Ethics in Marketing
Ethics in marketing refers to the moral principles and standards that guide the conduct of marketing activities. It involves ensuring that marketing practices are fair, honest, and transparent, and that they do not harm individuals or society. Ethical marketing also encompasses respecting consumer privacy, promoting diversity and inclusion, and being environmentally responsible.
8 Key excerpts on "Ethics in Marketing"
eBook - ePubPet Training and Behavior Consulting
A Model for Raising the Bar to Protect Professionals, Pets and Their People
- Niki J Tudge, Susan J Nilson, Debra A Millikan(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Joanne Tudge(Publisher)
...This means consciously avoiding harmful actions or omissions by embodying high ethical standards and adhering to all applicable laws and regulations in the choices we make. 2. Foster trust in the marketing system. This means striving for good faith and fair dealing so as to contribute toward the efficacy of the exchange process as well as avoiding deception in product design, pricing, communication, and delivery of distribution. 3. Embrace ethical values. This means building relationships and enhancing consumer confidence in the integrity of marketing by affirming these core values: honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency and citizenship. Ethics in Marketing The ethics of marketing analysis depends on three components: the intent of the action, the means or methods, and the end or outcome of the strategy or tactic (Murphy, Laczniak, Bowie & Klein, 2012). However, over the last 20 years or so, a number of ethics scandals have plagued the international business environment with fraudulent intent and devastating consequences across the financial sectors of the U.S. economy. Apparently, no industry is exempt from deceptive sales and marketing practices that may run through branding statements, marketing strategies and/or product sales. Over the last 20 years or so, a number of ethics scandals have plagued the international business environment with fraudulent intent and devastating consequences across the financial sectors of the U.S. economy. Apparently, no industry is exempt from deceptive sales and marketing practices that may run through branding statements, marketing strategies and/or product sales. What Is Marketing? It would be remiss to discuss service product transparency and consumer protection without first exploring marketing ethics and strategies. But first, we must ask exactly what is marketing and where does it fit into the realm of ethical business practices? There are many definitions of marketing available...
eBook - ePubProducts for Conscious Consumers
Developing, Marketing and Selling Ethical Products
- Kemi Ogunyemi, Vanessa Burgal, Kemi Ogunyemi, Vanessa Burgal(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Emerald Publishing Limited(Publisher)
...Introduction 1.1 What Is Ethical Marketing? Ethics is defined as a collection of various principles, rules and values that direct how various parties engage in person-to-person interactions as well as intrapersonal behaviours (Spence & Heekeren, 2005). In the field of marketing, ethics refers to the various standards and principles that guide the manner in which members of an organisation conduct themselves and the results of their decisions while marketing products (Peterson & Ferrell, 2005). In the past, the emphasis on ethics was placed on the need to ensure that businesses were carrying out their operations within the confines of the legal and regulatory framework. However, we are aware that although a particular transaction or behaviour might be strictly legal, it might be unethical. With a rapidly growing class of ethically conscious consumers, the expectation for a company to adhere to set ethical conduct and social responsibility has been emphasised. To the point, there are three undertakings used to illustrate the difference between ethical and legal conduct; there are undertakings that are deemed proper and work within the legal confines but there is no obligation to undertake these activities from a legal point of view; other activities are outright illegal and wrong; other undertakings constitute a legal obligation but they may also not be right from a moral point of view (Fischer, Lovell, & Silva, 2013). A key characteristic of ethics is that it is difficult to measure ethics since the sources leading to the ethical behaviour are numerous and what may be ethical today might in some circumstances not be ethical tomorrow. The stakeholders who participate in marketing transactions have various suppositions that they expect their transacting parties to meet. Due to the diversity in humans, establishing Ethics in Marketing should be viewed from three angles, that is at an individual level, organisational level and societal level...
