Date:

To:
From:

Subject:

October 18, 2015

Alpha Kappa Psi Members at Washington State University
Jessica Johnson
Student, Washington State University
Marketing Major
The Ethicality of Nudges

Purpose
Companies market using nudges to persuade people everywhere, and
most people arent even aware. I plan to increase awareness within the
members of Alpha Kappa Psi at Washington State University about the
beneficial and negative use of nudge marketing. Using nudges can be a great
strategy as long as it is used with the correct intentions.
Summary
A nudge is an indirect suggestion of marketing that influences people
to make certain decisions. Since they are used to influence consumers
subconsciously, they are quite controversial. In this memo, I will address the
ethicality of nudges by explaining the results of my research and how
consumers are effected by nudges, positively and negatively. I will
demonstrate that they can influence consumers to engage in behaviors that
will benefit society as a whole, but not to persuade people to take part in
activities that are not for the greater good of the community.
Introduction
If you have ever seen the assorted garbage and recycling bins that say
landfill rather than trash, you have seen a nudge. Use of the word
landfill rather than waste guides people to think about the end result of
placing items into that bin rather than a recycling bin. This is just one
example of a nudge; however they are used in a variety of different ways,
sometimes at a much higher level. Nudges have even been seen at the
governmental level, such as, to influence citizens to enroll into retirement
plans.
One of the first stories of using a nudge is the fly in the urinal example.
A guy named Jos Van Bedoff served in the army where he noticed that there
had been a small red dot in the urinals to decrease misdirected flow. He later
proposed to the airport board of directors that etching flies onto the urinals
may influence men to aim for the fly and decrease the misdirected flow as he
had seen before (Dimitry Apollonsky). This was one of the first nudges used,
and as they became more popular and as the book Nudge by Thaler and

Sunstein was popularized in 2008, they became more controversial. This

example demonstrates the correct way to use a nudge and how they may be
beneficial. However, as companies became aware of this strategy and began
implementing it to increase their profit, people started feeling controlled.
Nudges have been proven to help people make the best decisions for
themselves, however it is also an issue that is seen with marketing that
influences consumers to buy products when unnecessary. Nudges have been
used within the layout of grocery stores to persuade customers to purchase
unhealthy food items. This is done by placing the unhealthy items toward the
back of the store, so that by the time shoppers make it through and place
the healthy items into their carts they feel they deserve a reward and are
more likely to grab a bag of potato chips and a soda as well. What is lacking
here is an ethical sense of doing what is right for people overall. Marketers
simply use this tactic to gain profits and dont consider what is best for
human health. This grocery store example is what I have based my research
off of as well as the landfill example. I will analyze the likelihood of studentmember behavior based on their awareness of the marketers intentions.
Nudges can be a great source for guiding people to make decisions that are
best for them, but not when there is a lack of ethics involved. It is morally
wrong to use nudges to persuade consumers to purchase items rather than
guiding consumer to make the best possible decision. With this research and
memo, I hope to help increase consumer awareness at WSU of unethical
nudges to allow them to make decisions for themselves.
There have been studies proven that nudges work, however it was
unknown to me if AKPsi student members at WSU would engage in making
unhealthy descisions without the nudges involved. I have discovered that
student-member would not buy unhealthy items once if were aware that
grocery stores use the layout they do simply for that reason. I believe that
AKPsi WSU student consumers will benefit from being made aware of these
types of nudges to help reduce the controversy over nudges by eliminating
or moderating the use of negative nudges.

