Fast Food Marketing and Ethics - Term Paper Example

Running Head: FAST FOOD MARKETING AND ETHICS Fast Food Marketing and Ethics [The Writer’s Name] [The Name of the Institution] Fast Food Marketing and Ethics Introduction Marketing can undoubtedly bring benefits to society, although some aspects of marketing may be questionable on ethical grounds. Ethics is a complex concept to define, and there is an attempt made by contemporary theorists to highlight ethical behaviour in a marketing context. Issues surrounding marketing ethics and social responsibility are inherently controversial. An area that causes particular dispute is the question of the effect of ethical and unethical marketing activity in regards to the purchasing behaviour of consumers. According to the contemporary theory of ethics one would like to think that being a good company' would attract consumers to your products, whilst unethical behaviour would see customers boycotting the products of the offending organisations. (Gruerrette, 1998, 373) Marketing ethics imply the sense of moral right and wrong as regards to marketing practices, policies, and systems. Marketing ethics consist of principles and standards that guide appropriate conduct in organizations. Ethics view is essentially about the definition of what is right and wrong. However, it is difficult to get agreement about just what is right and wrong. Culture has a great effect in defining ethics and what is considered unethical in one society may be considered perfectly acceptable in another. In western societies, ethical considerations confront marketers on many occasions. The right moral and ethics will lead to a success for the companies and customers. This is important, especially in today ultra competitive, for companies to develop successful long-term relationships where both sides benefit. "Business, after all, is a "˜web' of relationships, where trust, reputation, dependability, honesty, and respect for human dignity are critical." (White, 1992, p.57) Fast Food Marketing Ethics Fast food has become a major source of nutrition in low-income, urban neighbourhoods across the UK. Although some social and cultural factors account for fast food's overwhelming popularity, targeted marketing, infiltration into schools, government subsidies, and federal food policy each play a significant role in denying inner-city people access to healthy food. Structural perpetuation of this race- and class-based health crisis constitutes "food oppression." Popular culture has raised some awareness of the deleterious effects of fast food, but media delivering this message often fails to reach the communities suffering the greatest harm. Even where efforts at education succeed, government support of the fast food industry severely limits dietary choices for low-income families. The rapid growth of the fast food industry catalyzed dramatic changes in agriculture, employment practices, the economy, and the population's physical shape and health. Fast food, by definition, is "designed for ready availability, use, or consumption with little consideration given to quality or significance. (Eric, 2006, 206-12) The phrase "fast food" gained common parlance in 1954 as a shorthand for the fare of restaurants that provided "fast food service. (Eric, 2006, 206-12) Fast food usually does not require cutlery and generally consists of finger food such as hamburgers, French Fries, chicken nuggets, tacos, and pizza. McDonald's is the leader of the fast food industry.' (Aaker, 2000, 127-40) Its founder, Ray Kroc, transformed a hamburger, fries, and a shake into the quintessential meal, erected golden arches to guide hungry travellers, and appointed a kid-friendly clown as fast food's ambassador. Fast food has since expanded to include an extensive array of foods. Fast food is highly processed and prepared using standardized ingredients and production techniques. Much fast food is deep-fried in partially hydrogenated oils, which lead to high cholesterol rates and heart attacks.' (Smith, 1997, 1-20) Combined with starchy vegetables and sugary drinks, these foods have a high glycemic load, a factor that contributes to obesity and diabetes." (Smith, 1997, 1-20) Fast food also contains a large amount of chemical additives" (Smith, 1997, 1-20) and often lacks accurate nutrition labelling. (Smith, 1997, 1-20) Even fast food's "natural" contents have wrought significant and often undesirable changes. These efforts must continue and grow if they are to effect real and meaningful change. Fast food restaurants selling cheap and hot food appear on almost every corner. The prevalence of fast food in The UK, combined with the lack of access to fresh, healthy food, contributes to an overwhelmingly disproportionate incidence of food-related death and disease. Urban teenagers’ communities suffer the harshest effects of poor nutrition. Individuals living in these communities often lack sufficient access to adequate health care and education, compounding the deleterious effects of a diet monopolized by fast food. Members of these communities also experience multiple forms of oppression as a result of their class and race. Attributes such as gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation can add further layers of vulnerability. Although the harm caused by over-consumption of fast food cuts across race and class lines, its pronounced and extreme effect on low-income people represents a form of structural oppression that activists must incorporate into a struggle for racial and economic justice. Too often, advocates of "personal choice" blame obese children for their own weight issues and health crises, linking these problems to individual moral and cultural failures instead of placing the problems in the broader, historical context of long-entrenched policies and practices. Activists for racial equality also encounter similar and related arguments that social ills facing student community, such as high rates of incarceration, segregation