Homework Question on Marketing Food Products
- It is recognized by many experts that obesity is a serious problem for many children in America. Unhealthy eating habits and lack of exercise seem to be the contributing factors.
- Is it unethical for food manufacturers to develop seemingly unhealthy products such as candy and sweetened cereals focusing on children as the target market? Why or why not?
- Should marketers be required to state the downside of using the products in the promotion of these snack foods?
Homework Answer on Marketing Food Products
The high rate of obesity in children reported in the United States of America has raised a big debate over food and beverage marketing targeting children. Unhealthy food products, such as candy and sweetened cereals have been cited as the main cause of obesity in children. This has raised questions on who should be responsible for ensuring children are protected against marketers of these food products targeting children in order to reduce the high rate of obesity.
Consumer protection groups have proposed that marketers should state the down side of using these food products in their promotion campaign. Nevertheless, there is a big question on whether this is ethically right (Sharma, 2013).In my opinion, marketers should be responsible for their marketing and promotion activities targeting children in order to show ethical responsibility. Marketing campaigns, especially advertisement have a big impact on children and marketers have been taking advantage of this to market unhealthy products to children.
Advertisers use misleading advertisement messages targeting children in order to attract more sales. Additionally, marketers have been using labels targeting children to sell unhealthy food products. The labeling of the products shows the products as fatty and tasty, and this misleads children in purchasing the item (Sharma, 2013). This act of marketers providing misleading information to the target customers in order to sell unhealthy products is ethically wrong.