Research Methods
For my research, I used the free survey website, surveymonkey.com.
Although I did not receive the 100 participants that I had hoped for, I made
sure to have 50 completed surveys to work with. I posted a survey onto my
group pages for the professional business fraternity I am in, all of which are
students at WSU. Using this website, I asked questions to discover the
likelihood of AKPsi WSU student-members to engage in the behavior that

marketers wanted them to before and after being aware of the marketing
intentions. For example, I asked in my survey how likely they were to place a
recyclable item into a waste bin versus a comingled bin. I then asked how
likely they were to place the same item into a landfill bin versus a comingled
bin. After those two questions, I informed the member about nudges and how
they are used to influence people to make the best decisions and that using
landfill is one of those examples. I then asked the likelihood of them placing
the recyclable item into the landfill versus the comingled bin once more.
These were my questions for the ethical nudge portion.
To research the likelihood of the student-members behavior with
unethical nudges I asked the following questions. I asked how frequently they
purchase unhealthy snacks when they go grocery shopping overall. I then
asked how likely they were to purchase an unhealthy snack after they had
already placed a variety of healthy food items into their baskets. After that, I
included in the question the layout scheme of a grocery store and the
purpose for it and asked how likely they were to purchase and unhealthy
snack. These were my research questions for the unethical marketing portion
of my questionnaire.
Results
After conducting my research, my results were very similar to what I
had expected. When students are aware of the unethical nudge marketing
that is influencing them to make an unhealthy purchase, they are less likely
to engage in that behavior. Before the WSU student-members were aware of
the nudge, they were more likely to purchase the unhealthy snack. However,
once I informed them of the nudge, the likelihood of that student to purchase
the same snack decreased. On the opposite side of things, when a member
was informed about the good nudges, he/she was more likely to engage in
the desired behavior because it was the best decision for everyone not just
for the company. For example, with the landfill versus waste bins AKPsi WSU
students were more likely to place a recyclable item into the co-mingled
recycling bin when the label was landfill rather than waste. Although, these
results didnt show a large difference they were more noticeable when we
informed the student-member about the nudge. After telling the student that
the nudge here was to try and influence them to recycle by making them
think of the end result of not recycling, they were more likely to comply with
the nudges, in fact all participants were willing to comply and place the item
into the recycling bin. This research is very similar to the context of the
Nudge book. In the book, it does not explain nudges to the consumers to see
how the awareness influences their behavior, but it does explain that nudges

work. The landfill versus waste example is from the book. I based my
research off this example to see if the knowledge of the nudges made a
difference because it had already been proven the nudge works.

60
50
40

Overall Snack Purchase

Liklihood

30

Snack Purchase Liklihood

with Healthy Items
Informed Snack Purchase
Liklihood

20
10
0
Would Purchase

Would Not Purchase

60
50
40
Recycling Bin vs

30

Recycling Bin vs
Informed - Recycling Bin vs

20
10
0
Recycle

Waste/Landfill

Conclusions
Overall, the results show that consumers do not mind the nudges that
are helping people entirely and are not willing to comply with nudges that do
not benefit them. Consumers are ok with nudges as long as they are with
good intentions.
These results indicate that there is a strong relationship between the
likelihood of complying with the influences of the nudge with whether or not
the intentions are good or bad. I have found that consumers are much less
likely to take part in the desired behavior when marketers use nudges to
influence people to make decisions that are not in their best interest.
However, consumers seem to react positively to the nudges that are
beneficial to the general public.
Recommendations
After conducting this research, it is clear that consumers are not in
favor of the unethical nudges. It is not an issue that will be easily solved.
Companies are interested in gaining profit and are not always concerned
about their consumers well being. Although there is no definite way to
defeat this problem, I would recommend attempting to increase consumer
awareness of unethical nudges. We can do this by starting with smaller
groups such as Alpha Kappa Psi. Within our organization we have
professional seminars, I could present one about unethical nudge marketing.
Then with each members outside connections, more and more people will
become aware. With the consumers having a better knowledge of the
influences surrounding them, it is possible that they can avoid being
negatively nudged into buying products that they would otherwise not
purchase. I believe this will not affect the companies selling these products
too deeply, but they will simply be gaining profit honestly. The consumers will
most likely still purchase potato chips, soda and cookies, but they will be less
likely to feel betrayed and manipulated.
References
Dimitry Apollonsky. "What Is Nudging? - How to Influence an Audience." July
2015. Web. 5 Oct. 2015.
Thaler, Richard H., and Cass R. Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions about
Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 2008.
Print.