The Chartered Institute of Marketing hosted a webinar on 11 February 2021 under the theme “The Darker Side of Nudging”. The speaker, Liz Barnes, outlined in her presentation the side effects of nudge marketing on people’s behaviour and called on good practices in digital marketing.

The event opened my mind about what people may encounter in everyday life when visiting different commercial platforms. For example, companies urging customers to upgrade the membership or putting pressure on customers to purchase the train ticket by counting down the time of the promotion. However, the impact of nudging in business environment has on people’s behaviour would be positive if marketers refrain from unethical processes.

Marketers have become much more unethical by using some techniques of manipulation, such as showing the number of viewers on the website. More importantly, Liz Barnes referred to nudge marketing, and sludges, as a new term in the business, but not a new concept. For me, the concept was new since it was described as a tool to help people make the right choice by reassuring the customer or simplifying the process.

Digital and nudge marketing have literally impacted marketing ethics through cognitive biases and heuristics processes. Therefore, some types of nudges embed manipulation and coercion whereas others involve persuasion and information for the benefit of the people. Boosts are associated with information for preferred choice whereas nudges are triggers with biases directed to the target audience. Marketers should recall that marketing aims to persuade, inform and remind the market but not to manipulate people’s psychological state of mind through coercion-like options surrounding decision-making.

I discovered that the patterns of sludges and dark nudges are very harmful to people since many dark sludges are hidden behind digital marketing, such as the countdown timer, low stock message, activity message. Furthermore, I agree that regulation could be the answer to remove this darkness over the public’s interests in favour of decision-making rather than manipulation. Ultimately, the integrity of marketers is questioned over people’s rights of freedom, openness over decision and options of policies to reach their own goals and make own decisions.

Written by Jean-Claude Mbwankiem, MSc International Relations Management student, University of Bedfordshire Business School