Ethics in Marketing - Essay Example

Ethics in Marketing The essay involves the discussion of the modern issues related to social marketing, and the increasing consumer awareness about marketing ethics. The paper also discusses the link between corporate social responsibility and business ethics while going to discuss the ethical implications of marketing to small children. Nisberg (1988:43) has defined business ethics as "a set of principles that guides business practices to reflect a concern for society as a whole while pursuing profits" Hackley (2005), defines ethics as a system of moral principles and rules of conduct that a society develops overtime. He further refers to ethics as what is right, good or consistent with virtue. Corporate Social Responsibility is the degree of moral obligation that may be put upon corporations apart from the normal laws of the state. The corporation is an individual and is amenable to treatment as an individual under the law (Nisberg, 1988, p. 74).Many academics have often remarked that marketing ethics is an "oxymoron" with in itself and many academics consider it as "intrinsically unethical" or at the least morally neutral. Influence of moral philosophies. Academics have applied a number of different philosophies to marketing ethics whenever they are faces with making decisions having ethical content (e.g., Ferrell and Gresham, 1985). Social psychologists have also considered moral philosophies to play a pivotal role in the shaping of marketing decisions. Forsyth (1980) has argued that ethical decisions can be explained in terms of idealism and relativism and defined (1980, p. 175) relativism as "the extent to which an individual rejects universal moral rules" when making ethical judgments and idealism as the degree to which the individuals "assume that desirable consequences can, with the 'right' action, always be obtained" (Forsyth, 1980, p. 176). According to (Vitell et al. 1993) these two philosophies as determinants of Marketing Ethics have done differently in practical life.(Vitel et al 1993) has observed that marketers who stressed on idealism tended to exhibit a higher level of honesty and deemed it essential for effective organisation to be based on ethics and social responsibility.Relativists on the other hand were reported exhibit lower trends of integrity. Hunt et al. (1989, p. 79) have defined corporate ethical values as "a composite of the individual ethical values of managers and both the formal and informal policies on ethics of the organization." Based on this it would seem that corporate values influence many aspects of an organisations decision making. Singhapakdi et al. (1995) has also indicated that corporate ethical values have a very profound link with marketing ethics and social responsibility. Academics have devised number frameworks for analysis in this regard and these involve many concepts like ,the Value-orientated framework which analyses ethical dilemmas on the basis of the moral values being infringed, the Stakeholder-orientated framework basing ethical problems on who they are directly influencing and the Process-orientated framework, (See Martin 2002). Another sort of framework is the Power-based analysis (Martin 2002) which shows that not all marketing is offensive or passive and the power may be in the hands of the buyer or the seller Therefore central to the identification of the factors giving rise to ethical dilemma's is the identification of the balance of such power. However the main body of the paper relates to marketing ethics and how conflicts with practical business decisions manifest themselves in the Modern Business World.See diagram below1 The problem today When we speak of marketing ethics, we refer to the moral principles underlining the operation and regulation of marketing and media ethics form a part of this issue to some extent as well. Popular culture has often criticised marketing as inherently evil and is said to damage peoples independent decision making powers, causing cut throat competition by aggressive and unethical advertising and the horrid manipulation of social morals and values by promoting crass commercialism and consumerism. Marketing practices have also been criticised for promoting invasion of privacy.(through spamming people's mail boxes and using their personal data for shaping market strategy. There is also an increased danger of stereotyping. For example in many Asian countries and even in the US in the late seventies, women were shown as homemakers and only appeared in Washing Powder advertisements and cooking shows. Such stereotyping can get irresponsible and lead to a lot of unethical outcomes2. For example it can be observed that in American Advertising the ethnic minorities are portrayed in a certain negative way .Other dangers include playing with the sentiments of young children and the elderly. The gay minorities are often ignored or downgraded in marketing campaigns. The recent hype about size zero models has however been resolved by a change in model hiring policy and size zero models are being discouraged. There has been a major criticism of unethical investment/pension Advertisements enticing the elderly to waste their life savings. Other prominent examples include the advertisements of tobacco in the fifties decade where tobacco was shown by the media to be promoting health. But when does a "Mere Puff" become a glaringly obvious lie Other issues have included gender and violence based stereotypes and negative campaigning against rivals. Unsolicited marketing is another annoying ploy especially as the majority of Gmail users find their accounts flooded by "Viagra" emails. Sadly Business ethics has also become a victim of the marketing ploys and as large corporations find themselves struggling to promote positive images of themselves. For example Body Shop and Star Bucks trades on the basis of using fair trade products.Such a pretentious attempt is sometimes rhetorically known as "Greenwashing" by companies to conceal their unethical practices. Another recent example of cheating the consumers has been the very controversial Enron crisis where the company did nothing but to lie to its consumer base and employees about its profitability. 