TOPIC

ETHICS IN MARKETING

INTRODUCTION
Marketing ethics is viewed as important because of marketings interface with many diverse stakeholders. Marketing is a key functional area in the business organization that provides a visible interface with not only customers, but other stakeholders such as the media, investors, regulatory agencies, channel members, trade associations, as well as others. It is important when addressing marketing ethics to recognize that it should be examined from an individual, organizational, and societal perspective. Examining marketing ethics from a narrow issue perspective does not provide foundational background that provides a complete understanding of the domain of marketing ethics. The purpose of this chapter is to define, examine the nature and scope, identify issues, provide a decision-making framework, and trace the historical development of marketing ethics from a practice and academic perspective.

MEANING OF MARKETING ETHICS

Ethics has been termed the study and philosophy of human conduct, with an emphasis on the determination of right and wrong. For marketers, ethics in the workplace refers to rules (standards, principles) governing the conduct of organizational members and the consequences of marketing decisions (Ferrell, 2005). Therefore, ethical marketing from a normative perspective approach is defined as practices that emphasize transparent, trustworthy, and responsible personal and organizational marketing policies and actions that exhibit integrity as well as fairness to consumers and other stakeholders (Murphy, Laczniak, Bowie and Klein, 2005). Marketing ethics focuses on principles and standards that define acceptable marketing conduct, as determined by

various stakeholders and the organization responsible for marketing activities. While many of the basic principles have been codified as laws and regulations to require marketers to conform to societys expectations of conduct, marketing ethics goes beyond legal and regulatory issues. Ethical marketing practices and principles are core building blocks in establishing trust, which help build long-term marketing relationships. In addition, the boundary-spanning nature of marketing (i.e. sales, advertising, and distribution) presents many of the ethical issues faced in business today. Both marketing practitioners and marketing professors approach ethics from different perspectives. For example, one perspective is that ethics is about being a moral individual and that personal values and moral philosophies are the key to ethical decisions in marketing. Virtues such as honesty,

fairness, responsibility, and citizenship are assumed to be values that can guide complex marketing decisions in the context of an organization. On the other hand, approaching ethics from an organizational perspective assumes that establishing organizational values, codes, and training is necessary to provide consistent and shared approaches to making ethical decisions (Ferrell and Ferrell, 2005).

IMPORTANT ETHICS IN MARKETING

Marketing and marketers play an important part in the development of corporate strategy and in the responding to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda. Indeed from a sustainability perspective, the boundaries between what was traditionally considered to be corporate strategy and marketing strategy become blurred. This is because conventional marketing theory views the customer as being interested in the marketing mix of the company (the product, its price, its availability, how it is promoted and customer service) but in little else about it. Sustainability concerns have demonstrated that the customer can also be influenced by the company behind the products and brands they buy. The social and environmental impacts of production processes, and the degree of social responsibility with which companies treat their workers, invest their money and conduct their affairs are now all potentially significant on both the marketing and corporate agenda.

Ethics refers to the study of moral principles, or right and wrong, therefore marketing ethics is all about marketers doing the right thing. Exactly what the right thing is, is not always completely clear-cut since what is right may vary depending on whether you are looking at it from the perspective of the company, its customers or the society in which they both exist. There are however several basic principles involved in ethical marketing :

Taking responsibility : marketers need to take responsibility for their products and their decisions. In the past marketers have often responded to social concern about particular products by defending them on the basis of It was what the customer wanted; Dealing fairly : marketers need to be honest and fair in their dealings with all stakeholders. This means that products must be fit for use and accurately described, and contracts (both formal and implicit) should be drawn up in good faith and honoured; Respecting consumer rights : including the right of redress, the right to information and the right to privacy;

In marketing ethics particular emphasis is given to safeguarding the interests of vulnerable consumers, such as children and the elderly. In practice many companies and organisations have attempted to deal with issues of marketing ethics by developing codes of conducts. A good example of a clear code of marketing conduct is the Canadian Marketing Associations code on information-based marketing. There are a number of ways to check whether a given marketing strategy or activity is ethical or not. Try and imagine whether or not you would feel comfortable giving an honest explanation of it on Newsnight, to your family or at a marketing conference.

