Computers and Marketing - Case Study Example

Computers and Marketing Computers and Marketing Ethics and morality is disappearing rapidly from every segments of human life and business sector is also not an exception. In order to market the products, marketers or product manufacturers are utilizing every opportunity. Internet and computers brought immense opportunities to the marketers in order to target individual customers. In fact most of the people who have an email account with any of the service providers, struggling to get rid of the spam messages.

It is easy for the spammers to send bulk mails to people in order to market their products without taking any consent from the public. The Guardian article “He sent 38 billion emails and called himself the Spam King. Then Bill Gates went after him” written by Wilson J and Johnson B in 2005, mentioned an incident in which Scott Richter and his Colorado-based company OptInRealBig.com are alleged to have been one of the world's biggest spammers. Microsoft and the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, sued Mr Richter for $18m in 2003, accusing him of violating state and federal laws, after "spam traps" set by the software company netted some 8,000 messages containing 40,000 fraudulent statements (Wilson and Johnson 2005).

  This paper analyses the validity of sending spam messages with the help of ethical theories of Deontologists and Utilitarian. Deontologists believe that some actions are wrong no matter what consequences follow from them. Deontology is an ethical system which has close association with Kantianism. While utilitarianism focuses on the outcomes of an action, deontology demands that the actions itself should be ethical; no matter what the outcome is. Sending spam messages will generate immense marketing opportunities for the sender; however it is not necessary that all the receivers take such messages as a blessing.

In other words, spam messages are useful to the sender if the receiver did not grant permission to the sender. In other words, Deontologists will never justify sending of spam message unless the receiver agrees to receive it. On the other hand, utilitarian may argue that the outcomes of sending spam message will be positive to the sender and it may not give any physical disturbances to the receiver. According to Deontologists, “duty should be done for duty's sake. The rightness or wrongness of an act or rule is, at least in part, a matter of the intrinsic moral features of that kind of act or rule.

But consequences are not what make the act right, as is the case with utilitarianism” (Moreland, n. d). Spam message senders know very well that it is disturbing for the people to receive spam messages. They also know that spam message sending are illegal and nobody likes to have their inboxes filled with spam messages. Only few receivers would consider such messages as useful. The spam message senders are doing an act and the outcomes of that act are known to them before doing it. In other words, the consequences of their act are predetermined.

Under such circumstances their actions cannot be justified with respect to the ethics of Deontologists even though, their action can be justified slightly when we analyse it with respect to utilitarianism. References 1. Moreland J.P. (n.d). Ethics Theories- Utilitarianism Vs. Deontological Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.equip.org/articles/ethics-theories 2. Wilson J and Johnson B. (2005). He sent 38 billion emails and called himself the Spam King. Then Bill Gates went after him. The Guardian, Thursday 11 August 2005.

Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/aug/11/microsoft.business1