two key ethical considerations

that critics have leveled against the use of defaults, a key element in NOSM: (1) the lack of

transparency; and (2) the adverse impact of default rules that may prove especially harmful to at

risk populations.

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NUDGING—THE TOOL OF NOSM

Nudge theory and the concept of nudges was named and popularized by Thaler and

Sunstein (2008) based on the work of Kahneman and Tversky (e.g., 1979). Thaler and

Sunstein’s (2008) work made a portfolio of heuristic tendencies from psychology,

communication, economics, political science, and marketing cohesive, comprehensible, and

highly marketable. The concepts drawn upon by Thaler and Sunstein (2008) are also consistent

with other recent books (e.g., Ariely, 2010; Cialdini, 2008; Heath and Heath, 2010; Kahneman,

2011) about change and influence that rely on insights from marketing and social sciences on

how decisions are actually made and suggests that human judgment is often guided by simple,

oftentimes irrational principles.

Nudges gently push people to make decisions by changing the way choices are presented.

Social nudging involves engineering people’s choices so as to channel them to make more

socially desirable decisions (from the perspective of the policymaker) without substantively

limiting their choice. Nudges are not legal or regulatory mandates. Taxing “un-healthy” food at

a higher rate than “healthier” food is a nudge; making “un-healthy food” illegal is not.

Nudging—framing people’s choices so as to direct them to certain outcomes promoting a

“good society” (Dolan, Hallsworth, Halpern, King, and Vlaev, 2012: 16) without substantively

limiting choice—has become fashionable (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008; Willis, 2012). “Nudges

are ways of influencing choice without limiting the choice set or making alternatives appreciably

more costly in terms of time, trouble, social sanctions, and so forth” (Hausman and Welch, 2010:

126). They are low cost to both the person targeted and the organization or agency employing

them; they are passive/easy in that they require little effort; and they push people to make

choices that are good for themselves or society by taking advantage of imperfections in human


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decision-making abilities (French, 2011). Nudges often include a variety of soft touches as

outlined by Bonell, McKee, Fletcher, Wilkinson, and Haines (2011):

“Nudges might involve subconscious cues (such as painting targets in urinals to improve accuracy) or correcting misapprehensions about social norms (like telling us that most people do not drink excessively). They can alter the profile of different choices (such as the prominence of healthy food in canteens) or change which options are the default (such as having to opt out of rather than into organ donor schemes). Nudges can also create incentives for some choices or impose minor economic or cognitive costs on other options such as people who quit smoking banking money they would have spent on their habit but only being able to withdraw it when they test as nicotine free” (p. d401).

The use of nudges to shape behavior has become so popular that in 2010, U. K. Prime

Minister David Cameron set up the Behavioral Insights Team—or nudge unit to “persuade

citizens to choose what is best for themselves and society” (Basham, 2010: 4). Three years later,

the team has doubled in size because of its success in nudging British consumers to pay taxes on

time, insulate their attics, sign up for organ donation, stop smoking during pregnancy, and give

to charity. Likewise in the U. S., the Obama administration embraced nudges (Dorning, 2010)

and has used them to increase enrollment in the President’s signature piece of legislation, The

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Maher, 2012).

While nudges can be effective in promoting some behaviors they are not intended to

represent a comprehensive repertoire of behavioral change interventions (French, 2011). Choice

architecture, a term coined by Thaler and Sunstein (2008), describes the way in which decisions

are influenced by how the selections are framed or presented. Social nudges can range from

shrinking plate sizes in cafeterias so that people implicitly reduce portion size (Wansink, 2006)

to repainting roadways in order to create the illusion that drivers are going too fast (Selinger and

Whyte, 2011).


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DEFAULTS

The quintessential illustration of a nudge is a default which is the designated course of

action for those who fail to explicitly choose for themselves (Willis, 2012). Default options are

automatically chosen when individuals make no active choice and stay with the given state or

condition (Brown and Krishna, 2004) and are sometimes considered “hidden persuaders” (Smith,

Goldstein, and Johnson, 2009: 1) because people tend to continue with preset options.

