*deceptive packaging & advertising
*the creation of "false" needs
*invasion of privacy
*telemarketing sales calls
*selling your purchase histories

Your thoughts?

I think that people have the right to say 'no', and if they want to buy something then they will. You cant force someone to get out their credit card, fill in online forms etc (if buying online), although you can 'persuade' them ;-)

I do not think marketing is unethical, but I do think it is often intrusive and in bad taste. Marketing is a service, and depending on what we are marketing, the consumer will hopefully benefit by purchasing the product. I have never helped market a product I feel would be harmful or that I think is a scam of some type. To me, that would truly be unethical.

Marketing isnt unethical. Marketing is essential.
There are however some rather unscrupulous marketers who will happily partake in unethical practices,

Free trials with auto renewal - IMO rather an unethical marketing tactic, not always but often enough the marketer wont really outline to clearly the fact that after xyz days the trial ends and the CC is rebilled for full months membership. Some of these trials may only be 1 day long!

Virii Infectii!! - Some unscrupulous marketers deiberately have yur machine infected with spyware, to sell you their spyware removal software!

Affiliate theft - another unscrupulous and downright unethical trick is using various methods to strip out affiliate cookies from surfers and replace them with the marketers own affiliate cookies. Some marketers will do this secretly in the background on their high traffic pages, but the worst case I have seen of this was an actual affiliate sponsor company setup to pay per install of a toolbar, and the toolbar stripped out and replaced cookies for most of the major affiliate networks, dispiccable!!

Like webmartyr says, marketing isn't unethical but essential. Really, it's a facet of business that can't be neglected but I think in order for it to be ethical it needs to remain in the realm of good taste.

Pop-ups that tell you your computer has a virus that the originator of the pop-up can solve are really pretty bad. I think many people are web-savvy enough to know to just ignore these but I can't help think of my grandparents clicking through them and worrying about what has happened to their computer.

It's the same with many of the survey and money/prize offering marketing ploys.

I think the ethics of marketing end up being determined by the people behind it, not the practice itself.