in housing and education, and drastic disparities in health and lifestyles, arise from individuals' failure to choose to better themselves. These arguments are part of a new colour-blind rhetoric that refuses to acknowledge the role of race in the challenges faced by children and young people. Furthermore, this emphasis on individual responsibility frees corporations and the government from culpability, and allows them to maintain the status quo and reap resultant benefits without social accountability. This Comment focuses on fast food, as opposed to analyzing the food industry more generally, for several reasons along with ethical marketing. (White, 1994, 59) Not only does the fast food industry exploit the market forces that drive supermarkets and produce stands out of low-income urban neighbourhoods, but it also specifically targets school going children and youth through target-based marketing and advertising, and expends extensive resources lobbying the government for subsidies, exemptions, endorsements, and other perks. Cooperation between the state and the fast food industry engenders artificially low prices, permits public schools to push fast food products and advertising, and leads to false information about the health benefits and harms of fast food. This close association between the government and the fast food industry can foment confusion and misinformation, yet it remains largely hidden from the public. Fast food is highly processed and prepared using standardized ingredients and production techniques. Much fast food is deep-fried in partially hydrogenated oils, which lead to high cholesterol rates and heart attacks.' (Eric, 2006, 206-12) Combined with starchy vegetables and sugary drinks, these foods have a high glycemic load, a factor that contributes to obesity and diabetes. Fast food also contains a large amount of chemical additives and often lacks accurate nutrition labelling. (Eric, 2006, 206-12) Even fast food's "natural" contents have wrought significant and often undesirable changes. The highly industrial methods of producing fast food's staple ingredients have led to a dramatic increase in food-borne illnesses and, in contrast to traditional animal husbandry, unprecedented incidence of cruelty to animals. (Eric, 2006, 206-12) Breeding techniques create new types of chickens designed specifically for the purpose of making popular fast food items such as chicken nuggets. Through subsidies from the federal government, intensive agriculture and corporate monocultures have developed to satisfy the needs of the fast food giants by yielding higher rates of production per acre for specific crops such as com. The external cost of these higher production rates is the destruction of environmental niches, leading in turn to the extinction of disfavoured crop species, the elimination of small farmers' capacity to plant secondary crops as a back-up to ensure their economic survival, and the decline of rural populations and their supporting communities. (Eric, 2006, 206-12) Fast Food Marketing Expansion to Children The ubiquity of fast food outlets has dramatically altered the appearance of highways, city streets, and suburbs. (Anthony, 2003, 25-26) Recently, market forces have pushed supermarkets out of urban areas to meet the demand created by suburban sprawl, leaving inner city residents with few, if any, sources of healthy food. Fast food first began to infiltrate urban neighbourhoods in earnest after the 1973 oil embargo, when gasoline shortages forced people to believe that the decline of the car culture had begun. After McDonald's' stock market value fell dramatically in response to the shortage, the chain shifted its focus from highways to urban centres and suburbs in search of new, more dependable markets. (Anthony, 2003, 25-26) Today, McDonald's and other chains strategize their expansion based on sophisticated cartographic software that uses satellite imagery to predict urban growth and locate school districts. (Anthony, 2003, 25-26) While the growth of fast food in poor urban neighbourhoods has increased steadily, supermarkets stocking fresh, high-quality food have simultaneously relocated to the more spacious and affluent suburbs ' Economic realities. Market forces have motivated the movement of supermarkets to the suburbs. Suburban neighbourhoods enjoy a much higher median income than urban centres. (Eric, 2006, 206-12) Suburbs have high-density residential space, allowing suburban supermarkets located between sprawling communities to reach a much larger and more mobile population than their urban counterparts. The suburbs also tend to have large parcels of land available for grocery stores. (Eric, 2006, 206-12) As the number of grocery chains decreases through consolidation, market pressures to increase profits and cash flow have led to a business model of multi-service operations demanding higher per-store sales. The high cost of store development and maintenance also makes investment in large stores serving dense residential areas more economically efficient. Finally, corporate decision-makers welcome the prospect of abandoning poorer, often crime-ridden areas to serve middle- and upper-class customers living in statistically safer locales. Fast Food Chain in Schools Fast food advertising targeted towards children raises a host of serious concerns. Physically, children are more sensitive to nutritional deficiencies, which often have permanent effects. Intellectually, children are less equipped to distinguish accurate from inaccurate information about healthy eating. (Anthony, 2003, 25-26) Children living in poor urban areas are often inundated with billboards advertising unhealthy food. They also enjoy limited opportunities to exercise outdoors; in high-crime areas, parents tend to keep children indoors to protect them. The fast food industry further ensures young people's access to fast food by strategically clustering franchises around schools, placing three to four times as many