The Ethics of Special Promotions

There was a humorous news story online this week about a bar in Singapore that is planning to take the traditional “Ladies Night” promotion to an extreme never seen in the Western World: called “Fill My Cups” it’s a merchandise give-away program that offers free drinks to women based on bra size. The better endowed the woman is, the more free drinks she gets, with those in the “D” or higher sizes getting a free bottle of premium vodka (which retails locally for the equivalent of $168 USD). You can read the story here if you want to, but assuming that the news site offering the story isn’t just having one on us, the piece offers a number of interesting ethical questions…

First off, doesn’t this count as discrimination? In the U.S. there have already been lawsuits complaining that conventional “Ladies Night” programs, which merely feature discounted drinks for all persons claiming to be female, unfairly discriminate against male bar patrons. Most of these cases have been thrown out on the grounds that the businesses are merely attempting to attract a segment of the population that has traditionally be underserved in their industry (and that most male bar patrons would rather have more women in the place than lower booze prices anyway), but when we start getting into the range of two or three days of take-home pay at minimum wage (or a week’s worth of groceries for a family of four) this doesn’t seem as funny, somehow. Giving one class of customer with specific appearance characteristics free merchandise while excluding all of the others is just one small step away from having different pricing scales for people on the basis of whether or not you like them, which is one even smaller step away from doing so based on skin color or ethnicity – which isn’t funny at all…

On the other side of the issue, the bar in this story isn’t planning to make a regular policy of giving away merchandise to anyone; the promotion is a single-night event for which they are taking reservations in advance. Moreover, the event is clearly a loss-leader; the owners are hoping that the women receiving free drinks will bring male companions (who will have to pay for their own drinks) or attract single males who will, in turn, consider a venue populated by large-breasted women who have been drinking heavily to be suitable to their own requirements. Viewed in this context, the event isn’t any more discriminatory than any other loss-leader, and if the women in the bar’s market consider the idea offensive or derogatory, they have the very simple action of not attending. This leads us to consider the question of whether it is ethically correct for people who are not being harmed in any substantive way to interfere with a business development stunt simply because they don’t approve of it. If the owners feel this program will increase their business, don’t they have a right to stage such an event in peace?

Of course, we can also argue about the corrosive effects of additional appearance-based value judgments, the promotion of alcohol consumption, the objectification of women, or inappropriate loss-leader promotions on our society (or Singapore’s society, anyway) in general, and the ethics of all of those things, but that’s really beyond the scope of the story – and today’s question. Is the loss-leader promotion described in the linked news story an unethical business practice that promotes the worst elements of society in order to sell more intoxicants, or is it a harmless business-development exercise? It’s worth thinking about…