3Advertising has strongly impacted the current trends relating to body shape and ideals of beauty. This area has also become a sources of media arm twisting and unethical marketing as young Asian women are enticed to use "face whitening" creams and cosmetics due to aggressive advertising by multinationals following a spate of allegedly rigged Miss World contests crowning Asian Women to enter the local Asian Market. Ethical issues involved in marketing to Children One of the most important areas of marketing ethics remains the debate regarding what makes ethical or unethical advertising to children .One of the aims of this paper therefore will be to analyse and discover who is responsible for what and where one can draw the line in terms of advertising to children. In advertising, many issues are encountered as to what is considered morally or ethically correct .Advertising is a feature of free competitive enterprise and can be a contributing factor towards the availability of goods. (Noggle, 1997).New ideas and concepts have caused controversy on the brink of ethical boundaries as a result of creativity in advertising (Brenan, 2001). Academics like Hyman have taken the view that advertising to children is morally wrong (Hyman, 2004) and the reason given is that if adults have trouble resisting the slick emotional messages, what hope do children have The Piagetian theory suggests that young children are going through a stage where by they acquire subtraction, reversibility and multiple classifications (Savage et al, 2005) so all these advertising tactics may be taking advantage of their developmental stages.In this regard many academics have taken their own view on whether such advertising is infact a necessary evil of the modern corporate era and Kappoor and Verma's model on advertising to children has shown that promotion to children breeds new generations of must have consumers (Kappoor and Verma, 2005) .Other views show that Advertising to children put them under unfair pressure (Elliot and Clare, 2004) by that this unfair pressure can be avoided through parental interference and not just a complete censure of such advertising.(Brian et al (2003). Therefore advertising to children remains a controversial topic in the wider domain in the area of marketing ethics..Many academics have pointed out that the most fundamental ethical issues in advertising are the elements of deception that is the making of false or misleading statements in an advertisement.(Adrian and Martin, 2002) .Companies join the band wagon with their initiative to aim adverts at children for products that don't meet certain nutritional standards.(Kenneth, 2005). Marketing communication practices directed at children are increasingly being blamed for contributing to the growing levels of child obesity in the young teenage audience. Where as many academics have argued that obesity is a lifestyle choice much influence by the parents of children. However the promotion of large portions of food by fast food giants has much to do with contributing to excessive calorie intake in some children(Kenneth 2005). Another ethical issue that has emerged is that most of these companies know that they are advertising unhealthy products to children who would not understand the significance of healthy food. This includes examples of Junk food advertisements by Mc Donald's with the incentives of toys with "kids meals".In this regard Professor J.J Boddewyn of the City University's research has questioned whether these companies are actually contemplating about the impacts and effects of advertising to children when they are shaping their marketing strategies.In a recent survey by the National Family and Parenting Institute ,a report revealed that parents increasingly felt that their children were bombarded with TV adverts (NFPI, 2004) enticing their children to demand more junk food and toys. The whole discussion on marketing ethics then takes us to the question of whether advertising is responsible for unhealthy eating and obesity in children Advertising is responsible for unhealthy eating in children as various organizations i.e as mentioned before McDonalds encourages children to eat their food by attracting them with toys (Brown, 2002) .An Investigation by the BBC (2004) learnt that some of Britain's biggest food companies are targeting children in up to 40% of their adverts. Not only were unhealthy foods most frequently advertised, but commercials targeted at children continued to employ the very production techniques and persuasive appeals that make it difficult for children to critically evaluate advertising (Marketing Week, 2007) .It has also been reported that most of the foods marketed to children are high in fat, sugar, salt and low in essential minerals important for a healthy diet .(Marketing Institute, 2004) . All these pieces of information then provoke the question whether there should be advertising to Children. Some academics have even gone as far as to say that advertising promotes superficiality and values founded in material goods and consumption (Chris, 2004) as children are in-experienced consumers and an easy prey for the sophisticated persuasion of advertisers (Adam, 2004) Recently there have been a lot of attempts by special interest groups to strictly regulate the type of advert aimed at children to stop the children from becoming passive trend followers. (Brenan, 2001).In this regard the International Obesity Task Force has called for an advertising ban on inappropriate food (OFCOM, 2004) .The World Health Organisation has taken action to mitigate the effects of advertising on children (OFCOM, 2004) .The Advertising Standard Authority has proposed three stringent codes of practice as guidance when advertising to children - Television adverts must not directly advertise or ask children to make enquires about purchases,. Prints and posters marketing communications aimed, at children should not actually encourage them to make nuisance of themselves , Radio adverts must not directly urge children to buy products (OFCOM, 2004) There has been a call for reform of the law regulating this area to enforce marketing ethics.In particular the National Food Survey 2002 has indicated that companies marketing to children should have a clear 'definition of children' as a child has a different capacity from a responsible adult . It has also been strongly recommended that Parents should be responsible for the diets of their children and they should be held responsible for their own shortcomings in monitoring their Children's responses to advertisement(Blustein, 1982).The Food and Drink Federation (2003) has commented that there