Social negative option marketing: A partial response to one of Spotswood, French, Tapp and Stead’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions”

The purpose of this paper was to address one of Spotswood et al.’s (2012) “uncomfortable questions”. The paper applies negative option marketing, the use of defaults as a behavioral engineering tool to shape choice, 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.

A conceptual assessment of the ethics of negative option social marketing (NOSM) using the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Marketing Ethics as the evaluative framework.

When assessed using the Hunt-Vitell (1986, 1993, 2006) Theory of Marketing Ethics, NOSM possesses neither ethically sound means nor socially desirable ends.

This paper contributes to the emerging debate on the use of nudges in a social marketing context and is a partial response to Spotswood et al. (2012).