Default options can exert a significant influence on behavior. Compared to the non-

enrollment default, governments that presume citizens as willing organ donors have markedly

higher donation rates (Abadie & Gay, 2006; Johnson & Goldstein, 2003); companies with

automatic 401(k) enrollment have more employees who save for retirement (Madrian & Shea,

2001); cities with “green” electricity defaults have lower energy usage (Pichert & Katsikopoulos,

2008); and states with limited tort default have drivers who pay lower insurance premiums

(Johnson, Hershey, Meszaros, & Kunreuther, 1993). Default effects have also been observed in

the use of advanced medical directives, internet privacy preferences, legal contracts, medical

vaccine adherence, and even for how psychologists choose to analyze their data (Bellman,

Johnson, and Lohse, 2001; Chapman, Li, Colby, and Yoon, 2010; Fabrigar, Wegener,

MacCallum, and Strahan, 1999; Johnson, Bellman, and Lohse, 2002; Korobkin, 1998; Kressel,

Chapman, and Leventhal, 2007; Young, Monin, and Owens, 2009).

Thus, defaults matter and their appeal is considered so strong that it has been referred to

as the “iron law of default inertia” (Ayres, 2006: 5). Their influence is due in large part to the

following fundamental reasons:

1. Implied Endorsement. People sometimes treat defaults as a form of implicit advice. When choice architects have explicitly chosen the default, consumers tend to believe that they should not depart from it unless they have information that would justify a change


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(McKenzie, Liersch, and Finkelstein, 2006). Consumers assume that the default was chosen as providing the typically best choice (Madrian and Shea, 2001).

2. Effort. Default effects are also partially due to effort (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988). Making a decision involves effort, whereas accepting the default is easy. To alter the default rule, people must make an active choice to reject that rule. Especially (but not only) if the question is difficult, technical, or with social implications it is less taxing to defer the decision by accepting the default.

3. Status quo. Defaults, by design represent the existing state or status quo. The status quo bias is a psychological principle which involves the propensity of decision makers to keep things the way they are (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988) often leading humans to make choices that guarantee that things remain the same, or change as little as possible. This preference results in inertia. Defaults do not force anyone to do anything. On the contrary, they maintain freedom of

choice. Whether people opt out or opt in, they are permitted to do so as they see fit. Default

rules nonetheless have a large impact, because they tend to stick (Johnson and Goldstein, 2004).

Defaults can be valuable and worth a fight. For example, search engines like Google and MSN

want their browser to be the default preloaded on computers and go to court to preserve such

status so as to garner more of the roughly $20 billion search-advertisement market (Kesan &

Shah, 2006).

NEGATIVE OPTION MARKETING

Marketers have exploited the power of defaults within a NOM framework where the

consumer’s failure to reject or cancel an offer (i.e., to act) signals consent. NOM, also referred

to as advance consent marketing, automatic renewals, continuous-service agreements, unsolicited

marketing, inertia selling, “free trial” offers, or “book-of-the-month” type plans, uses defaults to

take advantage of the tendency toward the status quo and inaction to achieve marketing

objectives (Sunstein, 2013). NOM requires that consumers take action so as to not purchase the

product or service (Licata and Von Bergen, 2007). NOM incorporates an opt-out default in


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which consent is presumed and where not explicitly making a choice, doing nothing, or being

silent means agreement. Individuals must explicitly become involved and take steps to prevent

the default from occurring and the sale from consummating (Lamont, 1995).

Four types of plans generally fall within the NOM category: pre-notification negative

option plans; continuity plans; automatic renewals; and free-to-pay or nominal fee-to-pay

conversion plans (U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 2009). First, in pre-notification plans, such as

book, wine, or music clubs, sellers send periodic notices offering goods. If consumers take no

action, sellers send the goods and charge consumers. Second, in continuity plans, consumers

agree in advance to receive periodic shipments of goods or provision of services, which they

continue to receive until they cancel the agreement. Third, in automatic renewals, a magazine

seller, for example, may automatically renew a consumer’s subscription when it expires and

charge for it, unless the consumer cancels the subscription. Finally, sellers also structure trial

offers as free-to-pay, or nominal-fee-to-pay, conversions, such as receiving free premium cable

channels for 60 days. In these plans, consumers receive goods or services for free (or at a

nominal fee) for a trial period. After the trial period, sellers automatically begin charging a fee

(or higher fee) unless consumers affirmatively cancel or return the goods or services.

In the case of NOSM, the marketer uses defaults to encourage “virtuous” behavior, even

if the subject would not normally explicitly choose to engage in that behavior. An example of a

NOSM program is a “carbon off-set” scheme by Qantas Airlines which “encourages” their

customers to make a more environmentally friendly decision by a opt out donation to an

approved organization that uses the funds to allegedly offset the passenger’s share of flight

emissions by some form of carbon sequestration. Customers who do not wish pay the extra fee

must explicitly opt out of the purchase of the carbon off-set during the on-line transaction. The


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present study defines NOSM as engineering people’s choices so as to channel them through the

use of defaults or opt-out marketing to make more socially desirable decisions (from the

perspective of the policymaker) without substantively limiting their choice, as illustrated by the

Qantas “carbon off-set” program.

