University of Reading (UOR)

“The Darkside of Electric Vehicles” examines both the benefits and challenges of EVs. While EVs reduce tailpipe emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, issues remain with electricity-related emissions, lithium mining, battery waste, and strain on power grids. The document also highlights consumer concerns like charging infrastructure and incentives, showing that widespread adoption depends on addressing these environmental, technological, and societal challenges.

This document examines the impact of service robots on customer experience, using a Japanese hotel’s robot failures as an example. It covers advances in AI and robotics, the growing market, and types of service robots, focusing on humanoid robots’ benefits like healthcare support and innovation. It also addresses challenges such as privacy, costs, customer distrust, and ethical concerns, supported by key theories like anthropomorphism and social exchange.

The Darkside of Marketing: Motivation and How the Brain Works examines how emotions, storytelling and human drives shape behaviour and marketing. It covers key emotions—happiness, fear, sadness, anger and shame—their evolutionary benefits, and how they can turn toxic. The document explains the three brain systems and how stories (quest, contest, downfall, scam) connect emotion and cognition to motivate action. Using drive theory, it highlights four human drivers—acquire, bond, comprehend, ...

This document introduces the dark side of marketing, focusing on ethical issues where marketing harms consumer wellbeing by promoting unnecessary or harmful products. It urges marketers to consider their societal responsibilities, challenge norms, and promote ethical practices. The module also covers health, consumer behaviour, and economic theories to inspire critical thinking and responsible marketing for the benefit of society.

The document outlines financial and accounting scandals, covering ethical issues like bribery, unfair pricing, and dishonest reporting. It highlights major cases such as WorldCom, Starbucks UK, and Patisserie Valerie, showing how misconduct harms investors, employees, and consumers. It also emphasises the role of media, corporate governance, and regulations in detecting and preventing fraud, as well as the reputational and financial consequences for companies.

The document “Dark Side of Marketing: Farm Animals” examines the ethical, environmental, and economic impacts of factory farming, highlighting animal cruelty, health risks, and ecological harm. It explores solutions like veganism and cultured meat, animal welfare standards, and how consumer attitudes often conflict with ethical intentions.

The document examines the challenges and responsibilities of marketing, highlighting its role in promoting consumption, shaping society, and sometimes creating inequality or monopolies. It traces marketing’s evolution from historical trade and moral philosophy to modern markets, emphasising barriers, information imbalances, and emotional appeals to consumers. It also considers marketing’s social impact on public services, ecological sustainability, and generational values, arguing that marke...

This seminar note provides a comprehensive overview of intellectual property (IP), covering patents, copyright, and design rights. Patents grant exclusive rights for novel, non-obvious, and industrially applicable inventions, with strategic uses including blocking competitors, evergreening, and ensuring freedom-to-operate. Copyright protects creative works like literature, music, software, and art, allowing creators to control reproduction, licensing, and revenue extension through adaptations an...

This document outlines careers and roles in intellectual property and media, from IP managers and patent examiners to rights directors and media executives, emphasising legal, technical, and business skills needed to protect and commercialise creative assets. It highlights diversity and class gaps in leadership and creative industries, the use of sensitivity readers, and representation in front of and behind the camera. The text also addresses media rights, residual payments, and how global mark...

The document outlines the intellectual property (IP) landscape, explaining that IP—covering patents, copyrights, trademarks, designs, trade secrets, and emerging AI-generated works—protects creations of the mind by granting exclusive rights, tracing its historical development, legal frameworks, ownership rules, economic and cultural impacts, and the challenges of balancing innovation, public interest, and commercial exploitation.