People's Perception of Marketing Practices and the Ethical Side of Marketing in the UK - Research Paper Example

Executive Summary: There have been several efforts in U.K. to change the unethical behavior of organizations when it comes to doing business especially in marketing their products and services. Several researches have been done in this filed related to the perception of the people towards the marketing ethics practices followed by organizations and the results are also different. Some suggesting that advertisement and marketing done by these companies confuse people while other saying that, ethicists mistakenly assume that the marketing actions of organizations to be unethical. All these research suggest that directly or indirectly almost all organizations are moved by profit oriented actions and marketing is no exception too. This research primarily deals with knowing perceptions of the people of the U.K. towards the marketing practices and ethical side of the marketing in the U.K. The research uses a questionnaire that contains question items which deal with respondents’ demographics, perceived understanding of marketing ethics and marketing practices in U.K. For analysis the factor analysis and descriptive analysis methods are used. The results suggest that the people of United Kingdom perceive that the marketing strategies and ethical side of marketing followed by the organizations are not oriented towards the consumers rather it is more towards increasing top line and bottom line of the business and in doing that, they play with psychology and sentiments of the people with innovative types of advertisements and other marketing strategies. Introduction: Despite years of effort to change both practice and perception, charges of unethical business procedures and frequent media exposure of such practices continue to undermine the fabric of U.K. business. People argue that in UK organizations display an act immorality and unethical practice while doing marketing. Advertisements and marketing done by these companies confuse people since they are new and unfamiliar form of communication discourse. (Hackley, 1999). However, the other perspective of the same discussion says that the ethicists mistakenly characterize organizations’ marketing actions as being `amoral'. This ignores the reality that marketing theory and practice are suffused with the morality of economic self-interest. This has important implications for whether one can understand the consequences of marketing action as intended or unintended. (Desmond, 2004). In the same context some researches say that there are number of factors on ethical perceptions of different-2 countries, culture and background. (Marta, Heiss, & Lurgio, 2008). All these researches suggest that there is a fundamental incentive behind doing marketing and that is to earn profit and in doing that companies often cross the limits and try to mislead the consumers. These firms play with the psychology of the consumers to represent themselves as the best products and service provider. And all these practices of organizations have forced the people of U.K. to change their perceptions towards the marketing ethics followed by these organizations and the educated and much information savvy consumer of U.K. do not generally get influenced from these emotional stunts of companies. This research primarily focuses on understanding the perception of marketing practices and the ethical side of marketing in the U.K. The research deals extensively with the demographic background of people from U.K. and their perceptions about the marketing practices by firms in U.K. Objectives: The primary and general objective of this research is “to know the people’s perception of marketing practices and the ethical side of the marketing in the U.K.” However, to achieve this objective, it has been broken into several sub-objectives as following: 1. To know the image of marketing as a practice. This objective would help to know in determining what people generally think about the marketing practices in U.K. 2. To know the position of people concerning the ethical practices. This objective would seek to reason out whether people want the ethical practices to be followed or not. 3. To know the ethical issues in the marketing. This objective would bring out the issues involved with the marketing. 4. To know the extent of exploitation of human-weaknesses. This objective is framed to know to what extent the companies are able to play with the psychological factors of the people to influence them. 5. To know the opinion of the practices that frequently receive concerning the criticism concerning unethical nature and to know the means to clean up these reprehensible practices. Finally this objective will go beyond seeking how and what consumer feels about marketing practices and it will also bring in front whom they think should take initiative to clean up these reprehensible practices which are not in the favor of neither consumer and the organization in the long term. Method: Research Design: The methodology followed to carry out this research is based on primary data. And the type of the research is descriptive research as it deals with knowing the behavior and perception of people in U.K. Sample and Participants: Total 16 participants from the United Kingdom were involved in the research. The sampling was done based on judgment sampling. The sample was taken from the U.K. belonging to diverse demographic and working background. However, only those participants were taken who were literate enough to understand the marketing and ethical practices followed by companies. All of these participants belonged to above 21 years age group and who were having above secondary level education and who were employed. Material: The primary material used was questionnaire designed specifically to know the people’s perception. The questionnaire was divided in five parts including the part which contains demographic information about the participants. Other parts directly address the above sub-objectives defined in the Objective segment. These parts are as follows: The image of marketing as a practice The position of people concerning the ethical practices The ethical issues in the marketing Exploitation of human-weaknesses The opinion of the practices that frequently receive concerning the criticism concerning unethical nature The detailed questionnaire has been attached in the appendix. Procedure: All the participants were send the questionnaires through e-mail and the filled up questionnaires were collected through e-mails. From the responses collected the further analysis was done. Analysis Method: The analysis of the responses collected from participants has been done using various analysis methods such as factor analysis and descriptive analysis. The analysis method is as following: All the objects i.e. questions are categorized under different-2 factors based upon the participants’ image about the marketing practices using the Part 1 of questionnaire and their opinion on ethical issue in Part 3 of questionnaire. Then the responses of participants are analyzed for each factor. Factor Analysis: For factor analysis the principal components analysis method is use, in which total variance in data is considered. To