eBook - ePub- Lynne Eagle, Stephan Dahl, Patrick De Pelsmacker, Charles R. Taylor(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...xvii, citing definitions originating in the 1990s) More recently the focus has moved to an examination of what distinguishes ethical marketing: Ethical marketing refers to practices that emphasize transparent, trustworthy, and responsible personal and/or organizational marketing policies and actions that exhibit integrity as well as fairness to consumers and other stakeholders. (Murphy, 2017, p. 85) Of all marketing activity, advertising/marketing communication is the most heavily criticised. It has been suggested by some that that advertising ethics is an oxymoron (Beltramini, 2003). Beltramini also said that ‘Advertising ethics has sustained itself as a towering lightning rod for controversy, at times singularly and fully credited with the demise of professional business practices, and the rise of underhanded and unprofessional commercialism’ (p. 215). While academics and many members of the public do recognise that advertising can perform positive societal functions including information provision, many simultaneously view advertising as serving primarily the interests of business with minimal consideration of other stakeholders. Calfee and Ringold (1994) found that, throughout history, people have a mix of contradictory beliefs about advertising. As a result of these paradoxical beliefs, it is very important to the advertising field that ethics be top of mind among both academicians and practitioners. According to annual Gallup polls (e.g. Gallup, 2018), advertisers rank below only politicians, lawyers and certain types of salespeople (e.g. of used cars) on the list of the most admired professions in the world. While there is a strong case to be made that advertising makes a positive contribution to society, there is simultaneously concern, among many, that bad advertising practice has negative consequences such as misleading people and attempting to dupe people into desiring and buying things they do not need...
eBook - ePub- Samuel Sebhatu, Bo Enquist, Bo Edvardsson, Samuel Petros Sebhatu, Bo Enquist, Bo Edvardsson(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...5) The latter definition spells out the pathway for marketing to be truly ethical. And, to fully understand the nature of “ethical marketing,” it is necessary to discuss the abstract components: transparency, trust, responsibility, and integrity. Obviously, ethical marketing consists of far more than good intentions. There are, unfortunately, numerous instances where firms practice unethical marketing, such as the price gouging that occurred in the sale of ventilators and personal protective equipment (e.g. masks) during the recent COVID-19 global pandemic. Four major philosophical ethical theories undergird the field of normative marketing ethics. They are: consequences-based theories, which say that marketing decisions are ethical or unethical exclusively based on whether they produce good or bad outcomes (e.g. utilitarianism); duty-based theories, which state that intentions or motivations (not outcomes) are what determines whether a marketing action is ethical (e.g. Kant’s categorical imperative); contract-based theories, which propose that companies should fashion a hypothetical contract with their stakeholders and the broader society (e.g. Rawlsian “justice as fairness”); and the ethics of virtue, which focuses on the decider and his/her moral character rather than on the particulars of a decision. (These theories and the literature in marketing ethics supporting them are further explained and can be consulted in L&M, 2019.) Normative marketing ethics can inform marketing practice on several levels. Among those identified by L&M (2019) that are discussed in both this chapter and throughout this volume are sustainable consumption and marketing, the interface between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and marketing ethics, the indispensability of a stakeholder orientation, and “base of the pyramid” issues that address the special obligations to the disadvantaged...
- Elizabeth Parsons, Pauline Maclaran, Andreas Chatzidakis(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This is followed by a discussion of the role of marketing ethics in contemporary society that explores how marketing ethics might offer practical guidelines to both organisations and the individuals working within them. The chapter then examines some ethical criticisms of marketing practice including: new media marketing, marketing research, advertising, and product and brand management. In closing, the chapter draws together these debates in a case study which explores the marketing of cosmetics. Marketing ethics: a definition and scope Surprisingly few authors offer an actual definition of marketing ethics. Drawing from Aristotelian moral philosophy for inspiration, Gaski observes that marketing ethics could be considered as ‘standards of conduct and moral judgement applied to marketing practice’ (1999: 316). Murphy et al. open this out to include institutions themselves, defining marketing ethics as ‘the systematic study of how moral standards are applied to marketing decisions, behaviours and institutions’ (2005: xvii). However, ethical standards typically vary from one institutional environment to the next and from one culture to the next, which makes a universal application of a set of ethical marketing codes problematic. Complications also emerge from differing perspectives on ethics. In this respect Laczniak et al. (1995) found that the views of American consumers and CEOs differed widely, with consumers being far more pessimistic than CEOs about the ethical climate of businesses. Defining the scope of marketing ethics is also difficult as the literature is both complex and extensive. At several intervals over the past thirty years scholars have made attempts to summarise and review this body of work. Murphy and Laczniak (1981) locate an initial debate on marketing ethics in the 1930s, although they observe that more significant developments occurred in the 1960s (i.e. Bartels, 1967)...
