Public Policy and Ethical Issues in Direct Marketing

Usually direct marketers and their customers like mutually rewarding relation-ships, however, sometime, a darker side emerges. Unfairness, Irritation, deception, and fraud are general complaints. Many of the consumers perceive that an innocent yearning to become "close" to the   customer actually is an invasion of privacy (it is the toughest issues facing the industry).

1.    Consumers may benefit from database marketing, however at what cost to privacy?
2.    In a company's desire to build a database, they frequently get carried away.
3.    In a recent survey, 79% of consumers expressed concern regarding their privacy. In realism, direct marketing is just too costly to waste on consumers who don't want it.