Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property
I will discuss three to five (3-5) ethical issues relating to marketing and advertising, intellectual property, and regulation of product .I will Argue for or against Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing by drug companies Determine who regulates compounding pharmacies under the current regulatory scheme, what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could / should have done in this scenario, and whether the FDA should be granted more power over compounding pharmacies.Decide whether PharmaCARE’s use of Colberian intellectual property would be ethical in accordance with:den Utilitarianism,Deontology,Virtue ethics,Ethics of care and my own moral / ethical compass.Then , I will Analyze the way PharmaCARE uses U.S. law to protect its own intellectual property while co-opting intellectual property in Colberia.Suggest at least three (3) ways the company could compensate the people and nation of Colberia for the use of its intellectual property and the damage to its environment.Compare PharmaCARE’s actions with those of at least one (1) real-world company whose creativity in skirting legal technicalities led to ethical lapses and financial loss.Determine the success PharmaCARE and WellCo shareholders would have in suits against the companies.Determine whether or not PharmaCARE lives up to its brand. Support the response.
Ehical means different things to differnet people always. However is ususally the sense of societal right and wrong. Marketing and advertisement is the key to the success of ones business. Business has an legal responsibility to ensure that any true and not deceptive, and donot break the law. Some ethical issues are discriminations, priva...
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...al responsibility. Pharma was selling their product in large quantities even though it was compounding pharmacie. CompCARE encouraged doctors to fax the list of the bogus patients. After the discovery that one of its products seemed to cause heart attacks, they ignored the complaints and still continued to file large orders instead of inspecting on the cause of the problem and to find ways to curb all that.. Their brand name and reputation cannot be recovered by going to their local store and getting another one.
Conclusion
There are so many federal laws that affect marketing and product safety. It can fall into many categories of regulatory activity and we must be knowledgeable if we are to protect the consumer as well as the organization. Bussiness has to mind ful when advertising because heri ads can be unethical and they can face many legal issues.
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs, the marketing behind pills, and the use of media outlets.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing of pharmaceuticals has grown increasingly in the past decade. The American public views prescription drug advertising for a wide range of medical conditions, including high cholesterol, depression, allergies, and erectile dysfunction. The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the content of these advertisements. Critics also have taken the position that the advertisements garner unearned trust from the public, are misleading, and promote unnecessary use of prescription drugs for common problems associated with aging. Proponents counter that DTC ads help eliminate stigmas associated with certain medical conditions, give patients an active role in their health care management, and encourages the doctor/patient relationship. There have been calls for bans on DTC pharmaceutical advertising, but the practice is protected under a business’s right to free speech. Regulation changes, particularly requiring the FDA to pre-approve marketing campaigns before they are released to the public, may be one way to appease opponents, while protecting the rights of pharmaceutical manufacturers to advertise to the average American consumer.
In America today, many people are in need of medical help. In fact,the Federal Trade Commission estimates that 75% of the population complain of physical problems (Federal Trade Commission 9). They complain, for example, of fatigue, colds, headaches, and countless other "ailments." When these symptoms strike, 65% purchase over-the counter, or OTC, drugs. In order to take advantage of this demand, five billion dollars is spent by the pharmaceutical industry on marketing each year . This marketing, usually in the form of advert...
Lahdesmaki (2005) argued that marketing can be an ethical contract between businesses and their customers. Therefore businesses are morally obliged to inform their customers about the products in store and provide all the information necessary via marketing strategy so the customer can make informed decisions about their purchase.
...ut throughout the past two decades, the realization of folly has called for a step in a new direction. For our society to finally rid ourselves of this parasite the change would have to be very slow; it would have to start with putting the entire industry in the hands of the government. In this way the corporation owners would truly be penalized while the product would be safer and the country would benefit from the profits. Marketing to children, testing underage smokers, using money to avoid the law, manipulating nicotine and suppressing research are among many of the immoral practices of the industry. Although they are very numerous and diverse they all share the same motive: to get rich. Money has become more important than compassion in the minds of the industry’s players. The success of the industry is merely a reflection of its immoral practices.
Pharmaceuticals are arguably one of the most contentious of all goods and services traded in the market. While medicines are as much a necessity as foods and water, they require more technical expertise and official approbation in the manufacture. Above all, they carry a moral weight that most market products do not (The Economist, 2014). This idea of moral can be linked to the recurring debate over whether a good health (which is represented by medicines, in this case) should be considered a basic human right, or just a normal commodity. A large portion of such controversy actually lies in an existence of drug patents: should we promote for longer-lasting patents or should we have their duration shortened?