Historical Development of Marketing Ethics

The historical background for marketing ethics is derived from early concerns during the turn of the 20th century concerning antitrust and consumer protection, especially adulterated food products. From the beginning of advertising, there have always been concerns about misrepresentations and purposeful deception of consumers. Frank Chapman Sharp started teaching a course in business ethics at the University of Wisconsin in 1913 and Sharp and Fox (1937) published a textbook on business ethics. The book was based on the concept of fair service and the authors stated it will be possible to reduce our study of fair service to the principles of fair salesmanship (Sharp and Fox, 1937). The book could have been titled Marketing Ethics and had chapters on

commercial coercion, let the buyer beware, the limits of persuasion, fair pricing, and the ethics of bargaining. Within the academic history of marketing, one of the first articles that appeared in the Journal of Marketing was an article by Charles F. Phillips (1939) entitled, Some Theoretical Considerations Regarding Fair Trade Laws. In this article, ethics was not directly addressed, but the impact of resale price maintenance on competition, especially channel members and customers, was addressed. The concern was that customers were not receiving information about prices and might assume that the quality of coffee offered by all stores was identical. Most academic publishing in the 1950s focused on issues such as fair trade, antitrust, advertising and pricing.

During the 1960s American society turned to causes. An anti-business attitude developed as many critics attacked the vested interests that controlled the economic and political sides of societythe so-called military-industrial complex. The 1960s saw the decay of inner cities and the growth of ecological problems, such as pollution and the disposal of toxic and nuclear wastes. This period also witnessed the rise of consumerismactivities undertaken by independent individuals, groups, and organizations to protect their rights as consumers. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy delivered a Special Message on Protecting the Consumer Interest, in which he outlined four basic consumer rights: the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and the right to be heard. These came to be known as the Consumers Bill of Rights (Ferrell, Fraedrich, and Ferrell, 2005).

During this period of time, Robert Bartels (1967) contributed the first comprehensive model for ethics in marketing. This first academic conceptualization of the variables that influence marketing ethics decision making tried to determine the logical basis for marketers to determine what is right or wrong. It presented a schematic plan for analyzing the variables inherent in the ethics of decision making; and provided a framework for social and personal ethics in marketing decisions. The model did a good job in delineating variables that influence ethical decision making, including participants, cultural influencers, role expectations, and the complexity of ethical decision making. During this same period of time, Richard Farmer (1967) published an article, Would You Want Your Daughter to Marry a Marketing Man? that maintained that much of

marketing is unethical and irrelevant. This article was received so well that in 1977, Farmer published an article entitled, Would You Want Your Son to Marry a Marketing Lady? and in 1987 published another article entitled, Would You Want Your Granddaughter to Marry a Taiwanese Marketing Man? The titles of these articles indicate that possibly marketing ethics was not considered a serious academic research area. The 1967 Bartels article provided a foundation for empirical research that followed in the 1970s. In the 1970s significant research was conducted to describe the beliefs of managers about marketing ethics. Carroll (1975) found that young managers would go along with their supervisors to show loyalty in dealing with matters related to judgments on morality. A follow-up study by Bowman (1976) supported these findings. Ferrell and Weaver

