Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Abstract

Almost everyone agrees that businesses have a moral obligation to be honest. Less emphasized is the fact that customers, the co-creators of value, are likewise obliged to be honest. Customer dishonesty like business dishonesty creates deadweight economic losses. Marketers can improve the moral infrastructure of society and eliminate these deadweight losses if they bring the moral accountability of the gemeinshaftlich village to the gesellschaftlich global economy. Customers can be made accountable through an expansion of credence markets that measure integrity and that compel the dishonest to bear the costs of their own misbehavior. The feasibility of expanding credence markets is enhanced because expansion serves the interest of honest customers who co-create most or all economic value and who thus have high levels of latent economic power. But achieving these worthwhile ends requires a rethinking of the issue of privacy.

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Published by Allied Academies

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