{"id":125,"date":"2011-04-07T21:04:53","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T05:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/?p=125"},"modified":"2011-04-07T21:06:25","modified_gmt":"2011-04-08T05:06:25","slug":"125","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/2011\/04\/07\/125\/","title":{"rendered":"McDonald’s Un-Happy Meal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to unethical advertising, McDonald\u2019s happens to top the list in this category.\u00a0 As we know, McDonald\u2019s attracts many young kids with their Happy Meal option where a toy is\u00a0 received along with\u00a0a meal. It has been a great way for the company to entice\u00a0 children to eat their food and influence parents to satisfy their children\u2019s happiness by buying the Happy Meal to get the toy, even if the meal is unhealthy. This has in fact become such a controversial tactic that there has even been a case where a mother has sued a Sacramento McDonald\u2019s<\/a> because she claims it, \u201cmanipulated her children into begging to eat at McDonald\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

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McDonald's Happy Meal (A Meal and A Toy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However as my marketing professor, Elaine, explained ethics is not a black and white issue in marketing but rather a gray one. Can we say that this kind of advertising McDonald\u2019s is doing is unethical or can we just say that parents need to learn to not give in to their children\u2019s wants?\u00a0 With many advertisements aimed at children because they are not sensible enough at that age to realize what is right and wrong, some people say it is just the way it goes in marketing. While others think that companies should be able to advertise their products freely, but still stick to some type of guidelines in order to keep it ethical. In my opinion, I think McDonald\u2019s is just trying to create a sustainable competitive advantage and is willing to advertise and promote their Happy Meal to vulnerable children to sell the product which is the ultimate goal. While I\u2019m not saying this is completely right, I don\u2019t know if I would say it is completely unethical either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to unethical advertising, McDonald\u2019s happens to top the list in this category.\u00a0 As we know, McDonald\u2019s attracts many young kids with their Happy Meal option where a toy is\u00a0 received along with\u00a0a meal. It has been a great way for the company to entice\u00a0 children to eat their food and influence parents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/laurennipp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}