(1978) provided insights into organizational relationships that influence marketing mangers ethical beliefs and behavior. The findings indicated that respondents perceived that the ethical standards of their peers and top management were lower than their own standards. Empirical research in the 1970s set the stage for frameworks that describe ethical decision making within the context of a marketing organization. The Ferrell and Gresham (1985) A Contingency Framework for Understanding Ethical Decision Making in Marketing emphasized the interaction of the individual and organization, including organization culture, co-workers, and opportunity to explain how ethical decisions are made. Most of the propositions in this model have been tested to provide a grounded understanding of ethical decision making. Hunt

and Vitell (1986) A General Theory of Marketing Ethics is widely accepted and also provides an empirically grounded model to illustrate how ethical decision making occurs in an organization. Research followed in both marketing and management literature that helped test the Ferrell and Gresham and Hunt and Vitell models (Hunt and Vitell, 2005). In the 1980s, business academics and practitioners acknowledged business ethics as an important field of study. Industry developments, such as the Defense Industry Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct, established a method for discussing best practices and working tactics to link organizational practice and policy to successful ethical compliance. In the 1990s, the government also provided support and rewards for ethics programs through the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations, approved by

Congress in 1991. The Guidelines broke new ground by codifying into law incentives to reward organizations for taking action to prevent misconduct. A special task force provided a report for updating and refining the guidelines in 2003 (United States Sentencing Commission, 2003). In 2005, a federal amendment to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines added oversight of ethics and compliance programs to the responsibilities of board of director positions. The amendment places more responsibility on board members to monitor and audit ethics programs, including marketing ethics. While the regulatory system was developing incentives for ethical conduct in organizations, Hunt, Wood and Chonko (1989) conducted research demonstrating a strong link between corporate ethical values and organizational

commitment in marketing. Their corporate ethical values scale is widely used in organizational ethics research. Gundlach and Murphy (1993) build a normative framework for relational marketing exchanges based on the ethical exchange dimensions of trust, equality, responsibility, and commitment. They develop foundational understanding of the interrelationship of ethics and law in marketing exchange. This is a significant contribution because some observers take the perspective that the legal and ethical dimensions of exchange are independent. They conclude that ethical marketing exchanges require a managerial emphasis on ethical corporate culture, ethics training programs, and on ethical audits. Dunfee, Smith and Ross (1999) suggest the need for a normative framework for marketing ethics. Integrative Social

Contract Theory (ISCT) links the decision-making process, multiple communities, hypernorms, and ethical judgments based on the dominant legitimate norms. This framework can be used for resolving ethical issues that arise among different communities and is significant because marketers frequently engage in boundary-spanning relationships and cross-cultural activities. This normative framework is significant to marketing because it emphasizes the exchange relationship between the firm and its stakeholders, including the right to exist and even prosper in society. This theory can be used to bridge normative and descriptive research in marketing ethics (Dunfee, Smith and Ross, 1999). As the 21st century arrived, ethics in the world of business became a major issue with scandals associated with Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Qwest, Sunbeam, and Arthur

Andersen. While most of these scandals were associated with accounting fraud, in many cases companies such as Sunbeam, using inventory sales shifting strategies (buy and hold), relied on salespersons to help implement the fraud. These activities resulted in the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, which is the most far-reaching change in organization control, corporate governance, and government oversight since the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. During this time (2000 2006) the Journal of Marketing published no articles with the word ethics in the title, but articles did appear dealing with ethical issues (Klein, Smith and John, 2004). There is still a need to continue both theory development and empirical testing of theories of ethical decision making in mark

UNFAIR OR DECEPTIVE MARKETING PRACTICES

Marketing practices are deceptive if customers believe they will get more value from a product or service than they actually receive. Deception, which can take the form of a misrepresentation, omission, or misleading practice, can occur when working with any element of the marketing mix. Because consumers are exposed to great quantities of information about products and firms, they often become skeptical of marketing claims and selling messages and act to protect themselves from being deceived. Thus, when a product or service does not provide expected value, customers will often seek a different source. Deceptive pricing practices cause customers to believe that the price they pay for some unit of value in a product or service is lower than it really is. The deception might take the form of making false price comparisons, providing misleading suggested selling prices, omitting important conditions of the sale, or making very low price offers available only when other items are purchased as well. Promotion practices are deceptive when the seller intentionally misstates how a product is constructed or performs, fails to disclose information regarding pyramid sales (a sales technique in which a person is recruited into a plan and then expects to make money by recruiting other people), or employs bait-and-switch selling techniques (a technique in which a business offers to sell a product or service, often at a lower price, in order to attract customers who are then encouraged to purchase a more expensive item). False or greatly exaggerated product or service claims are also deceptive. When packages are intentionally mislabeled as to contents, size, weight, or use information, that constitutes deceptive packaging. Selling hazardous or defective products without disclosing the dangers, failing to perform promised services, and not honoring warranty obligations are also considered deception.

