Cause-Related Marketing: Ethics and the Ecstatic
评估善因营销的伦理影响，指出其将慈善行为嵌入市场交换，可能削弱消费者的道德承诺，并产生一种空洞的狂喜状态。
This article evaluates the ethical implications of the practice of cause-related marketing (CRM). The authors note howCRMis consistent with a contemporary rhetoric that argues that consumers are displaying a developing interest in the social commitments of the corporate world. However, following the work of Zygmunt Bauman, the authors suggest that CRM actually threatens these sentiments. Of particular significance is its incorporation of a charitable act within an act of exchange that is mediated by marketing technique. This serves to prevent any encounter with Bauman’s “Other.” Instead, the pretense of engagement has to be preserved by increasingly vociferous avowals of concern. These become examples of the ecstatic, a seductive force that renders the extreme meaningless and amoral. Finally, the authors argue that the nature of ethical commitment produced by CRM cannot be divorced from the instrumental benefits that are generated.