ETHICS OF NEGATIVE OPTION SOCIAL MARKETING

Influencing behavior is central to social marketing. It is nothing new to governments,

which have often used tools such as legislation, regulation, or taxation to achieve desired policy

outcomes, nor to marketers which have employed numerous advertising promotions to guide

people’s behavior. But it is now being used by nations in social marketing campaigns to warn of

the dangers of obesity or the problem of domestic violence to achieve desired policy outcomes

using nudges. NOSM nudges have garnered increased attention primarily because its

techniques—often involving relatively minor and subtle changes to processes, forms, and

language—have provided policymakers a potentially potent new set of tools to influence citizen

choices and behavior so as to shape individual behavior.

The increased use of such NOSM has raised a number of ethical concerns including: (1) a

re-conceptualization of the “state-individual relationship,” (Ménard 2010: 229), suggesting that

policymakers assume that “the masses are too stupid to make good decisions for themselves

(Selinger and Whyte 2011: 928); and (2) that nudges undermine trust in patient-physician

relationships or exploit power-differences particularly in vulnerable populations (Blumenthal-

Barby and Burroughs, 2012). Hansen and Jespersen (2013: 5) note that social nudging

“seems to make the approach incompatible with public policymaking in a modern democracy. Indeed, state manipulation with the choices of citizens appears to be at odds with the democratic ideals of free exercise of choice, deliberation, and public dialogue.”


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Likewise, Haug and Busch (2013) identify a lack of clarity pertaining to the ethical dimensions

of nudges, suggesting the need for an ethical framework.

These ethical concerns about NOSM appear to be consistent with a notion voiced by

former U. S. President John Kennedy in a speech to Congress, that consumers have the right to

freedom of choice. President Kennedy (1962) said that:

“Marketing is increasingly impersonal. Consumer choice is influenced by mass advertising utilizing highly developed arts of persuasion…. Additional legislative and administrative action is required, however, if the federal Government is to meet its responsibility to consumers in the exercise of their rights. These rights include: 1. The right to safety… 2. The right to be informed… 3. The right to choose… 4. The right to be heard….”

This Consumer Bill of Rights as it has become known can be used to suggest ethical

issues that may arise with the implementation of NOSM techniques as a tool of social policy.

For example, would a consumer who does not want to support a specific social cause be truly

free to choose under the conditions of a social nudge’s choice architecture without incurring

either pecuniary or non-pecuniary costs over and above those faced by consumers making a more

socially desirable decision? If NOSM techniques were used the answer is yes, the consumer

making the less socially desirable choice could face more effort, time or even pecuniary costs.

The ethical concerns that are associated with the use of NOSM can also be evaluated

using Hunt and Vitell’s (1986, 1993, 2006) general theory of marketing ethics. The Hunt-Vitell

(1986, 1993, 2006) theory suggests that ethical decision making is ultimately judged at the nexus

of deontological (the behavioral means) and teleological (the outcomes or “desired end states”)

evaluations that are influenced by cultural, individual, industry, and organizational environments

coupled with the personal characteristics of the decision maker and are an antecedent to ethical

judgments. When both the means and ends of the act result in social good, that is, that no one is


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made worse off (see Arrow, 1950) the act is deemed ethical. This theory can be used to explain

the ethical implications of NOSM. Figure 1 adapts a simplified model of the Hunt-Vitell (1986,

1993, 2006) theory to the context of NOSM as an illustration. Table 1 provides a summary of

the interrelationship between NOSM and the Consumer Bill of Rights evaluated by the Hunt and

Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) framework.

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Inset FIGURE 1 about here

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Insert TABLE 1 about here

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NOSM violates the spirit of Kennedy’s (1962) Consumer Bill of Rights by making the

pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of the public actively choosing higher than simply accepting

the nudge. NOSM makes some worse off by increasing their costs to express their choice. For

example, when NOSM is used to support a vaccination campaign, there is a very small number

of vaccine recipients that will be harmed by the vaccine. By increasing the time, effort, and

potentially financial costs of making a choice, NOSM forces the policy makers’ values on the

public, potentially diminishing the safety, and rights of some individuals to be safe, to choose, to

be informed, and to be heard.

