Ethics of Marketing

1. Ethics of Marketing

2. Responsibilities of Marketers with Respect to Consumer Safety • When product is ready to be marketed, companies should have their product safety staff review their market strategy and advertising for potential safety problems • When a product reaches marketplace, firm should make available to consumers written information about the product’s performance. This information should include a complete list of the ways the product can be used and a cautionary list of the ways it should not be used. • Companies should investigate consumer complaints. • Business must monitor the manufacturing process itself. It should select materials that have been certified as flawless.

3. Ways of Ethical Marketing • Raising quality of the life of the society • Maintaining balance of demand with adequate supply • Preserving healthy market with adequate number of competitors • Providing products that consumers need and want • Offering products at prices that consumers find acceptable • Placing product where consumer want them • Informing consumers about products, prices and places • Offering employment to members of the society in large number

4. Ethical Problem Areas in Marketing • Deceptive Pricing: Falsely advertising factory or wholesales prices or a large price reduction from a phony high retail list price. • Deceptive Promotion: Misrepresenting the product’s features or performance or luring the consumers to the store for a bargain that is out of stock. • Deceptive Packaging: Exaggerating packet content through subtle design, using misleading labeling etc. • High-Pressure Selling: Salespeople sometimes persuade people to buy goods they had no thought of buying.

5. Ethical Problem Areas in Marketing • Selling Shoddy, Harmful or Unsafe Products • Planned Obsolescence: Some producers follow a program of planned obsolescence, causing their products to become obsolete before they actually should need replacement. Some holding back attractive functional features, then introducing them later to make older models obsolete. Other producers use materials and components that will break, rust or rot sooner than they should.

6. Ethical Problem Areas in Marketing • Poor Service to Disadvantaged Consumers: Home and insurers assign higher premiums to people with poor credit rating. • Cultural Pollution: Advertising pollute peoples mind with messages of materialism, power, status etc.