PRODUCT SAFETY
Some products in the semiconductor processing market have few or no safety requirements, and other products have significant safety risk. It is the responsibility of marketing to make sure that the safety aspects of the product are identified and accommodated.

National, state, and local governments all have a hand in defining safety regulations. Trade and government organizations are often the source of safety regulations, including (in the USA) OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), NEC (National Electric Code), NFPA (National Fire Protection Association), and SEMI (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International). Europe requires compliance to a CE mark, and other regulations exist in various regions in the world. The customer should be the primary source to identify which regulations are significant. For the semiconductor processing industry, the SEMI standards SEMI S2-0200 (safety standard), SEMI S8 (human factors requirements), and SEMI F5-90 (gaseous effluent handling) are some of the important standards available from SEMI. Other standards dealing with more specific subjects are also available.

Self-declared compliance is often sufficient; however, third party review is sometimes required (for example, a CE mark) and generally offers two advantages:

1. It helps assure that the product design does meet the safety requirements 2. It shows that the manufacturer made a reasonable effort to assure compliance

For any product whose possession or use creates a hazard, it is essential that:

A formal safety audit be on file and available Safety upgrades are implemented in a timely manner and documented internally Safety bulletins are published and disseminated to users

PRODUCT QUALITY
In the globalized marketplace following the creation of the World Trade Organization, a key challenge facing developing countries is a lack of national capacity to overcome technical barriers to trade and to comply with the requirements of agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary conditions, which are now basic prerequisites for market access embedded in the global trading system. The World Trade Organization has adopted two important agreements in these areas: the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (both available at http://www.wto.org). With a view to meeting this challenge, developing countries need significant technical assistance to develop institutional infrastructure related to standards, metrology, testing and quality in order to be an able partner in the global trade regime. With a view to developing national capacity among the South Asian least developed countries,

the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) has implemented a project entitled Market access and trade facilitation support for South Asian least developed countries, through strengthening institutional and national capacities related to standards, metrology, testing and quality. The project was financed by the Government of India and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. To facilitate understanding of the complex subject of standards, metrology, testing and quality, a number of small guides, as listed below, have been developed as part of the project. These guides are available free of charge to small and medium-sized enterprises and other interested users. Role of standards Product quality Role of measurement and calibration in the manufacture of products for the global market The purpose of the present guide is to assist small and medium-sized enterprises and other interested users to understand how to control product quality. Chapters 5-8 of the guide also

cover various third-party schemes for product certification and preshipment inspection and also how the World Trade Organization Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade can facilitate product conformity assessment procedure

PRODUCT PRICING
Pricing is the process of determining what a company will receive in exchange for its products. Pricing factors are manufacturing cost, market place, competition, market condition, and quality of product. Pricing is also a key variable in microeconomic price allocation theory. Pricing is a fundamental aspect of financial modeling and is one of the four Ps of the marketing mix. The other three aspects are product, promotion, and place. Price is the only revenue generating element amongst the four Ps, the rest being cost centers. Pricing is the manual or automatic process of applying prices to purchase and sales orders, based on factors such as: a fixed amount, quantity break, promotion or sales campaign, specific vendor quote, price prevailing on entry, shipment or invoice date, combination of multiple orders or lines, and many others. Automated systems require more setup and maintenance but may prevent pricing errors. The needs of the consumer can be converted into demand only if the consumer has the willingness and capacity to buy the product. Thus pricing is very important in marketing.