Question

some experts are highly critical of social selling. Search online and make a list of the criticisms. Evaluate each in turn; do you think these criticisms are justified?

Answer 1

list of criticism:

First, there is the intrusiveness of millions of brands that want to wrest money from our bank accounts, brands in which we normally have little interest nor that would significantly increase our well-being. It is estimated that we are exposed to 5,000 commercials a day without noticing most of them. These brands are collecting information about us as we use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, You Tube, or Google and they reach a point of knowing so much about us that they hope to send the right message at the right time and place to incentive us to make a purchase.

Second, there is frequent exaggeration or deceitfulness of the messages. lakme of cosmetics brand Revlon said it well: “In the factory, we make the product; in the store, we sell hope.” Others will hint: “Buy this convertible, and women will swarm all over you.” Each medicine will cure the described illness, and each pair of shoes will let you glide through life.

Third, marketing seems to neglect the hidden costs and damage to the environment that our high consumption creates. Businesses in the past were not charged for the air and water pollution that their activities produced. Rachel Carson alerted us in her book Silent Spring on the ravages to our rivers and streams by the relentless use and disposal of our natural resources and the weak regulations covering production activity.

Fourth, marketers pay little attention to the five billion desperately poor people in the world (of the 7 billion on the planet) who need much lower cost products. The poor do not have the means to buy even the cheapest bottle of shampoo. This was the case until Unilever started to package shampoo in a very small bag, or sachet.

Fifth, marketers are ready to sell anything that consumers want, without regard to its fitness for consumption. For years, marketers sold cigarettes and dismissed or denied evidence of the damaging effects of smoking. Had laws not prevented selling cigarettes to minors, marketers would want to get minors early into the smoking addiction and have them buy cigarettes for the next 70 years. Marketers don’t raise questions about marketing alcohol to drunkards, or guns to mentally disturbed people.