3Walker, Hugh: Market Power and Price levels in the Ethical Drug Industry; Indiana University Press, 1971, P 25.
With the ongoing expansion of technology, being “at risk” has become a common diagnosis that requires its own cycle of prescriptions and treatments. It’s almost like biomedicalization has become a disease like state in itself. Fosket uses this perspective to analyze the emergence of pharmaceuticals as credible strategies for breast cancer prevention and the analogous emergence of a group of women designated “high risk” for breast cancer and targeted for pharmaceutical interventions. These interventions include Chemoprevention, which is “the practice of ingesting pharmaceuticals or nutraceuticals to prevent disease” (Fosket 331). This practice of Chemoprevention was also seen in many articles we read this semester, some of which is Dumit’s “Pharmaceutical Witnessing and Direct-to-Consumer Advertising”, where he mentions how people may experience things that may not be pathological, like heart burn, b...
In order to get insights into the consumer perception about the role of advertising we have reviewed a number of articles and conducted four in-depth interviews. A number of research papers reach opposed conclusions. These vary from the ones stating that "the ethicality of a firm's behavior is an important consideration during the purchase decision" and that consumers "will reward ethical behavior by a willingness to pay higher prices for that firm's product" (Creyer and Ross Jr.
Intellectual property abounds in our society, it is the direct result of the expression of an idea or other intangible material (Zuber, 2014). Our laws provide rights which are specific to the owner of the intellectual property. Furthermore, intellectual property is protected by laws just like tangible property is protected (Lau & Johnson, 2014). The most widely known forms of intellectual property rights include: trade secrets for confidential information, patents for a process/invention, copyrights for creative items and trademarks for brands (Lau & Johnson, 2014). While these rights may appear very defined, there are times when questions
Ethical issues in business arise because of conflicts between an individuals personal moral philosophies and values and values or attitudes of organization in which a person works and a society in which one lives. Ethical issues can be identified in terms of the major participants and functions of business. Ethical issues related to ownership include conflicts between manager’s duties to the owners and their own interests, also separation of ownership and control of business. Financial issue includes, for example, the accuracy of reported financial documents. Ethical issues can acquire between manages and employees, then employees are asked to carry out assignments they consider unethical. Consumers and marketing issues are related to providing safe desired products for a fear price and not harming people and an environment. Accountants also face ethical dilemma, they have to deal with competition advertising commission. All of this places the accounting profession in situation of ethical risk.
Business ethics are the core fundamentals of a business and are extremely important for organizations smooth and successful operation. It can have either positive impact by operating ethically or negative impact if they are caught up in any unethical situation or dilemma. Ethics has been defined as “study and philosophy of human conduct with an emphasis in determining the right and wrong” (Ferrell et.al, 2010). This case study will analyze Coca Cola for the ethical dilemmas they were involved in Belgium, and how the company responded to the issues.
Marketing is a system of business activates designed to plan, price, promote and distribute want-satisfying products, services and ideas to customers in order to achieve business objectives. Consumer law protects consumer’s rights in the marketplace as well as fair trading, competition and accurate information. On the other hand, ethical aspects of marketing are about making marketing decisions that are morally right. However, consumer law and ethical aspects of marketing have a lot of advantages and disadvantages in the marketplace, which impacts business 's sales and growth like it happened to: Harvey Norman, Nurofen, apple, etc.
In order to generate sales, marketers often promote aggressively and uniquely, unfortunately, not all marketing advertisements are done ethically. Companies around the globe spend billions of dollars to promote new products and services and advertising is one of the key tools to communicate with consumers. Conversely, some methods that marketers use to produce advertisements and to generate sales is deceptive and unethical. Ethical issues concern in marketing has always been noted in marketing practice. According to Prothero (2008), ethics itself has a profound, varied and rich past. It emphasizes on questions of right and wrong or good and bad.
The textbook defines business ethics as “the accepted principles of right or wrong governing the conduct of business people.” Business ethics also govern the members of a profession and the actions of an organization. Many organizations put into place an ethical strategy which is “a course of action that does not violate accepted principles.” These principles are used to guide organizations and employees to make the right decisions.