Today, I was browsing through my classmates’ blog posts and came across Eivan’s post about Gold’s Gym and its sweepstakes scam. I was quite shocked to hear that the Gold’s Gym at UBC (as well as other locations) lures people in by making them think they “won” a free month’s trial (when in reality, they seem to offer this trial to everyone), only to lock them in a year-long membership as part of the conditions of the “prize”. I know people who are regular Gold’s Gym members who were not recruited through this method, so I was quite surprised that Gold’s Gym finds it necessary to carry out this “Bait and Switch” marketing practice (as Elaine described it) to gain customers.
Unfortunately, deceptive advertising is not as rare of a practice as it should be. Just a few days ago, Business Insider revealed that Ticketmaster will be refunding $1.50 per ticket sold over the last 12 years, thanks to a class-action lawsuit over those unexplainable “processing fees”. The lawsuit did not prohibit from Ticketmaster charging these fees in the future – rather, the ruling stated that Ticketmaster must put it in big red letters on their website that they are ripping you off. But hey, they’re just looking out for both the consumer and the corporation, right? Ticketmaster still needs to make a ridiculous margin in order to sleep at night, right? Oh, and the refund will only be provided to US citizens, because apparently Canadians are too busy drinking Maple Syrup and would be too nice to say anything about it anyways.
I think there are parts of marketing that will always be about deception – after all, marketing is all about making you think a product/company/service is greater than it really is. It’s just walking down that thin line between capturing every last bit of consumer surplus, and actually scamming customers, that marketers and companies have to be careful about – because it’s their reputation (and potentially a lot of money) that hangs on that line.