outlets within walking distance of schools than in locations where there are no schools nearby. (Dina, 2001, 42-46) Under-funded schools in areas with low tax bases are particularly susceptible to fast food's encroachment because the schools cannot afford to refuse corporate sponsorship. As technology becomes increasingly important, poorer schools without resources to buy expensive, up-to-date technology such as computers and video cameras have turned to corporations, including fast food companies, to fund such purchases. (Dina, 2001, 42-46) School districts that contract with fast food companies for promotion rights get money or equipment in exchange for the companies' right to sell their products on campus and to have their logo on school equipment and facilities. (Dina, 2001, 42-46) Corporations offer audiovisual equipment and sometimes computers in exchange for daily classroom broadcasts of Television, a youth-oriented current affairs program that includes two minutes of television advertising targeted to its captive young audience. This advertising generally focuses on fast food and other unhealthy products such as candy, soda, and breakfast cereals. The soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi compete with each other to donate large sums to under-funded schools in exchange for exclusive vending rights. (Dina, 2001, 42-46) Advertisements for unhealthy foods also appear printed on school lunch menus, and fast food companies sell their food in schools either directly, at their own stands, or indirectly, through the cafeteria. While some school boards have fought back against the fast food companies to protect their student s' health, the majority remain in the industry's thrall. The profit from selling fast food items in high school cafeterias often supports vital school operations, such as extracurricular programs and athletics. In most cases, inadequate funding also prevents the provision of nutrition education that would counter fast food's ubiquity and sales pitches. As a significant contributor to the obstacles preventing children from gaining access to healthy food, schools should re-evaluate their priorities and institute changes to increase their student s' welfare. (Michael, 2006, 227-30) Fast Food Television Advertising and Programming The fast food industry's campaign to win over young people continues in their homes, through television advertising. Research shows that low-income analysis of the role of schools in child obesity. Teenage children youth use entertainment media such as television, movies, and video games more than their white counterparts, and are disproportionately exposed to marketing. Children with single or two working parents often bear the greatest brunt of exposure to advertising.'' With parents gone for large portions of the day, these so-called "latchkey kids" look after themselves, most often amusing themselves by watching television. (Stephen, 2007, 234) In general, the average child watches over thirty-two hours of television a week. Consumers in low-income households are more likely to view advertising as authoritative and helpful in selecting products. (Gordon, 2004, 418-22) Children in these homes are more likely to have their own television sets, and to watch television during meals. Children are more likely than adult youth to report having televisions in their bedroom. (Gordon, 2004, 418-22) Fast food companies in turn spend billions of pounds a year to research and refine the most effective methods of instilling brand recognition in children. (Alan R. Andreasen: 2001, 33-40) Between 1991 and 2000, the money spent by companies on food advertising doubled from six billion to twelve billion pounds, and that number continues to rise. The average child now sees 10,000 food ads per year. (Mary, 2004, 91-94) Young people have very few defences against this monolithic marketing machine, and research has found that advertising can affect children's food preferences after only brief exposure. (Mary, 2004, 91-94) For example, one in five children now requests particular food brands at age three. Television programming can also communicate that nutrient-poor and high-fat foods are acceptable. Researchers studied the food messages on the most popular television shows, tracking the most-watched shows during prime time. (Mary, 2004, 91-94) The study revealed that children watch seventy-five hours of television per week as opposed to the fifty-two hours per week watched by other viewers, and are more likely to watch shows with predominantly student community. Searching for a relationship between these facts and the higher prevalence of obesity in student community, the study revealed that there are a greater number of food commercials on prime time and that teenage audiences may be subjected to as many as three times as many ads for candy and soda. (Mary, 2004, 91-94) Prime time TV transmission also features a greater number of overweight characters, which though it might accurately represent student community' weight status, may also condone obesity in the eyes of young viewers. Regardless of whether the relationship between images of student community on television and body size is one of causation or correlation, the simple act of watching television is both psychologically and physically damaging. Studies show a direct link between hours of television watched and body fat, and between higher caloric intake and watching television during meals. (Stephen, 2007, 234) Movies also have a negative impact on certain communities because they depict stereotypical food-related behaviour with respect to body shape, gender, and ethnicity. (Lynn, 2001, 370-76) The fast food industry and the government are complicit, in varying degrees, in the oppression that results from the fact that the consequences of their actions fall heaviest on certain traditionally subordinated groups. Instead of trying to reduce or mitigate the disparate effects of their products, fast food companies exploit