Answer

Deceptive marketing practices refer to advertising practices that mislead consumers into making decisions that are influenced by misrepresentation of products and services. This trend has mostly affected consumer trust towards e-commerce sites as they have the habit of misrepresenting their products to scam customers into buying substandard products. It is upon this backdrop that this essay discusses three categories of deceptive marketing practices; pricing, promotion and packaging.
d. Deceptive Pricing
This is when retailers and whole sellers trick customers into thinking that the value of a certain highly priced product has been lowered. Kotler and Armstrong explain that this practice is manifested when retailers advertise reductions in prices when in reality, they doubled the prices before introducing promotional offers (64). For instance, a retailer may put a discount on a commodity after overpricing it to deceive customers into thinking it is rightly priced.
e. Deceptive Promotion
Deceptive promotions entail adopting practices such as misrepresentation of product performance and features to lure customers. This includes promotional techniques like bait and switch pricing used to convey false and misleading information about a product (Kotler & Armstrong, 84). An example is when a marketer increases the price of men’s shoes from two thousand dollars to three thousand dollars and then introduces a discount of thirty three percent. The customer is actually deceived into thinking he is getting the thirty three percent discount but in real sense the shoe is being sold by its market price.
f. Deceptive Packaging
Deceptive packaging entails using large packages to mislead the customer into thinking that the product is bigger. In addition, some business could indicate wrong ingredients and quantities or false information (Kotler & Armstrong, 84). Such practices are unethical and could make customers perceive a certain product as superior only to end up disappointed.
In conclusion, this paper identifies the three deceptive marketing practices used by retailers in real market situations, namely; deceptive pricing, deceptive packaging and deceptive promotion. These practices are unethical because they misinform consumers.