Likewise, when defaults have an effect because consumers are not aware that they have

choices, or because the transaction costs of changing from the default are onerous, NOSM

marketing may be ethically problematic. Schwartz (2005: 39) proposes a set of “universal moral

values” which include: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) responsibility; (4) fairness; (5) caring;


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and (6) citizenship. Similarly, the American Marketing Association’s (AMA’s) Statement of

Ethics (2014) appear to largely capture Schwartz’s domain with the following norms: (1) do no

harm; (2) foster trust in the marketing system; and (3) embrace the ethical values of honesty,

responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency, and citizenship. NOSM may foster distrust by the

public and seems to be at odds with the mandate to “embrace, communicate, and practice the

fundamental ethical values that will improve consumer confidence in the integrity of the

marketing exchange system” (AMA, 2014).

Specifically, NOSM may violate AMA’s basic values which include: (1) honesty; (2)

responsibility; (3) fairness; (4) respect; (5) transparency; and (6) citizenship. Honesty requires

the social marketer “to be truthful and forthright in … dealings with customers and

stakeholders;” and “tell the truth in all situations and at all times.” Additionally, NOSM works

best in the dark and may be implicitly dishonest, violating any semblance of transparency.

Responsibility and respect suggest that the social marketer must both “recognize our special

commitments to vulnerable market segments such as children, seniors, the economically

impoverished, market illiterates and others who may be substantially disadvantaged…and avoid

using coercion with all stakeholders,”(AMA, 2014). On the other hand NOSM forces those with

different values from the choice architects to pay a cost in time, effort, or even money if they

wish to actually exercise their choice. Fairness requires that social marketers represent their

ideas or products in a fair and clear manner with the aim to truthfully communicate the attributes,

avoiding conflicts of interest, or marketer manipulation. Social marketers under the AMA

(2014) Statement of Ethics also have the obligation to be good citizens. Table 2 provides a

summary of the interrelationship between NOSM and marketing ethics.

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Insert TABLE 2 about here

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The more specific ethical criticisms of nudging (and defaults) have included: (1) lack of

transparency; and, (2) a negative impact on poor and low income people. Nudging and defaults

work by implicitly “manipulating people’s choices” (Bovens, 2009: 19; Vallgårda, 2012: 201)

and behavior (Hansen and Jespersen, 2013), and this has ethical implications because of its lack

of transparency. For example, Bovens (2009: 209) has questioned the ethics of nudges because

they:

“… typically work better in the dark. If we tell students that the order of the food in the Cafeteria is rearranged for dietary purposes, then the intervention may be less successful.”

While nudges tend to work best when people are unaware that it is influencing their

behavior (Selinger and Whyte, 2010), recent research by Loewenstein, Bryce, Hagmann, and

Rajpal (2014) seems to complicate the matter. These researchers found, in the context of end-of-

life care choices, that even when individuals are explicitly informed that a default rule is in place,

and that it has been chosen because it affects people’s decisions, there is essentially no effect on

what people do which suggests that people are not uncomfortable with defaults, even when they

are made aware that choice architects have selected them, and do so because of their significant

effect. Clearly further research is needed, specifically when NOSM is used in high involvement

decisions such as medical care choices.

The second specific ethical concern is that certain vulnerable groups may be particularly

sensitive to defaults. Some research (e.g., Brown, Farrell, and Weisbenner, 2012) has found that

minorities and the poor and other less “sophisticated” participants—those with lower education

levels, who are less confident in their skills in a given context, and who have lower levels of


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knowledge about specific plan parameters—are more influenced by defaults. This suggests that

certain at risk individuals are less likely to opt out of the default and are more susceptible to

defaults even when it is relatively inappropriate for them and further negatively impacts their

already modest economic wellbeing. According to Mani, Mullainathan, Shafir, and Zhao (2013)

this may happen because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for

other tasks—like evaluating the appropriateness of defaults, and leaving them more vulnerable to

unscrupulous social marketers using NOSM schemes.

SUMMARY

This paper has explored NOSM and how it relates to both the AMA Statement of

Marketing Ethics and President Kennedy’s Consumer Bill of Rights using the Hunt-Vitell (1986,

1993, 2006) general theory of marketing ethics and an evaluative framework. NOSM’s power to

influence choice seems at odds with both the Consumer Bill of Rights and the AMA Statement

of Marketing Ethics, underlined by Schwartz’s (2005) statement of universal human values.

