The Joneses

I.

Personal selling is a sales method where the seller convinces the customer to purchase a particular product/service face to face. The salesperson aims to emphasize various product features to prove their value and encourage the customer to buy it.

In the movie “The Joneses”, I would categorize the Jones family lives as personal selling because as they are using their personal relationships and influence to promote and sell products in their neighborhood. Additionally, the fact that the family members are acting and faking their lifestyle further supports the idea that their behavior is designed to persuade their neighbors to buy the products they are promoting.

II.

There are couple similarities I can enumerate between the sales tactics the Jones family employs and the marketing tactics of some brands.

First, I would say is the use of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing implies collaborating with people who have a huge social media following to push things to their followers. The Jones family sells things through their personal influence and relationships with their neighbors, whereas brands may work with social media influencers to reach a larger audience. In these recent years, we saw how Companies hire influencers with a huge presence on social media to promote or review their products in order to get the subscribers to like and maybe buy the products. For example, Jennifer Lawrence starred in a fragrance ad for Dior to promote their latest fragrance, “Joy by Dior “and also commented about it on her Instagram account, which has over 24 million followers. Dior was able to sell their fragrance to a big audience and build a positive link with the brand by working with Jennifer Lawrence.

Second, I could add product placement which is a marketing tactic in which a brand’s product is featured in a television show, film, or other kind of media. This can serve to increase brand awareness and exposure, as well as making the product more appealing to customers. In the film “The Joneses,” the members of the family use product placement by inserting the things they are marketing into their daily lives. For example, we saw the daughter Jenn who succeed to sell beauty products to girls in her school or when Kate was able to influence the ladies in the neighborhood to buy some workout clothes.

III.

Based on what I read I would say The Jones family members utilize deception and trickery to sell things to their neighbors throughout the film, which is not entirely ethical. They impersonate their lifestyle, relationships, and personalities in order to sell the things they promote. I would say their entire lifestyle is a complete lie even though they were pulling numbers and their sales were going up. And in business, this might be considered unethical persuasion because they are not being honest about who they are or what their motivations are. At, some point, this whole unethical behavior created some challenges for the neighbor Larry as he got himself in deeper debt trying to keep up with the lifestyle the Jones Family was promoting.

VI.

I will feel deceived, manipulated, and betrayed if I were friends with someone in the Jones family and found their secret.

I think I would prefer to end the friendship and confront them about their unethical behavior. It’s a good thing to sell products to friends and family but using deception to make the sale is not right. People are emotional and sometimes when some understand they’ve been used that can cause a conflict.