is no such concept of bad foods,only bad diets. The question that pops up then is whether food manufacturers should be held collectively accountable for selling an unhealthy diet - via industry, broadcasters or 'gatekeepers' such as restaurantsSome academics have commented that there is an urgent need for robust means of ensuring that companies take responsibility in their control over children's diet (Dowler, 2003) .Advertising to children remains an economic necessity as it is a huge part of everyday living, therefore children will have to learn to handle it sooner or later (Yoo and Dothu, 2000) .How would we know about so many products if advertising did not exist (Latner and stunkard, 2003) .The field of advertising to children is extremely broad and diverse, companies should address the boundary at which children are to be informed in terms of lines that cannot be crossed and regulations to adhere to (Revill and Ahmed, 2003) As today's parents happen to grow up with TV advertising, they think passing on media awareness to their children is important.. (Smith, 2004) Ethics and social responsibility: The other side The link between ethics and social responsibility is pivotal to a company's long term growth .From a business point of view " Good ethics is often good business". However it would be useful to argue at this point that not all marketing/business practices are unethical as the media has fervently portrayed for many decades.But this leads to another query i.e. how fair is the business game in the arena of Advertising.Given that the marketplace is not a level playing field should the producers actually be penalised for business tactics to increase sales.Is bad advertising the main culprit or the irresponsible parents Advertising entices and manipulates. Are we allowing our children to be controlled by the world of fantasy and illusion The other side of the picture is less evil though. Marketing ethics have seemed to have manifested themselves with in regulation and codes of practice over the recent decades and these codes have increasingly curbed any attempts by the advertisers to mislead the audience. Today we have a revival of the conceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility. It is reported that ethical investment funds amounting in the USA to $650 billion in 1996 (Punter and Gangneux, 1998), and over 1,400 companies belong to Business for Social Responsibility, (Punter and Gangneux, 1998).(BSR) In America the BSR has played a vital role in reinforcing marketing ethics and corporate social responsibility. Other Ethics watch dogs have been established aswell and they promote ethical behaviour(see the Nader Page located on the Web at http://www. nader.org/). There is a newfound trend in marketing and business ethics where large corporations publicize their business ethics programs on the Internet. Take the example of Shell Oil, where, after a number of environmental and public relations problems, decided to commit to recyclable and environment friendly energy and publicly promotes human rights worldwide. Has marketing ethics become a marketing ploy in itself Today many organisations are anxious to portray themselves as seeking high moral ground, something they call " ethical business".Traditionally commerce has been perceived as crass and cut throat competition driven and trampling on employee rights. It seems that the media has played a mixed role in this area. Firstly they have created " cultural guilt" around vehicle use and fuel pollution and created environmental awareness yet Oil companies speak little of environmental issues and more on engine fuel efficiency in their adverts. The recent scandal created by the Shell Company where there was the Brent Spar oil spill and the media attention it received is one example. It seems that these companies are less afraid of treading on marketing/business ethics and more afraid of prosecution and law suits. The newfound trend of marketing "the marketing ethics" themselves leads to the query whether business concerns have actually been successful in selling ethical products and whether they have profited from these practices. Modern Banks have joined the Ethics Band wagon by seeking to differentiate the bank, and choose to emphasize its social origins and the issues which would appeal to its traditional market, namely the oppressed minorities like the Scottish Widows Fund in England endorsed by Lloyds TSB Bank.(See Stainer 1995) Taking the example of The Body Shop which has found great success in having a trade charter that focuses on human rights, long term support for needy communities, environmentally sustainable resourcing, and animal protection. The ethical background of such products seems to have contributed significantly to their success.Another example is the popular coffee house chain of caf's namely Starbucks. The chain became successful for its contribution to good causes for being a top donor to the international aid agency, CARE. (See Stainer 1995). In their article "Is it ethical to compete on ethics"Stainer A, Stainer L (1995) have taken the view that competition should actually be encouraged by ethicists and an overdose of ethics ,(the Going Green trend ) is not helpful in the promotion of good business. Business rivalry is essential therefore for promotion of enterprise and this competition is " indispensable to free enterprise thinking." Stainer and Stainer(1995 p.4) have made an interesting point when they write "When.. one considers the business activities of such organisations as The Body Shop, Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream, Levi Strauss and Johnson & Johnson, who have benefited economically from their moral stances Even the Pope's recent visit to the Philippines was sponsored by the San Miguel Brewery. . Body Shop and Ben & Jerry's both initially sustained substantial market growth with little advertising, with the swell of positive publicity propelling them forward..Ben & Jerry's hit hard times by reporting huge losses in December 1994 and had to temper their idealism with a more realistic approach, they were wide open to criticism by business analysts." Conclusion In this essay all the dimensions underlining the modern dilemmas of marketing ethics have been tested and discussed. However some problems remained unsolved particularly based on the corporate arm twisting of Large Fast Food Giants. 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