eBook - ePub- Erdener Kaynak, Nedjet Delener(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The Growing Importance of Ethical Issues in International Marketing and Their Practical Relevance: An Introduction Nejdet Delener As the global awareness of ethical and corporate social responsibility issues is continually increasing, conducting business transactions efficiently and effectively in a mere technocratic sense is no longer sufficient to preserve the acceptability of business persons by society. Ethical and corporate social responsibility considerations must become as much an integral part of the managerial decision making process as marketing, production, financial, legal, and human resource considerations. A step toward better global decision making is to be aware of and acknowledge the clash among different cultures. This acknowledgement is really a process of learning about other cultures without making business or moral judgments based solely on United States customs and mores. The business persons should know the historical, cultural, political, and legal facts about a country, as these facts influence the way the business people think, interact, and do business. While business ethics has flourished as a field of inquiry for the past decade, its theories and analyses have been heavily oriented toward domestic issues and duck difficult international challenges (Donaldson, 1992). The operations of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) have posed major challenges to governments, development agencies, and analysts of international business. Because ethics belong at the core of managerial decisions and strategies, corporate managers need to know the dominant values of their companies’ environment and to acknowledge that ethics is an indispensable part of that inquiry. Marketing, as a business discipline, is particularly vulnerable to criticism of ethical practices. Sub-disciplines of marketing (i.e., advertising, pricing, personal selling, marketing research, and international marketing) offer extensive opportunities for unethical behavior...
eBook - ePubMarketing Theory
A Student Text
- Michael J Baker, Michael Saren(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...4 Marketing Ethics Patrick E. Murphy Kelly D. Martin Chapter Topics Introduction 90 Theoretical focus in marketing ethics 92 Empirical research in marketing ethics theory 98 Future research directions 99 Suggestions for conducting research on marketing ethics 102 Conclusion 103 Introduction The field of marketing ethics has matured in recent years. If one were to apply the product life-cycle concept to it, the introductory stage would be the 1960s and 1970s, while the growth period occurred during the 1980s and 1990s (as will be noted later, the most articles on this topic were published in the 1990s), and the time since the turn of the century could be labelled as the maturity stage. The earliest work appeared in the 1960s and was mostly published in the Journal of Marketing. The 1970s and 1980s saw marketing ethics topics beginning to be published with some regularity in other academic journals. According to Murphy (2002: 166), ‘marketing ethics came of age in the 1990s’. At that time, substantial attention was devoted to it in the academic and business press. Marketing ethics, then, moved from being called an ‘oxymoron’ to a subject of academic legitimacy. Since the turn of the century, more scholarship has been devoted to this topic but most of it is now being published in specialty journals rather than ones that most marketing academics would consider as top tier. At the outset, it is important to characterize the field of marketing ethics and its theoretical underpinnings. The definition that will be used here is: ‘Marketing ethics is the systematic study of how moral standards are applied to marketing decisions, behaviors and institutions’ (Laczniak and Murphy, 1993: x). Many observers view marketing ethics as a sub-field within business ethics, much like ethics in finance, accounting, human resources and quantitative analysis. Business ethics is also considered to be an ‘applied’ area similar to legal or medical ethics...
eBook - ePubTribal Marketing, Tribal Branding
An expert guide to the brand co-creation process
- Brendan Richardson(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...8 Towards an Ethics of Tribal Marketing Introduction In thinking about how to develop an ethical standard for tribal marketing, it seems sensible to begin by looking at some of the principles that inform any basic approach to business ethics. Commentators on business ethics usually begin by pointing to the main distinctions between the different types of ethical theory – absolutist, or traditional, ethical theory and relativist ethical theory. Most contemporary ethical theories are relativist and recognize the benefits to be derived from a non-absolutist approach. The non-absolutist nature of contemporary theory might in some ways make it a more appropriate starting point for the development of an ethical approach to tribal marketing – but this would mean overlooking the contribution of some key aspects of traditionalist theory to the development of an ethical approach to tribal marketing, so we will take a brief look at both perspectives before beginning to draw inferences for the approach recommended in this book. Having looked at things from this wider perspective the chapter will then examine some additional principles that govern the manner in which tribal research should be conducted in order to comply with good ethical research practice. Traditional and contemporary theories of business ethics Crane and Matten (2010) 1 define ethical theories as ‘the rules and principles that determine right and wrong for a given situation’. In practice, most business scholars and commentators on issues of business ethics would agree that it is difficult and perhaps even impossible to apply the same absolute rules in exactly the same way in all situations. Ethical absolutism is therein defined as adoption of a position whereby it is claimed that ‘there are eternal, universally applicable moral principles (and that).....