These frameworks mandate respectful, open, fair, and honest communication allowing for true

freedom of choice. It appears that the use of NOSM to achieve public policy objectives falls

short of the standards set by these frameworks when evaluated by the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993,

2006) marketing ethics protocol, thereby and answering one of Spotswood et al.’s (2012)

“uncomfortable questions”—“(S)hould social marketers use implicit (rather than explicit)

behavior change techniques?” The answer is quite clearly no.


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Johnson, E. J. and Goldstein, D. G. (2004). Defaults and donation decisions. Transplantation, 78(12), 1713-1716. Johnson, E. J., Hershey, J., Meszaros, J., and Kunreuther, H. (1993). Framing, probability distortions, and insurance decisions. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7(1), 35-51. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kahneman, D., and Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263-291. Kennedy, J. F. (1962). Special message to the Congress on protecting the consumer interest. Retrieved from www.presidency.ucsb.edu Kesan, J. P., and Shah, R. C. (2006). Setting software defaults: Perspectives from law, computer science and behavioral economics. Notre Dame Law Review, 82(2), 583-634. Korobkin, R. (1998). Inertia and preference in contract negotiation: The psychological power of default rules and form terms. Vanderbilt Law Review, 51, 1583-1623. Kressel, L. M., Chapman, G. B., & Leventhal, E. (2007). The influence of default options on the expression of end-of-life treatment preferences in advance directives. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 22(7), 1007-1010. Laczniak, G. R., Lusch, R. F., and Murphy, P. E. (1979). Social marketing: Its ethical dimensions, Journal of Marketing, 43, 29-36. Lamont, D. D. (1995). Negative option offers in consumer service contracts: A principled reconciliation of commerce and consumer protection. UCLA Law Review, 42, 1315-1388. Lang, T. and Gataher, M. (2009). Food policy: Integrating health, environment and society. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Licata, J. W., & Von Bergen, C. W. (2007). An exploratory study of negative option marketing: Good, bad or ugly? International Journal of Bank Marketing, 25, 207-222.

Loewenstein, G., Bryce, C., Hagmann, D., and Rajpal, S. (2014). Warning: You are about to be Nudged. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2417383 Madrian, B. and Shea, D. F. (2001). The power of suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) participation and savings behavior. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(4), 1149-1187. Maher, B. S. (2012). Some thoughts on health care exchanges: Choice, defaults, and the unconnected. Connecticut Law Review, 44(4), 1099-1112.


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Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., and Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science, 341(6149), 976-980. McKenzie, C. R. M., Liersch, M. J., and Finkelstein, S. R. (2006). Recommendations implicit in policy defaults. Psychological Science, 17(5), 414-420. Ménard, J. F. (2010). A ‘nudge’for public health ethics: Libertarian paternalism as a framework for ethical analysis of public health interventions? Public Health Ethics, 3(3), 229-238. Murphy, P. E., Laczniak, G. R., and Lusch, R. F. (1978). Ethical guidelines for business and social marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 6(3), 195-205. Pichert, D., and Katsikopoulos, K. V. (2008). Green defaults: Information presentation and pro- environmental behaviour. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28, 63-73. Samuelson, W. and Zeckhauser, R. (1988). Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1, 7-59. Schwartz, M. S. (2005). Universal moral values for corporate codes of ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 59(1-2), 27-44. Selinger, E. and Whyte, K. P. (2010). Competence and trust in choice architecture. Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 23(3-4), 461-482. Selinger, E. and Whyte, K. P. (2011). Is there a right way to nudge? The practice and ethics of choice architecture. Sociology Compass, 5(10), 923-935. Shove, E. (2003). Converging conventions of comfort, cleanliness and convenience. Journal of Consumer Policy, 26(4), 395-418. Smith, N. C., Goldstein, D. G., and Johnson, E. J. (2009). Smart Defaults: From Hidden Persuaders to Adaptive Helpers. INSEAD Business School Research Paper No. 2009/03/ISIC. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1116650 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1116650 Spotswood, F., French, J., Tapp, A., and Stead, M. (2012). Some reasonable but uncomfortable questions about social marketing. Journal of Social Marketing, 2(3), 163-175. Sunstein, C. R. (2013). Deciding by default. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 162(1), 1-57. Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.


