Marketing Ethics and Social Responsibility of BP Company - Case Study Example

BP Marketing Case Study Case Synopsis BP is a petroleum company which is faced by a monumental task of redeveloping its sustainability branding strategies in order to repair its tarnished reputation. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the company’s image was tattered and it needed to rebrand in order to reclaim its reputation (Black 16). BP Company realized the importance of being more conscious about its environmental responsibility and made a landmark by becoming the first oil company to acknowledge the presence of global warming. The company introduced initiatives to help in the production of cleaner and alternative forms of energy. Key themes Marketing ethics and social responsibility Marketing ethics is the moral principles that guide operations and regulations of marketing practices (Hill and Ryan 50) . Social responsibility suggests that organization or individual’s actions should benefit the society. Ethical marketing and social responsibility are main concern in this case, for example, BP Company does not hold its ethical marketing conduct and social responsibility. This is evidenced when the company’s social and ethical conduct is coincides with its promise to remain responsible environmental steward. The company is faced by numerous cases of environmental negligence and it also disregards the safety of its employees. New product development failures In a bid to repair its image after violation of many environment acts, BP Company tried to launch new products that could provide alternatives to oil use and solve the environmental problems that were characterized by the petroleum business. The company launched solar, bio-fuels, carbon sequestration and storage. The company also foresaw the implementation of other energy saving measures. The launch of all these new products were aimed at providing solutions to ever increasing challenges of BP. Unfortunately, the launch of new products failed to solve the company’s woes as the company faced more environmental problems, explosions, and safety issues. Sustainability BP Company had sustainability challenges since it could not maintain its policies. The company promised to be environmental conscious but ended up having many environmental violations. It introduced new products to tame the many ethical challenges it was facing and repair its tattered reputation, unfortunately, more ethical concerns and environmental violations were reported. BP Company could not implement sustainable environmental and ethical conduct to avert the challenges it was facing (Thiele 55). Corporate branding and positioning Corporate branding is the process of promoting a corporate entity’s brand name rather than its specific products (Melewar and Elif 119). BP struggles to promote its brand name after several environmental and ethical flaws but its efforts backfires due to negligence and disregard to the existing ethical code of conducts. The company tries to reposition its brand name through launching new products and introducing a code of conduct for all the employees. In a bid to repair its image, the company changed its name from British Petroleum to BP. Stakeholders’ engagement Stakeholders’ engagement is an important part of attaining effective social responsibilities as it involves engaging stakeholders to determine environmental and social issues that could affect them in order to improve accountability (Rendtorff 26). BP companies demonstrated a total disregard to the views of its stakeholders leading to its numerous environmental challenges. The company showed lack of concern about the safety of the employees which resulted to death of 11 employees. SWOT analysis Strengths BP Company has a large capital base that it can effectively use to solve the many ethical and environmental issues it is facing, for example, it was constantly fined substantial amount of money for violating environmental and ethical conduct. The company is located in many countries which facilitates its sustainability in case there are issues in one country for example, when its shares were nationalized in Libya, it resorted to operating in other places including Scotland and Alaska. Weakness The management of the company was incompetent as they could not be proactive to prevent potential challenges the company was facing. The management could not prevent recurrence of ethical and environmental violations. The company does not stick to its promises and policies, for instance, it promised to be environmental steward and violated that promise later. It also introduced code of conduct for its employees but poor implementation of such codes led to more problems to the company. Opportunities It has the opportunity to engage all its stakeholders to help in rebuilding the corporate image of the company and restoring confidence of its customers. BP was the first oil company to detect global warming. Therefore, it can use such opportunities to promote its brand image. It has the opportunity to exonerate itself from its previous challenges by compensating people who were affected by its negligence and restoring their faith its products. Threats The company is faced with threat of losing more customers if it doesn’t compensate the victims of its unethical operations. It may lose its competitiveness if its disregard to the environment and ethical issues continues. It may become bankrupt again if it does not change its policies and loses its customers to competitors. Missing information The missing information is this case is total sales of the company and how it was affected by the ethical issues that were facing the company. This could help in determining whether the company’s sales were being affected by the cases it was facing. Statement of the problem The key problem of this case is management disregard to ethical and environment issues. The problem is that BP Company violated most of the codes of conduct that resulted to massive ethical and environment repercussions. The company could not deal with the problems they were facing amicably and ended up losing its reputation. They seek to repair their tarnished image although they are still facing the same problems. Development of alternatives Changing the company management and engaging management that is serious in implementing the policies and strategic plans of the company. Developing policies that are proactive in nature- this is advantageous in detecting the problems before they actually occur. Training the management and employees- this would help improve their handling of the challenges the company was facing. Engagement of the stakeholders- this would help in determining the effect of its actions and policies on its stakeholders. Evaluation of alternative The advantage of engaging the experienced and new management is that they could have new ideas on how to solve the problems of the company although its disadvantageous in that they are not familiar with the operations of the company and may need time to learn the company Developing proactive policies would help the company to detect potential threats and make relevant corrections in time. Training management and employees is helpful as it helps in introducing new methods of tackling the problems and alternative actions to improve the reputation of the company. The disadvantage is that it may be costly leading to additional costs. Engagement of the stakeholders will ensure that the company is able to satisfy the expectations of the stakeholders and determine the effects of its actions on them. Recommendations The company should develop a proactive approach to solving its problems. This will help the company determine to avoid incurring costs in terms of fines that they could have avoided. BP should restructure its management and train them on the possible alternatives in case of problems. I would recommend proactive action which will help the company tackle problems before they occur. Implementation My recommendation of proactive polices can be effectively implemented if the company’s management have the experience and ability to detect the problems before they happen. This can be implemented through strict evaluation of situations and making prompt action to correct the situation. Additional thought In order to effectively deal with the tattered image, BP Company should engage all its stakeholders and implement strict policies to restore their confidence in the company. Works cited Black, Edwin. British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement. Washington, DC: Dialog Press, 2011. Print. Hill, Ronald P, and Ryan Langan. Handbook of Research on Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility. , 2014. Print. Melewar, Tengku Chik, and Elif Karaosmanoğlu. Contemporary Thoughts on Corporate Branding and Corporate Identity Management. Basingstoke [England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print. Rendtorff, Jacob D. Responsibility, Ethics, and Legitimacy of Corporations. Frederiksberg, Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2009. Print. Thiele, Leslie P. Sustainability. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. Print. Read More