check the sampling adequacy, KMO (.522) & Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity (sig. 0.073) are used. Both the test confirms the adequacy of the factor analysis. Varimax with Kaiser Normalization method is used for rotation which is used to minimize the number of variables with high loadings on a factor, therefore enhancing the interpretability of the factors. For selecting the number of factors, the Eigen value of more than one is used. Descriptive Analysis: Each question has then been analyzed using descriptive analysis. The analysis involves knowing the number of respondent favoring a particular choice then comparing that with other responses. Findings: Factor Analysis: 1. Using SPSS software we have got three factors for Part 1of the questionnaires on the basis of the responses on the image of marketing practices. Factor Number Components of factor Factor 1 (Marketing values customer) B1_1, B1_2, B1_3, B1_4 Factor 2 (Marketing plays with psychology) B1_5, B1_6 Factor 3 (Marketing is deceptive) B1_7, B1_8 Table 1 The three factors represent three different perspectives and image about the marketing done by the organizations as mentioned in the table. 2. For Part 3 of opinion questionnaire we have got two factors based on total variance explained by them. Factor Number Components of factor Factor 1 (Unethical marketing is need of the hour) G1_2, G1_4, G1_6, G1_7, G1_9 Factor 2 (Marketing is profit oriented) G1_1, G1_3, G1_5, G1_8 Table 2 Descriptive Analysis: The responses of all the participants for part 1, 2, 3 and 4 have been analyzed using descriptive method of analysis. Q 1: 1. Eight out of 16 disagreed with the factor that marketing values customer. 2. 14 out of 16 agreed that marketing is all about playing with psychology. 3. 13 participants were in agreement that most of the firm’s marketing strategy is deceptive. Q 2: 1. 7 participants referred marketing practices to be based on ethical culture as the most important way to apprehend company ethics when applied to marketing. 2. While 7 suggested that ethics are useless and its only profit that counts, within the limits of the law. Q 3: 1. 9 participants considered that marketing is perceived to practicing ethical standards worse than finance. While 13 perceived it to practicing ethical standards worse than operation. 2. Purchase department is considered to be one of the most notorious department in terms of practicing ethics as 14 participants considered marketing to be performing better than purchase. 3. Information technology department is also perceived to be worse performer as 9 considered marketing to be better than marketing. Q 5: 1. 8 participants said that as Marketing Director they would try to adopt marketing campaign that will exploit human weakness and said to an alternative marketing campaign (for the promotion mentioned in the question). 2. While 10 participants perceived that others who are in charge of Marketing Director prefer exploiting human weakness to earn profit and said that the existing marketing director would retain the same campaign. Q 6: 1. 10 participants opined that unethical marketing is the need of hour and valuing customer more than profit is just an ideal thing rather than being a reality. 2. Almost all participants agreed that marketing is profit oriented rather than being consumer oriented. Q 8: All of the participants agreed that it is possible to react to clean up the unethical practices followed by organizations in U.K. and they considered media to take lead role in doing that. Analysis: 1. Analyzing the findings we can say that in U.K. marketing done by any organization is not at all perceived as to be very consumer oriented and to be trustworthy rather it is perceived as deceptive. They consider marketing as a practice to play with the minds and sentiments of the people to earn as much profit as possible. 2. The perception of people in U.K. for marketing practices is more negative as comparison to operation, finance and human resource department, only IT and purchase departments are perceived to be performing worse in terms of ethical standards as comparison to marketing. 3. The people not only disbelieve the marketing strategies followed by the firms but also the people who are behind those strategies. As majority of the participants said they themselves would not play with the sentiments of consumers but they do not have belief on the company’s representative of marketing strategies. 4. However, the people also opined that only organizations are not responsible for these unethical practices but its also because of the kind of system they are living in. They considered that unethical marketing which is completely oriented towards profit rather than consumers is the need of the hour in the current competitive market. And if they would not deceive the customers then there will somebody else who would be doing that and minimizing their share of the pie. 5. Nonetheless, the people of U.K. are not that much pessimistic and they believe that its possible to clean up these reprehensible practices if there is a right action taken towards the right direction. Although, they do not consider themselves responsible to initiate that action, rather they expect that media should take initiative in this direction. Conclusions: The people of United Kingdom perceive that the marketing strategies followed by the organizations are not oriented towards the consumers rather it is more towards increasing top line and bottom line of the business and in doing that, they play with psychology and sentiments of the people with innovative types of advertisements and other marketing strategies. They perceive that organizations have become more myopic in terms of doing business and for the short term profits they sacrifice their long term relationships with the consumers and the profit that they could have generated had they valued the customers. Nevertheless, the people are still optimistic and they perceive that the media can take a lead role in brining all these firms on to the track of ethical marketing. Further Recommendations: There can be a doubt on the reliability of the results and findings of this research as the number of participants was not significant to say anything conclusive; however, taking the lead from the results of this research there can be a further study which would involve a significant number of participants from different part and background of the U.K. The further research can be same as this one based on questionnaires covering various aspects of the perceptions of the people. In this study the participants can be divided in different-2 clusters using cluster analysis and then the perceptions of the participants belonging to each cluster can be compared. It can also be analyzed whether culture play any role in perceiving about the ethical standards followed by the organizations. References: Desmond, J. C. (2004). Morality and the consequences of marketing action. Journal of Business Research , 1222-1230. Hackley, C. (1999). The meanings of ethics in and of advertising. Business Ethics: A European Review , 37-42. Marta, J., Heiss, C., & Lurgio, S. (2008). An Exploratory Comparison of Ethical Perceptions of Mexican and U.S. Marketers. Journal of Business Ethics , 539-555. Read More