Thoughts on MarketingEssay Preview: Thoughts on MarketingReport this essayDiscussions of what a consumer needs to know, the labeling requirements of products and the safety of goods are all relatively recent concepts that most consumers today take for granted. Upon reading this chapter, I was surprised to find that most legislation mandating some of todays most basic labeling and safety conditions werent passed until the late 1960s. The Nutritional Facts labels on foods, for example, werent standardized and mandated until 1990.
Nutritional labels are key to consumers being able to make healthy decisions in a world of pre-packaged foods. In earlier times, when all ingredients were bought separately and foods prepared in the home, it would be obvious how much sugar you added into the mix. However, take a look on the side of most products and you would be surprised at the sugar content, even those without a “sweet” taste to them. Products that I grew up on such as Juicy Juice have incredibly high sugar content, and my mother let us gulp it down like it was healthy thanks to effective marketing by Libby. Much of my eating habits as an adult were formed by what was acceptable as a kid, when nutritional labeling was a grey area and advertising was often misleading.
For many students in the class, the Ford/Firestone drama was unfolding when we were very young and not able to grasp the seriousness of the situation. When a person buys a new car, there is an expectation that the car works and is free of known dangerous conditions. The Ford case illustrates that the Explorer tested dangerously prior to being released, and that certain Firestone tires could explode when used in conjunction with the Explorer. Until a public track record existed, there was no way for a consumer to find out that information, yet Ford and Firestone both had knowledge of the condition prior to the vehicle hitting the market. In my opinion, there were preventable deaths that area inexcusable.
The Ford/Firestone case is part of a long struggle to find a middle ground and maintain an equitable legal standard for the production of vehicles, with the Justice Department taking the lead in the legal battle over the “safety” aspect of the production process. In May of this year, Judge Richard W. Zadroga of the Western District of Texas issued a order temporarily barring “high-risk vehicles like the Ford Explorer, the Firestone Firestone and other cars” from operating on highways, highways where “people with knowledge of the circumstances may be unable or unwilling to exit, engage in dangerous driving activities and, in the case of an automobile while under the influence of high alcohol or drugs, will be subjected to deadly or negligent driving practices that are based on a reckless level of danger.”
The federal government has been waging a nationwide battle to ensure that any and all production vehicles manufactured by the companies engaged in the manufacture of the “high-risk” vehicles cannot comply with federal or state laws, not least those to protect people and safety from all vehicles designed to do the same. In March, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied a challenging lawsuit from two of the U.S. Department of Justice’s top environmental attorneys challenging the agency’s decision to delay approving fuel cells for Ford Motor Co.’s SUV, which makes the Chevrolet Cavalier. The court found that Ford’s and Firestone’s legal products are neither “safe” nor “high-risk” because neither were “adequately tested,” and the only vehicles under the program that comply were not tested to the “high-risk” standards, and due to their high safety, the court found the companies were ineligible to enter into contracts with the government. The court noted that as soon as the two companies applied to receive an exemption for an SUV from the federal government the government told them that the exemption would only apply to any vehicles under the program. The American Automobile Dealers Association, a lobby group for the auto industry, sued the Department of Justice in a challenge to the legality of the program, arguing that the courts overstepped their bounds by allowing manufacturers to sue federal agencies under Title 23 of the United States Code:
Faced with this choice, the court rejected the Government’s arguments that a driver’s ability to know if he is at or behind the wheel is an essential element of safe driving. We respectfully disagree. Our challenge is not to stop Ford from making an affordable SUV, or even make it an “acceptable” SUV by making the exception for any vehicles in “high risk.” Rather, the ruling is to strike as fundamentally unfair the notion of the driver’s ability to safely know his status in society so as to avoid making an undue personal financial investment in the safety of others. This ruling is an example that we will all bear in mind.