Criminal marketing

an inhuman side of business

Nils Bagelius

Evert Gummesson

pp. 98-112

in: Richard Varey, Michael Pirson (eds), Humanistic marketing, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

As a general concept and term we use criminal marketing in this chapter. Its definition is incomplete and fuzzy and we see it as tentative. The reason is simple: to define crime, organized crime, corruption, viola. tion of ethical and social standards, and so on is extremely compli. cated. According to the legal profession a criminal is a person who has been found guilty of a crime after trial. The criminologist's definition is wider, including cases when a person is not prosecuted and sentenced, often because of legal technicalities and ignorance of the police and courts. This means that official crime statistics are highly unreliable; the unknown — the dark figure — is considerable. Criminologists go further and include deviant and socially unacceptable conduct that can cause serious harm to society thus adding an ethical dimension. The ordinary citizen relates more readily to the criminologist definition (Walsh & Ellis, 2007; White & Hab ibis, 2005). Here we will focus on corruption and organized crime.