Deceptive marketing
Deceptive marketing refers to the use of confusing and misleading information to market a product of a company. Kotler and Armstrong (2016) claim that deceptive marketing practices usually create mistrust among the consumers, which end up to problematic working relationship. These practices are illegal, and therefore, businesses should avoid them to prevent government interference and remain ethical. According to Kotler and Armstrong (2016), there are three different categories of deceptive marketing that are commonly used in today’s corporate world, which include a deceptive promotion, deceptive packaging and deceptive pricing. These improper practices are meant to help marketers generate increased profits through false pricing, embroidered packaging and unethical promotion practices (Murphy et al., 2016).
According to Kotler and Armstrong (2016), deceptive promotion occurs when marketers engage in practices such as misrepresenting certain features of a product. Besides, marketers engage customers in the negotiation of the price of products that are out of stock. Sometimes, advertisements make statements about quality or origin that marketers cannot affirm.
Deceptive packaging is a common practice where marketers exaggerate packaging contents of a product through subtle designs, use of misleading labels or terms of describing a product’s size. For instance, marketers may advertise a large bottle, but they fill it half the content in order to gain more profit from the sales. Exaggerations of packaging enable traders to persuade consumers to buy their products which they claim are of high quality (Kotler and Armstrong 2016).
Finally, deceptive pricing occurs when marketers conduct false advertisement about product price or a huge price reduction from a fraudulent high retail list price. Final consumers think that they can buy products at a lower price for banded products but instead pay the usual price or even higher. Bait-and-switch pricing is an example of deceptive pricing where marketer claims that a given product is available at a given price when they do not intend to sell the product, or they go ahead and sell it at a higher cost (Kotler and Armstrong 2016).
Companies that engage in deceptive marketing usually face legal actions. Moreover, the government puts in place legislation and other customer protection actions (Kotler and Armstrong 2016). For example, in 1938, the Wheeler-Lea Act was enacted by Congress to grant the Federal Trade Commission power to control deceptive practices among businesses. Overstock.com was sued, found guilty and fined $6.8 million by a California court due to deceptive pricing.
In conclusion, deceptive marketing practices which include promotion, packaging and pricing usually mislead consumers which end up violating their rights and affecting customer relationship adversely. As such, marketers should avoid these malpractices not to harm their relationship with the customers and prevent government interference.