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Keeping up with The Joneses: Stealth, secrets, and duplicity in marketing relationships

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  • Pehlivan, Ekin
  • Berthon, Pierre
  • Hughes, Mine Üçok
  • Berthon, Jean-Paul

Abstract

Stealth, or undercover, marketing involves the disguising of marketing communications that marketers undertake to purposefully influence their audiences without the audiences being aware of these activities. Inasmuch as stealth marketing involves secrecy (the withholding of information) and miscommunication (the communication of partial or misleading information), it is at least on some level duplicitous. Duplicity is the double act of secrecy and misrepresentation. In this article we explore duplicity in marketing communications. Specifically, we deconstruct the movie The Joneses to explore the various ways in which both marketers and consumers employ duplicity in their communications—to each other and themselves. We conclude by exploring the ethical and functional issues duplicity raises, and suggest that irony is one way in which duplicity can be ethically and productively employed.

Suggested Citation

  • Pehlivan, Ekin & Berthon, Pierre & Hughes, Mine Üçok & Berthon, Jean-Paul, 2015. "Keeping up with The Joneses: Stealth, secrets, and duplicity in marketing relationships," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 591-598.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:58:y:2015:i:6:p:591-598
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2015.06.002
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Diego Rinallo & Suman Basuroy & Ruhai Wu & Hyo Jeon, 2013. "The Media and Their Advertisers: Exploring Ethical Dilemmas in Product Coverage Decisions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 425-441, May.
    2. Andy Wible, 2011. "It’s All on Sale: Marketing Ethics and the Perpetually Fooled," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 99(1), pages 17-21, February.
    3. Swanepoel, Celeste & Lye, Ashley & Rugimbana, Robert, 2009. "Virally inspired: A review of the theory of viral stealth marketing," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 9-15.
    4. Roy, Abhijit & Chattopadhyay, Satya P., 2010. "Stealth marketing as a strategy," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 69-79, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Berthon, Pierre & Chohan, Raeesah & Pehlivan, Ekin & Rabinovich, Tamara, 2022. "Fixing fake news: Understanding and managing the marketer-consumer information echosystem," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 65(6), pages 729-738.
    2. Andrea Stevenson Thorpe & Stephen Roper, 2019. "The Ethics of Gamification in a Marketing Context," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 597-609, March.
    3. Fedorenko, Ivan & Berthon, Pierre & Edelman, Linda, 2023. "Top secret: Integrating 20 years of research on secrecy," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    4. Weiquan Wang & May Wang, 2019. "Effects of Sponsorship Disclosure on Perceived Integrity of Biased Recommendation Agents: Psychological Contract Violation and Knowledge-Based Trust Perspectives," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 507-522, June.

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