Marketing Ethics Essay

Marketing Ethics: The Marketers standards of conduct and moral values. The 5 areas of ethical concerns for Marketers are: Marketing Research – ex: Gathering marketing information in exchange for money or free offers. Product Strategy – ex: Product quality, planned obsolescence, packaging. Distribution – ex: Determining the appropriate degree of control over a channel. Promotion – ex: Gifts and Bribes Pricing – Most unethical pricing behaviours are also illegal. Social Responsibility: involves marketing philosophies, policies, procedures, and actions whose primary objective is the enhancement of society. The 4 levels of Social Responsibility are: Economic – Be Profitable; the foundation upon which all others rest Legal – Obey The Law; Play by the rules of the game Ethical – Be Ethical; Obligation to do what is right, just, and fair. Philanthropic – Be a Good Corporate Citizen; Contribute resources to the community, improve quality of life.

One of the key components was that now, civil penalties could be assessed for failure to follow FTC’s orders, such as cease and desist orders, should the respondent ignore the order. Previously, they would just be sanctioned. In addition, the amendment to Section 5 was to include unfair and deceptive acts or practices. Prior to this passage of the Wheeler-Lea Act, it was the burden of the FTC to prove unfair methods of competition. The Wheeler-Lea Act expanded on the food and drug advertising, as well. (Brown, 1947)

Many consumers are often not aware that a large number of companies do not label everything they put

My first article that I ran into for my research on a business with ethical issues is the famous clothing line Calvin Klein. Calvin Klein is well known to have a fashion line of high quality clothes for men and women. The reason why I think his practice is unethical is because they are using sexually act and messages in ads to promote their brand of clothes. According to Armstrong, Kotler, “marketing system uses cultural pollution in commercials to interrupt people 's minds with messages of materialism, sex, power, or status.”(2017, Pg. 498) Calvin Klein has tried to sell their clothing line by input sexual explicit text message through ads and media to draw in buyers. In the American Marketing Association

This case study analyzes the experiences of Courtland Kelley at General Motors (GM). Courtland Kelley a third generation GM worker put his job on the line by pushing the GM managers and executives to fully respond to the safety issues found while working as a safety inspector at the company. Kelley along with his supervisor Bill McAleer first discovered the issues while auditing GM cars at rail yards across the country, a spot check of vehicles before the cars were cleared to be delivered to the dealers. McAleer was taken off the audit as a result, who subsequently sued the company seeking whistle-blower protection. The case was eventually dismissed by a judge in favor of GM. The judgement only increased Kelley’s

3. The policy should be changed and this impact AAA to acquire more Wholesalers and grow their profit margin by allowing the label.

Discuss what is meant by the term “customer orientation”. Illustrate with examples how companies demonstrate their customer orientation by reference to at least two elements of the marketing mix.

Top managers develop long-range plans, called strategic plans that define the company's overall mission and goals. Strategic planning focuses more on issues that affect the company's future survival and growth. To develop strategic plan, top managers also need information from outside the company, such as economic forecasts, technology trends, competitive threats, governmental issues and shareholder concerns.

This document represents The i-Fusions Consultant’s Report on BRITA. The company’s current business situation is analysed and various options for action considered. The report aims to identify a clear marketing strategy for Brita in order to address the current issues facing the company the associated falling sales.

In this paper, I have researched to find out how this grant empire has become and remain so successful. I found out that one of the reasons is because it has been able to maintain the goals and standards that its owner, Mr. Sam Walton has built it upon. Even after his death, Wal-Mart continues to expand and grow in other countries. Wal-Mart is considered one of the top ten global companies today. Mr. Walton’s main goal was to sell products at a low price so that people could live a better life. Another reason is because Wal-Mart uses certain market mix strategies such as the four P”. These strategies, price, promotion, product and place.

As Jobber(2012) was claiming, the marketing concept is "Achieving corporate goals by meeting and exceeding customer needs, better than the competition". Marketing is the process of telling a true story in an unforgettable manner. As a consequence, it became an essential tool in the competitive business environment. The main objective is to maximize the company 's profit by showing up with stunning adverts. Bearing in mind the development of technology, "It is well known that markets grow by the reduction of unit prices: this is how the computer became a household necessity", this could not be possible without a good marketing strategy (Kapferer 2012, p.205).

To fully understand the nature of the question posed one must know the meaning of ethics. Webster’s dictionary defines ethics as the philosophical study of the moral value of human conduct and of the rules and principles that ought to govern it; moral philosophy, the moral fitness of a decision, course of action, etc. Basically, I believe ethics is how one makes a decision according to the social norm that surrounds him. The social norm includes not only the culture but the laws and standard procedures of the environment. These laws and norms must be fully understood before one can understand the ethical significance of one’s decision.

Ethical problems in marketing starts with conflicts and disagreements. Each party in the marketing transaction brings expectations of how the business relationship will exist and how the transaction should be conducted. Some ethical problems in marketing research aren’t always the invasion of privacy and stereotyping. Selective marketing is used to discourage the demand from undesirable markets or just by disenfranchising them altogether. Examples of unethical market is the exclusion markets such as gay, ethnic minorities, and plus-size markets.

Businesses have been relatively passive in investigate their in marketing ethics and are still operating according to traditional business models and process that do not reflect consumer interests and ethical implications of their activity often continue afterthought and are yet to be thoroughly incorporated into management decision-making. The contingency framework can accelerate this pre-emptive approach to ethical decision-making. To embed ethics into firms planning and strategy formulation process , marketers should learn from consumers ethical evaluation of their marketing techniques (Smith and Cooper-Martin 1997). An “ethical execution of the marketing program. In addition to financial , market, and competitive objectives, marketers should include consumer concerns and ethical integrity as important criteria for management decision making . Furthermore, ethics must be matched throughout the marketing planning process from product development, market selection , advertising and promotion execution.

Process-orientated framework, analyzing ethical problems in terms of the categories used by marketing specialists; Research, price, promotion, placement Specific issues in marketing ethics: