Ethical Marketing and Tobacco Advertising - Essay Example

Because of their powerful role in the society, governments and the legislatures of different nations and states impose rules and regulations to ensure that such power is not used wrongfully. Moroever, there is a growing demand on businesses to maintain higher ethical standards in all of their practises (Lantos 2001). The tobacco industry provides a classic setting to study the ethicality of marketing practices in general (Sundaram & Mitra 2007). This is especially that it is believed that “the cigarette is the only legally available product in the United States that when used as directed, will kill the user and injure others (Snell 2005).

The future of the tobacco industry depends on maintaining current users and recruiting new users to replace older smokers who quit or die from tobacco-related diseases (Kreslake, et al,2008, p.1685). As such, every day in the United States, the tobacco industry spends almost $42 million on advertisements and promotions, and between 2002 and 2003 the industry increased its spending by $2.7 billion (Facts A La Carte 2007). The usual way of the government to effectively reduce the use of tobacco products is to ban smoking in restaurants and impose higher taxes on tobacco products (Doohee et al 2004).

This paper will explain the basic ethics in marketing based on the related literature gathered and the current marketing strategies of the tobacco industry and a brief evaluation on the two sides of their ideas. For George Brenkert (2008), marketing a product is not about obtaining profit. For him marketing is a moral activity embodying central ethical values and principles. Marketers are expected to have limited but positive sympathies toward others (Robin and Reidenbach 1993). In Brenkert’s book Marketing Ethics, he addressed in a clear and pragmatic manner the ethical questions, misunderstandings, and challenges that marketing raises.

He tried to confront standard marketing views and offered