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Ethical Marketing Techniques And Its Effects On The Sustainable Business Environment

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To what extent unethical marketing techniques could damage the sustainable business environment. Discuss.
Marketing is like a double-edged sword, if it is adopted properly, it will give profits to a company; however, if it is used inadequately, it will give harm. It is undeniable that today’s business operations have more intense competition level against each other due to the advancement of technology that allows people to receive more information. Marketing plays the key role in making products being recognized by consumers. To get people’s attention, some massages about the product need to be sent to the target market. With the high level of competition, the unethical marketing issues arise in order to make their own firms gain more …show more content…

To illustrate, the famous fast food restaurant, Burger King, used the famous clown character, Ronald McDonald, from its competitor’s company, McDonald’s, in Burger King’s TV advertisement. It is obvious that the advertisement tries to communicate that even Ronald McDonald chooses Burger King’s hamburger (MARQUES, 2005). And, this is misleading as it effects McDonald’s reputation. In addition, this TV advertisement was banned in Germany and was a big discussion issue in Netherlands (van Leeuwen, 2005; MARQUES, 2005).

Figure 2: Ronald McDonald visits Burger King advertising campaign
From: http://www.marques.org/Newsletters/Downloads/Issue%20No081.pdf

The sustainable business environment can be greatly impacted by these unethical marketing practices. More and more companies use unethical techniques to market their target group, and sometimes, to beat their competitors. Those companies may select the unethical way to do marketing and may claim that it is technically legal as the action is not against the law, but it fails in term of the ethical view. Nevertheless, it is not worth for those companies to apply unethical marketing strategies as there are negative consequences from using these unethical tactics. Before discussing about the negative impacts of immoral marketing techniques, let’s take a look at the sustainable business environment first. Lee Cockerell, the former executive vice president of

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