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Social negative option marketing: A partial response to one of Spotswood, French, Tapp and Stead’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions”C. W. Von BergenJohn Massey Professor?of?Management?Department of Management & Marketing Southeastern Oklahoma State University 1405 N.?Fourth Avenue, PMB 4103 Durant, Oklahoma 74701-0609 580.745.2430 Fax: 580.745.7485 cvonbergen@se.edu Morgan P. MilesTom E. Hendrix Chair of Excellence in Free Enterprise and Professor of Marketing Department of Management, Marketing, and Information Systems College of Business and Global Affairs University of Tennessee – MartinMmiles6@utm.edu&University of Tasmania24-8-2014AbstractPurpose: to address one of Spotswood et al.’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions.” The paper applies negative option marketing (NOM) to social marketing and then uses the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Marketing Ethics to evaluate it against President Kennedy’s (1962) Consumer Bill of Rights and the American Marketing Association’s (2014) statement of marketing ethics? Design: a conceptual assessment of the ethics of NOSM.Findings: when assessed using the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Marketing Ethics NOSM possesses neither ethical means nor socially desirable ends. Practical/Social Implications: the findings suggest that although NOM is an attractive social engineering technique social marketers should avoid using NOSM due to its ethical implications. Originality: this study’s contribution is that it applies an accepted ethical theory to show how, for the first time, that NOSM is not ethical.Keywords: Negative Option Social Marketing, Nudges, EthicsSocial negative option marketing: A partial response to one of Spotswood, French, Tapp and Stead’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions” “The search for a clear definition of optimum social welfare (or social good) has been plagued by the difficulties of interpersonal comparisons. The emphasis, as is well known, has shifted to a weaker definition of optimum, namely, the determination of all social states such that no individual can be made better off without making someone else worse off” (Arrow, 1950: 329). “Because social marketers are not (usually) elected by the public(though they may work for people who are), they require some justificationto 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) behaviorchange 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 orchestrasare 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 constitutes a “good” (or bad) product or idea? … How can possibleabuse 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. These “nudges” are often created by government behavioral insight units that are helping “form” the publics’ choices toward what 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). PURPOSEThe purpose of this paper is to attempt to address one of Spotswood et al.’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions” by first considering negative option marketing (NOM)—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)—and applying it to social marketing. We then evaluate it against President Kennedy’s (1962) Consumer Bill of Rights and the American Marketing Association’s (2014) statement of marketing ethics to determine if social marketers should answer the normative question of whether they should use negative option social marketing (NOSM)? In addition to these more general concerns we examine two key ethical considerations that critics have leveled against the use of defaults, a key element in NOSM—lack of transparency and the adverse impact of default rules that may prove especially harmful to at risk populations that can least afford to be harmed. NUDGING—THE TOOL OF NOSMNudge 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 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 aboutsocial norms (like telling us that most people do not drink excessively).They can alter the profile of different choices (such as the prominenceof 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 onlybeing 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). DEFAULTSThe 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 they have 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: 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 (McKenzie, Liersch, and Finkelstein, 2006). Consumers assume that the default was chosen as providing the typically best choice (Madrian and Shea, 2001). 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. 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 MARKETINGMarketers 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 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). An example of a NOM program is the “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 each time they fly by some form of carbon sequestration action. 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. 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 prenotification 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. The 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.ETHICS OF NEGATIVE OPTION SOCIAL MARKETINGInfluencing 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 manage individual behavior. The increased use of such NOSM has raised a number of ethical concerns, including the 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), or that nudges undermine the 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.” Haug and Busch (2013) identify a lack of clarity pertaining to the ethical dimensions of nudges, suggesting the need for an ethical framework. Likewise, 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:The right to safety…The right to be informed…The right to choose…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? 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 made worse off (see Arrow, 1950), then the act is 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.---------------------------------------Inset FIGURE 1 about here------------------------------------------------------------------------------Insert TABLE 1 about here---------------------------------------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. 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 choice architects’ values on the consumer, potentially diminishing the safety, and rights of some individuals, often a small public minority, 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; 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. The implication of NOSM may be problematic as the use of 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 encourages 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. ---------------------------------------Insert TABLE 2 about here---------------------------------------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; Vallg?rda, 2012: 201) and behavior (Hansen and Jespersen, 2013), and this is inherently unethical 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 the consensus appears to be that choice architecture tends to work best when people are unaware that a nudge 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.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 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. Simply put, being poor taps out individuals’ mental reserves leaving them more vulnerable to unscrupulous social marketers using NOSM schemes. SUMMARYThis 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 suggest 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. Choice architecture—the design of the context in which decisions are made—can “nudge” individuals towards a particular outcome. An especially powerful tool of choice architecture is the default—which is the option that is implemented when individuals do not actively make selections—because individuals are likely to accept the default. Therefore, the default chooser, whether they are policymakers, employers, insurance companies, governments, researchers, or marketers, is often able to guide people to certain decisions and choices that they find desirable. 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Health Psychology, 28(6), 675-681.Figure 1Adapting the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Ethics to NOSM27279601102360002728570194381100TABLE 1KENNEDY’S (1962) CONSUMER BILL OR RIGHTS AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF NOSM EVAULTATED BY THE HUNT-VITELL (1986, 1993, 2006) THEORY OF MARKETING ETHICS CONSUMER RIGHTDEONTOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS – ARE THE MEANS1 OF NOSM GOODTELEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS – ARE THE ENDS GOODTO SAFETYThe 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 individualChoices made due to NOSM could reduce safety for some individuals, while enhancing the publics’ mean level of “social welfare.”TO BE INFORMEDThe 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 CHOOSEThe 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 HEARDThe 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 place1: adapted from Ayres (2006)TABLE 2AMERICAN 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 VALUESDEONTOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONSTELEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONSDO 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 normIf the choice is not in the consumers’ best interest, then it could violate this normFOSTER TRUST IN THE MARKETING SYSTEMNOSM diminishes the level of behavior based on trust The nature of NOSM would constrain the public’s trustHONESITYThe behavior of a social marketer employing NOSM is not honestThe nature of NOSM would limit an honest outcomeRESPONSIBILITYIf 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. FAIRNESSNOSM 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.RESPECTThaler 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 publicTRANSPARENCY 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. CITIZENSHIPThe implications of NOSM in reducing choice also diminish good citizenship. Effective democracies require active choice. ................
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