College of Business Administration

Advertising

1) Does marketing unethically coerce and manipulate people in making purchases or do people have free-will and self-determination?

2) Is advertising to children ethical and to what degree?

3) Is advertising to teenagers a form of unethical advertising? Whose responsible for protecting teenagers from advertisements which “prey” on their insecurities?

4) Is boycotting a company/product the only way to enforce ethical standards in advertising?

Product Safety

5) Should Philip Morris be accountable for negative effect from smoking? Or should consumers be responsible for their decisions to smoke?

6) Who is responsible for unsafe products? The manufacturer? Seller? Consumer? To what limit?

7) Should a rational consumer know that some products have a potential to be harmful and therefore assume the risk of harm (automobiles, coffee, small toys).

Pharmaceuticals

8) Should companies that offer products that preserve human life (pharmaceutical) be held to different pricing standards than those that do not?

9) If pharmaceutical price controls limited or shut down drug research, would you feel differently about the previous question?

10) Is there a moral duty to keep prescription drug prices as low as possible?

Other Questions

11) Are consumer rights more important that a corporation’s duty to its shareholders? What if you are a shareholder and a consumer?

12) Should the “fine print” of contracts hold a consumer responsible legally? Ethically?