Ethical Issues in Marketing Managment

Marketing Management -

                 Marketing management is the process of developing strategies and planning for product or services, advertising, promotions, sales to reach desired customer segment. Marketing Management is concerned with the chalking out of a definite programme, after careful analysis and forecasting of the market situations and the ultimate execution of these plans to achieve the objectives of the organisation.

Ethical Issues in Marketing management

Ethical issues in marketing arise from the conflicts and lack of agreement on particular issues. Parties involved in marketing transactions have a set of expectations about how the business relationships will take shape and how various transactions need to be conducted. Each marketing concept has its own ethical issues, which we will discuss in this Article.

Emerging Ethical Problems in Market Research

Market research has experienced a resurgence with the widespread use of the Internet and the popularity of social networking. It is easier than ever before for companies to connect directly with customers and collect individual information that goes into a computer database to be matched with other pieces of data collected during unrelated transactions.

The way a company conducts its market research these days can have serious ethical consequence, affecting the lives of consumers in ways that have yet to be fully understood. Further, companies can be faced with public counterblast if their market research practices are perceived as unethical.

Ethics in Advertising and Promotion

In the early days of the existence of corporations, especially during the 1940s and 1950s, tobacco was advertised as a substance that promotes health. Of late, an advertiser who does not meet the ethical standards is considered an offender against morality by the law.

Sexuality is a major point of discussion when ethical issues in advertising content are considered. Violence is also an important ethical issue in advertising, especially where children should not be affected by the content.

Delivery Channels

Direct marketing is one of the most controversial methods of advertising channels, especially when the approaches included are unsolicited.

Some common examples include TV and Telephonic commercials and direct mail. Electronic spam and telemarketing also push the limits of ethical standards and legality in a strong manner.

Deceptive (Misleading) Marketing Policies and Ethics

Deceptive (misleading) marketing policies are not contained in a specific limit or to one target market, and it can sometimes go unseen by the public. There are numerous methods of deceptive marketing. It can be presented to consumers in various forms; one of the methods is one that is accomplished via the use of humour. Humour offers an escape or relief from various types of human constraints, and some advertisers may take the advantage of this by applying deceptive advertising methods for a product that can potentially harm or reduce the constraints using humour.

Anti-Competitive Practices

A pyramid scheme is also an anti-competitive process. It is a non-sustainable business model that promises the participants payment or services, mainly for enrolling other people into the scheme; it does not supply any real investment or sell products or services to the public.

This business practice demands the initial investor to enrol other people for a fee to them who again will further enrol more people in order to be paid by the company.

Pricing Ethics

There are various forms of unethical business practices related to pricing the products and services.

Bid rigging is a type of fraud in which a commercial contract is promised to one party, however, for the sake of appearance several other parties also present a bid.

Predatory pricing is the practice of sale of a product or service at a negligible price, intending to throw competitors out of the market or to create barriers to entry.