Would you categorize the way the Jones family lives as personal selling? Why or why not? Personal selling is persuading a customer to buy a product or service through face-to-face interaction. While the Jones family in the movie may not be selling products or services directly to customers, they promote a particular lifestyle and image to their neighbors and peers, which can be seen as a form of personal selling. They are also using their relationships and influence to influence the behavior of those around them, which is another aspect of personal selling.

What similarities do you see between the Jones family’s sales tactics and the marketing tactics of some of your favorite brands? Give an example.                                                        The Jones family in the movie uses a variety of marketing tactics to promote their lifestyle to their community, such as using social influence, product placement, and endorsements. Similarly, many brands use these tactics in their marketing campaigns to appeal to their target audience. For example, a famous makeup brand may use social media influencers to endorse their products, or a clothing brand may use product placement in movies or TV shows to increase brand awareness.

Based on what you read in the course materials and what you observed in this movie, do you think the way products are marketed in this movie is ethical?                                            It depends on one’s perspective and interpretation of ethics. While the Jones family’s marketing tactics may not be illegal, some viewers may view their methods as manipulative and deceptive, as they intentionally hide their true intentions from their peers. This is not entirely ethical because you can not know if the presenter recommends this product because he loves the product or just because he gets money from the company that produces it. In Israel, we have a law that every promotion funded needs to be mentioned at the beginning of the video or advertisement in order not to mislead the public.

How would you feel if you were friends with someone in the Jones family before you found out their secret? What about afterward?                                                                                If I were friends with someone from the Jones family before learning about their secret, I would initially feel angry and surprised. Discovering their true intentions might leave me feeling betrayed and deceived. The revelation of their mystery could strain our relationship and even lead to its eventual breakdown. The reason is that I would not like a friend who tries to make money from our friendship without taking care of my needs and prioritizing only business on the people he knows and seeing them as a wallet.

The film is a fictionalized account of what happens to a group of salespeople assembled to sell an overpriced product after they become a fake family and are torn between reality and lies.

The film’s approach is classified as PERSONAL SELING. They are salespeople assembled to sell a product. In reality, there are many similar sales methods such as social media and pyramid schemes.

It is unethical to lie to get people to buy expensive products.
If you become friends with them, you may find their lifestyle refreshing, but there are limits to their lies.Many consumers also have the ability to make judgments, so few people would continue to be deceived by a fake family member in real life.

Personal selling is something we encounter a lot of the time—I like to think it’s something I can spot a mile off, but it’s not always so clear, as The Joneses tries to illustrate.

The way the Jones family sell products in this film could be viewed as an extreme version of personal selling. We are presented with their neighbor (Summer Symonds) as a more typical version of such a tactic, as she sells her beauty products the same way we might be familiar with Avon or even the Allez Vous line on Schitt’s Creek. Summer’s methods are more transparent, as we see at her gala event and her clumsy introduction to the Joneses when they first move in. Conversely, the Joneses have a more elaborate and all-consuming personal sales technique.

The Joneses identify specific demographic segments that each of them target in their various ways, and their whole lives are dedicated to putting on a show of being a real family who genuinely enjoy and recommend specific products to their “friends.” This is not entirely ethical, as while personal selling is typically identifiable as such, it isn’t entirely clear here if they genuinely like and recommend the products or not.

I think there are referral programs that fall into a similar gray area – consumers do use the products they are recommending, but there is an undisclosed benefit to them when their recommendation results in a sale. Companies that spring to mind with regards to referrals that benefit the referrer include Mint Mobile and Prose (which a friend just recommended to me and then followed up with a second text a day later to tell me about the referral bonus to her…). I don’t mind it in a context where you expect it, or where it is disclosed, but I would certainly feel angry if a “friend” did something like the Joneses did (indeed, I don’t think I could call them friends if their whole life was a fiction in the way they are shown in the film!).