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U. S. Federal Trade Commission. (2009). Negative Options: A Report by the Staff of the FTC’s Division of Enforcement. Retrieved from http://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/negative-options-federal-trade-commission-workshop-analyzing-negative-option-marketing-report-staff/p064202negativeoptionreport.pdf Vallgårda, S. (2012). Nudge—A new and better way to improve health? Health Policy, 104(2), 200-203. Wansink, B. (2006). Mindless eating: Why we eat more than we think. New York: Random House. Willis, L. E. (2012). When nudges fail: Slippery defaults. University of Chicago Law Review, 80, 1155-1229. Young, S. D., Monin, B., and Owens, D. (2009). Opt-out testing for stigmatized diseases: A social psychological approach to understanding the potential effect of recommendations for routine HIV testing. Health Psychology, 28(6), 675-681.


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Figure 1

Adapting the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Ethics to NOSM

Antecedent Enviroment

(culture, regulatory

institutions, individual values)

Deontoligical evaluation of

percived social problem (are

the means ethical?)

EVALUATION OF THE ETHICAL

DIMENSIONS OF NOSM

Are both the means and ends

socially "good?" - If not then

the act is not ethical

Teleological evaluation of

percived consequences (are

the outcomes desirable from

a social "good" perspective?)


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TABLE 1

KENNEDY’S (1962) CONSUMER BILL OR RIGHTS AND THE IMPLICATIONS

OF NOSM EVAULTATED BY THE HUNT-VITELL (1986, 1993, 2006) THEORY

OF MARKETING ETHICS

CONSUMER

RIGHT

DEONTOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS – ARE THE

MEANS1 OF NOSM GOOD

TELEOLOGICAL

IMPLICATIONS –

ARE THE ENDS

GOOD

TO SAFETY The Implied Endorsement by an expert means of NOSM could reduce the probability of a consumer critically evaluating an option. The choice architecture design of low Effort may discourage the consumer exploring “safer” alternatives. The notion of the nudge being the part of the Status Quo may imply a safe choice when that is not the case for that specific individual

Choices made due to NOSM could reduce safety for some individuals, while enhancing the publics’ mean level of “social welfare.”

TO BE

INFORMED

The Implied Endorsement could reduce the probability of information search. The low Effort dimension of NOSM nudges may result in low involvement with the issue by the public. The power of maintaining the Status Quo may imply that there is no need to become informed on an issue.

NOSM may constrain consumer information search and result in a less educated public.

TO

CHOOSE

The Implied Endorsement could reduce the probability of making an active choice. The low Effort dimension of NOSM nudges may result in many members of the public abdicating their right to choose in favor of the nudge’s lower time and efforts demands. The Status Quo as the “correct choice” implies that there is no need to choose for your-self.

Freedom of choice is constrained by the marginal pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of choice.

TO BE

HEARD

The Implied Endorsement may diminish any dissent. The low Effort dimension of NOSM nudges may encourage the public not to speak out. The Status Quo may in fact silence most other voices.

NOSM increases the costs of “being heard” and may reduce the voice of the consumer in the market place

1: adapted from Ayres (2006)


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TABLE 2

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION’S (AMA’S) STATEMENT OF

MARKETING ETHICS (2014) AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF NOSM

EVAULTATED BY THE HUNT-VITELL (1986, 1993, 2006) THEORY

OF MARKETING ETHICS

AMA’s ETHICAL NORMS

AND VALUES

DEONTOLOGICAL

IMPLICATIONS TELEOLOGICAL

IMPLICATIONS

DO NO HARM If the choice is not in the one that the consumer would have made in the absence of NOSM, then it could violate this norm

If the choice is not in the consumers’ best interest, then it could violate this norm

FOSTER TRUST IN THE

MARKETING SYSTEM

NOSM diminishes the level of behavior based on trust

The nature of NOSM would constrain the public’s trust

HONESITY The behavior of a social marketer employing NOSM is not honest

The nature of NOSM would limit an honest outcome

RESPONSIBILITY If the social marketer was acting in the consumers’ best interest then NOSM may positively influence responsible behavior.

If the social marketer was acting in the consumers’ best interest then NOSM may positively influence a socially desirable outcome.

FAIRNESS NOSM guides choice to what is in the best interest of the “public,” but not always what is in the best interest of the individual.

Some individuals who accept the nudge will make sub-optimal choices.

RESPECT Thaler and Sunstein’s (2008) “libertarian paternalism” assumes that the public does not possess the capacity to make informed and rational choices.

NOSM diminishes the respect that the social marketer would hold for the public

TRANSPARENCY By nature NOSM does not result in transparent behavior by the social marketer – as Thaler and Sunstein (2008) note – nudges work better in the dark.

For NOSM to be most effective it cannot be transparent.

CITIZENSHIP The implications of NOSM in reducing choice also diminish good citizenship.

Effective democracies require active choice.


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