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The Scope of Marketing Ethics
Importance of unethical behavior in business
The Scope of Marketing Ethics
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Introduction
The term “Marketing ethics” has been defined as how moral standards of right and fair practices are implemented into organization and strategy (Murphy et al., 2005). In fact, marketing and ethics are usually seemed as a contradiction, because the purpose of marketing is monetary-oriented. The ultimate goal for business is making profit or generating sales, while ethics is moral and societal, such as contributing to the society. Introcaso et al (1998) quotes Michael Novak’s (1998) words that business might fail in the short term if introducing ethical model in competition, because high moral standards increase costs. Consequently, numerous companies launch misleading advertising, manufacture unsafe products, exploit labour right and waste natural resource for self-interest. They have indirectly deceived vulnerable consumers and sacrificed minority group.
Nevertheless, marketing ethics can be seen in positive ways and ethics can actually be moulded into developing blocks of competitive advantages (Wyburd, 1998). Similarly, The Hong Kong Ethics Development Centre documents (1998) also expressed that marketing ethics make better employees and company reputation, which all enhance the company’s competitive edge in the long term. This indicates that ethics is a win-win strategy for business if managers place consumer satisfaction and social welfare beyond profitability.
According to Meyers (2004), being ethical or not, is attributed to individual characteristics and business culture. This report will identify how individual characteristics affect ethical behaviour in an organization and its marketing strategy with The Body Shop (TBS) example applied and how it can strike the balance.
The relation between ethical behavio...
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... to some extent, is a crucial element for Anita Roddick and TBS to persist with ethical responsibility for years. It is a shame-induced sense of imperative. There is also evidence that Alter and Winger consider “shame”, is to criticise socially destructive behaviour. Therefore, ‘shame’ could assist individual and organisation avoid being unethical. For example, TBS was sold to L‘Oreal Group since 2006. During that time, L‘Oreal Group does not have ethical image or adapt Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). However, TBS remains its passion on moral values, instead of changing its business philosophy. In addition, TBS has influenced L‘Oreal Group successfully by starting introducing 6 Community Fair Trade ingredients across a range of its brands (Global Value Report, 2011). This means ‘shame’ not only makes TBS stick to core values strictly, but also affects others.
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.
In business it is important the a company establish some clear order of business when dealing with business ethics. Ethical business practices can build customer relationships. Unethical business practices can cause a business to lose customers. In this case study the reader will be come familiar with the ethical practice of a Red lobster store in Pleasant Hill, Pennsylvania.
The abovementioned process is influenced by the commoditisation of products and blurring of consumer's own perceptions of the companies' offering. In order to differentiate and position their products and/or services today's businesses employ advertising which is sometimes considered not only of bad taste, but also as deliberately intrusive and manipulative. The issue of bad advertising is topical to such extent that organisations like Adbusters have embraced the tactics of subvertising - revealing the real intend behind the modern advertising. The Adbusters magazine editor-in-chief Kalle Lason commented on the corporate image building communication activities of the big companies: "We know that oil companies aren't really friendly to nature, and tobacco companies don't really care about ethics" (Arnold, 2001). On the other hand, the "ethics and social responsibility are important determinants of such long-term gains as survival, long-term profitability, and competitiveness of the organization" (Singhapakdi, 1999). Without communications strategy that revolves around ethics and social responsibility the concepts of total quality and customer relationships building become elusive. However, there could be no easy clear-cut ethics formula of marketing communications.
Ethical behavior cannot be successfully shaped and maintained in isolation. Therefore, the internal controls characterized by individual attributes must be usually consistent with organizational structure, organizational culture and societal expectations. These four components are key elements for designing an environment supportive of theses ethical conducts (Cooper, 2012 pg. 164).
When running a business ethics plays an important role in the success of the business. “Ethics is the study of those values that relate to our moral conduct, including questions of good and evil, right and wrong, and moral responsibility” (pg. 2). Every individual will have a different set of moral codes. Moral codes are shaped by your personality, environment and religion. In this scenario and throughout this paper you will come to understand how our moral code of ethics plays a role in our daily decisions.
Ethical behavior is behavior that a person considers appropriate. A person’s moral principles are shaped from birth, and developed over time throughout the person’s life. There are many factors that can influence what a person believes is right, or what is wrong. Some factors are a person’s family, religious beliefs, culture, and experiences. In business, it is of great importance for an employee to understand how to act ethically to prevent a company from being sued, and receiving criticism from the public while bringing in profits for the company.
Every company faces ethical dilemmas in their dealings with customers and conducting business in multiple companies adds to the difficulty in adopting ethical models that conform to nation’s policies throughout the world. Nestlé, known for their chocolate and confections also holds a large share in the breast milk substitute or formula market and in the past few decades has been under sever scrutiny for the ethics employed in the advertisement and distribution of formulas in third world countries. For one employee’s opinion the company crossed an ethical and moral line by bribing healthcare workers into promoting free samples of their product in order to secure
Business ethics simply can be defined as the application of business values in the business practice of a company (Seawell 2010, p. 2). For a multinational company, business ethics is one of the critical aspects need to be taken into account in business decision-making processes. Failure to give attention on ethics may bring consequences on company’s reputation (Meyer & Jebe 2010, p. 159). The company is expected not only to pursue its own profits but also contributing to the environmental and social welfare of the community where it operates (Svensson & Wood 2008, p. 308).
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.
Ethical standards that evolved over the history of Western civilization deal with interpersonal relationships. What is right or wrong? What one should do and not do when dealing with other people. Ethical behavior in a business environment has not been as clearly defined. When businesses were small and the property of a few individuals, traditional ethical standards were applied to meet different situations. However, as businesses became larger, the interpersonal ethical relations did not provide any clear behavioral guidelines. Likewise, the principles of ethical relationships were even less pertinent to the corporate environments.
Nowadays, it has been acknowledged that having an ethical business could determine the future business success. According to the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer, consumers purchase a particular product because of their trust on the company produced it (Edelman Berland, 2015). Therefore, more company has instilled their ethical values to operate their business. Nike’s corporate as one of multinational enterprises (MNEs) has also implemented its code of conduct and code of leadership standard. The purpose of this policy is to ensure the ethical practices in their business. The company has revised these conducts since Herbert’s 1996 (cited in DeTienne & Lewis, p.361) criticized Nike as a giant pyramid which repress its labours. This critique was
Julep, a popular beauty subscription company, has been accused and ultimately fined for taking part in deceptive marketing practices. As a company, one should take their customers into account and make sure that they are aware of what they are signing up for. They did the wrong thing by misleading their customers into enrolling in their subscription plan without proper disclosure of the terms. Deceptive marketing is unethical because a business should treat their customers as part of their company and not just as their means for profit. Deceptive marketing is when any form of advertising or promotion misrepresents the nature of a product or service.
review the ethical question always open to critic, but an ethical marketing research is one most disregard and surfacely research area of the discipline. The objective of cross-cultural study research it is because different county will have different culture and different understanding of ethical, for instance some action one country may think ethical and another country may think as unethical. Those different attitudes will impact the marketing researchers. Since the researcher ask two-country group of student to take the self-administered questionnaires of 17 scenarios to find the differences of marketing research ethical attitudes between the 149 of USA respondent and 151 Turkey
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.