existing social conditions through targeted marketing that includes billboard campaigns in low-income urban neighbourhoods, a strong presence in under-funded schools, and race-based advertising. This stands in contrast to the tobacco and alcohol industries, which have made some gestures in recognition of the social responsibility that the harmfulness of their product dictates. The fast food industry could similarly adopt practices to mitigate the particularly harmful effects of their food on certain communities, ranging from ending race-targeted marketing to financing nutrition education programs in poor urban neighbourhoods. (Marion, 2002, 189-92) To date, fast food companies have not taken any of these steps. As an institution charged with protecting the welfare of its constituents, the government has an even greater responsibility than the fast food industry to implement harm reduction strategies. By allying itself with fast food in exchange for financial support, the government neglects this duty. More specifically, government complicity with the fast food industry furthers the government's narrow self-interest in re-election and party support at the expense of the health and well-being of many of its most disadvantaged citizens. The illusion of choice in food consumption is a particularly powerful and entrenched social myth that contributes to food oppression's perpetuation and invisibility. Dominant ideology places strong value on the vision of society as a meritocracy with each individual equally placed at the starting line of the race to social and economic success. Many people believe that economic mobility depends on individual accomplishment, that success is a reflection of personal fortitude. (Star, 1989, 148-54) Conclusion Fast food is a multi-billion pound industry that relies on a close relationship with the government to ensure profits. While many outspoken critics of the food justice movement advocate a free-market society based on consumer choice, these arguments ignore the fact that, in many cases, true freedom of choice is not available to many individuals. The narrowing of choice results from the deals made between the government and the meat, dairy, and fast food industries. This cooptation keeps fast food prices artificially low. Multi-billion pound advertising campaigns infiltrate schools and poor neighbourhoods, instilling mistaken beliefs about nutrition in communities that lack the resources to counter the deception. To approach equality in health choices and quality of life, the government should acknowledge and terminate its complicity with the fast food industry. This would entail a shift in nutrition education, beginning with a racially inclusive and vegetarian-friendly revision of the federal food guidelines. The government should also support nutrition programming that targets areas and communities affected most by the health crisis. Regulations should require fast food companies to provide accurate nutrition labelling on all their products. Restaurants failing to comply should be fined, with the proceeds going to health and educational programs. An example may be quoted, though from US and that is of California that has now banned soft drinks in elementary, middle, and high schools, has a nutritional standard for vending machine snacks, and requires more fruits and vegetables in school lunch programming. Although not perfect, these laws are a step in the right direction. Emotionally and psychologically children break down, mostly because they feel they do not belong and are not accepted by their peers. The cruel treatment that overweight children experience in school, in social activities, and on the playground is unfathomable. This feeling of rejection can lead to serious emotional turmoil and to states of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and insecurity. When people are overweight and obese, they may feel sad or feel angry and eat to make themselves feel better. Retrospectively, they feel worse for eating again. After eating again they feel even worse about it and therefore eat, more creating a tough cycle to break. This state of emotion, better known as depression is very common among those with a high average-fast-food intake. When someone is depressed, that person is usually less likely to exercise or engage in some sort of physical activity, further exacerbating their situation. If analyzed on ethical perspectives and lines, the point transpires that why fast-food restaurants go to such extents to change menu options by bringing in healthier alternatives and advertising to children. Well, the answer is simple. The industry began with one motive in mind; money. With most fast-food chains operating as independent franchises, the pressure to be profitable is greater than ever before. The industry elite usually do not have malicious intents in mind; however, pressure from the investors can be overwhelming. This may be one of the reasons why the fast-food industry targets children. To engrain the appeal of fast food at a young age benefits the industry tremendously. Children are the future and the industry acknowledges that they are the ones who make the choices as to what it is that they eat. The fast-food industry has adopted a Machiavellian viewpoint where it has turned itself into a capitalistic venture, looking for a profit at any means. References Aaker, J.L. A.M. Brumbaugh & S.A. Grier, (2000): Nontarget Markets and Viewer Distinctiveness: The Impact of Target Marketing on Advertising, 9 J. Consumer Psychology 127-40 Alan R. Andreasen: 2001: Ethics in Social Marketing: Georgetown University Press; 33-40 Anthony N. DeMaria, Of Fast Food and Franchises, 41 J. AM. College Cardiology 1229 (Apr.2003) 25-26 Dina L.G. Borzekowski & Thomas N. Robinson, (2001) The 30-Second Effect: An Experiment Revealing the Impact of Television Commercials on Food Preferences of Preschoolers, 101 J. AM DIETETIC ASS'N 30, 42-46. 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