It is unethical to target uninformed consumers because these consumers waste money on name brands and these brands often mislead, exploit, or spam consumers to trick them into buying their products.
Let's start with how uninformed consumers waste money on name brands. A new study writes Harvard behavioral economics professor Cass Sunstein, shows that “the more informed you are, the more likely you are to choose store brands. If all consumers were better-informed, then, consumer markets would look very different,' says Sunstein, who co-wrote a 2008 book arguing that poor choices are often the product of unaddressed biases. The report found that by sticking to generic products instead of national brands, consumers could save as much as $44b. Another example is if a taxi driver in an unfamiliar city knows that someone else is covering your fare, they are much more likely to charge you a higher price than is justified by the distance you are taking. That is one of the lessons from an economic experiment involving 400 undercover taxi rides in Athens, Greece. This manipulation had an economically pronounced and statistically significant positive effect on taxi bills, with undercover passengers in that treatment 17% more likely to pay higher-than-justified prices for a given ride. Total consumer expenditures increased by an average of 6% when consumers indicated that someone else would be paying the bill. In addition, female customers were on average more susceptible to fraud and paying higher prices than men. This proves that consumers are basically robbed of their money by companies that are trying to sell their products or make more money.
Brands often mislead, exploit, or spam consumers to trick them into buying their products. For example, Ads for Dannon's popular Activia brand yogurt landed the company with a class action settlement of $45 million in 2010, according to ABC News. The yogurt was marketed as being “clinically” and “scientifically proven” to boost your immune system and able to help regulate digestion. As a result, the yogurt was sold at 30% higher prices than other similar products. This shows that many companies have misled their customers just to make more money. Also, it is also shown that these customers are often uninformed about the products they buy. Many can say that you eliminate the waste and cost of marketing to consumers unlikely to use your services. But the truth is that the only people that benefit from targeting uninformed consumers are the people selling the product to consumers. The companies are in it for themselves and want to make money. A study by the University of Massachusetts found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation. According to Forbes, Christopher Elliot claims that “misleading a customer about a price, hiding 'gotcha' clauses in the fine print, making claims about the products that aren't true may not even be crimes. At least, that's the impression we're left with, in a world where the government cares more about freeing businesses from 'burdensome' regulation than protecting consumers.”
In conclusion, it is unethical the target uninformed consumers because not only does it mislead them but it also makes them spend much more money than they need to. Of course, it benefits the companies that sell the product but does it really help the consumers?