Selling sin

Most products and services are marketed in positive or at least neutral environments. Not so with such products as cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, gambling, poronography, and firearms. For these particular products the environment can be actually hostile, and this poses special problems for marketers. It is these unusual marketing challenges that Dr. Davidson explores in this new study.

Offering a unique cross-industry comparison of marketing tactics, strategies, and hurdles to be overcome to counter the lack of legitimacy for these products in the marketplace, his book will be fascinating reading for marketing, advertising, and sales professionals as well as for academicians and students in these fields. Readers will gain insights into the difficulties of marketing these five product categories - why there is antagonism to these products, how marketers deal with this antagonism, and what specific marketing practices lead to increased social criticism.

The study of these problems leads to a better understanding of the marketing of any product or service where the environment is unfriendly.

Dr. Davidson discusses in some detail the different circumstances surrounding each of these product categories but points out that what they have in common is a high level of controversy at this point in their history. Hostility toward the products comes not from consumers. Buyers, and of course, sellers, enter into the exchange relationship quite willingly and enthusiastically.

The hostility stems from some segments of society - often advocacy groups - who are opposed to the products and who gain a large enough membership or audience to impede and force changes in normal marketing practices. Marketers thus face the unusual situation of working with products that are perfectly legal, although heavily regulated, but which are "socially unacceptable." In addition to the predictable challenges and risks encountered in marketing any product - competitive pressures, changing economic conditions, shifts in consumer behavior - marketers must develop special tactics and strategies to counter the opposition which these products face.

These methods are explored here in a book that will make a unique contribution to our understanding of the marketing enterprise overall.