Inform Consent in Shoppers & Yourself

Informed consent is at the base of ethical retailing. When asking a shopper to agree to a purchase from you, give enough information to adequately guide the selection. Offering choices isn’t enough in itself. Don’t stack the deck against the consumer’s interests.
     To achieve this, recognize that you might need to work at staying aware of stacking the deck. Bias frequently operates subconsciously, and bias is slippery. A minor transgression repeated a few times will easily become the revised standard for what’s perfectly proper.
     A recent Time magazine article analyzed the practice of brands paying bloggers to tout the brand’s products. No ethical problem there, as long as the bloggers sincerely believe in the products and clearly declare they’re being paid. It’s called advertising, and adult consumers should be expected to suspect that bias lurks within ads. But, according to the Time article, full disclosure is not the prevailing standard among the promotional bloggers.
     As a consequence, these bloggers might begin by recommending products in which they genuinely believe, with the side benefit that they’re paid to do so, and then slip into praise for pay. The temptations are great. Fashion blogger Kelley Lilien says she earned about $120,000 in 2012 for touting products. There’s a network of talent scouts who help bloggers connect with marketers. Or you can do it yourself at conferences such as New Media Live, TwtrCon, and Savvy Blogging Summit.
     With in-store selling, the chances of undetected advertising are less, but they still exist. A couple of years ago, researchers at Princeton University, University of Sydney, and McKinsey & Company-Paris outlined questions sellers can ask themselves to check for subconscious, potentially slippery bias. Here’s my version:

• What information that you don’t have would you like to have in order to help you make more accurate claims for the product without losing what could be a valuable opportunity? 
• To what degree are you basing your recommendation on the outcome of a similar recommendation you’ve made yourself or was made by others whose judgment you trust? Check that the degree to which you’re doing this is not more than the degree of similarity of the current situation facing you to the situation occurring with the basis decision. 
• What is the evidence that the numbers and stories you’re using to make your decision are overall averages that mask a wide range or are extremes that mask typical situations? 

Click below for more: 
Honor Salesmanship 
Respect Consumer Rights 
Anticipate Ethics Slippage 
Trade Ethics with Consumers 
Stamp Out Bias in Your Decision Making