The ethical dilemma in Fingerhut’s pricing strategy was whether the company really exploited lower income individuals. Most people’s perspectives towards the company’s pricing strategy looked both unethical and deceptive. They thought Fingerhut was targeting and taking advantage of those of a selective group of lower income individuals with poor credit history and that the advertisements looked misleading, and their installment plans yield a false sense of the ability to afford certain market products. Many consumers also felt they were backed into a corner where they were forced to pay outrageous inflation prices for products that were well out of their price range to begin with. Things have been said about Fingerhut being highly unethical to take advantage of a group of individuals that don’t have the financial means to enter a transaction to begin with so that the company could be very profitable.
The real question to be asked is- is it the company’s fault for choosing this price strategy? Is it the company’s fault for being too manipulative? Is it the company’s fault that people still choose to buy over and over again? Overall did they really exploit the low income individuals/families with their marketing strategy? However, in my view, Fingerhut was acting ethically because they were doing business in a capitalist way and still managed to do socially responsible acts. Fingerhut’s CEO, Ted Deikel was mainly following his procedures under capitalism which was to conduct its business to generate profits as much as it could while still keeping the business going under the basic rules of society. Fingerhut had found a means on how they could do business and create greater profits out of it. Their strategy was to offer specialized goods to the low income customers who were also a part of the economy that was growing faster and every other company had ignored.
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