1. Do you feel ethical guidelines make a difference to marketers?
I believe ethical guidelines make a difference to marketers who are committed to a long term strategy focused on the customer. El Sayed & El Ghazaly (n.d.) state that “To be customer focused in marketing, is the essence that brings an organization to success, it's the underlying culture that enables a company to grow, simply because marketing is the glue that sticks the consumer to the company or the product it sells” (para. 4). Marketers who are willing to overlook ethics for the sake of making quick profits will only last a short time. Markets are simply too competitive to try and maintain fooling the customer. It is the customer who will ultimately decide if an organization’s marketing is unethical. A single consumer alone cannot make that come to that conclusion. Conversely, if the majority of the consumers are detracted from what they perceive as unethical marketing, they will seek out more ethical marketing tactics. The result is the perpetual demise of the organization who should have known unethical marketing would be counterproductive to successful business practices. However, that does not stop marketers from pushing their ethical boundaries. For example, Lord & Taylor has recently come under fire for a practice called “native advertising”. This tactic involves a company paying someone such as a blogger to make the content of their media look more like editorial content as opposed to a paid ad. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) charged Lord & Taylor specifically for paying bloggers and a magazine to promote their clothing without disclosing they were ads. This practice in turn dupes consumers into thinking a product may be trending or gaining popularity when the reality is that it is just a paid advertisement. Ron Urbach (2016), chairman of law firm Davis & Gilbert LLP, which concentrates on the advertising and marketing sectors, states, “The reason the line between editorial content and ads becomes blurry on social media compared with traditional paid advertising is due to the personal nature of social posts. On digital and social platforms, content is more likely to be presumed by the consumer as not being advertising” (Hadley, para. 14).
2. How can companies balance the
need to win with being ethical?
Companies can balance the need to win with being
ethical by avoiding shortcuts and accepting that trying to be number one in
their market will come with time as long as they respect their customer. Sticking to an ethical marketing strategy
will almost always win in the long run. Targeting
the young, impressionable, and sometimes the ignorant can be an easy
accomplishment using unethical tactics.
The real challenge for a successful unethical marketing strategy comes
when people are armed with education and experience to identify such immoral
approaches. People quickly learn how to avoid
falling victim to being exploited by unethical companies and their unrealistic
product promises, approaching them with an “I am not buying what you are
selling” attitude. Companies need to
have a high level of self-awareness and introspection to ensure they are
staying within the proper ethical boundaries.
Consumers are looking more and more at how a company is impacting
society because of competition in the industry.
Many times there are numerous companies who can provide a product or
service and the consumer would rather select a company who is focused on making
the world a better place. Auger, Devinney,
Louviere, and Burke (2010) suggest “most research, both commercial and
academic, on the importance of social product attributes suggests that a
growing number of consumers are increasingly taking ethical and social issues
into account when purchasing products” (p. 143).
3. Is it ethical to track your
buying habits or web visits to target you for marketing purposes?
I could care less if a company tracks my buying
habits for the purpose of marketing products.
I have nothing to hide. If a
company wants to use resources and invest in trying to find out what their
consumer buying habits are, then I believe they have every right to do so. They are not forcing me to make a
purchase. They are not stealing some
sensitive information from me. They are
not hurting me or costing me anything.
I, the consumer, have the final say in whether or not I make a purchase
from being targeted by marketing. I even
take a welcoming approach to being marketed because sometimes there may be
things I find interesting that I did not realize were available. Again, it is up to the consumer to decide if
they want or need what is being marketed.
4. As a leader, how will you manage
the ethical aspects of your marketing efforts?
Leading by example is a key to leading others in a
way of practicing what I am preaching and that is one way I will manage the
aspects of my marketing efforts. For
example, if I tell my followers what to do and what not do regarding ethics,
yet my actions are contradictory to my guidance just one time, all trust is lost. This is a recipe for a plausible slippery
slope where “a relatively harmless and plausibly permissible action
may increase the propensity of acting badly later. This propensity makes doing the initial
actions immoral” (LaFollette, 2007, p. 135).
I may not recognize my unethical behavior and my subordinates are too
afraid to point it out, so it continues.
In the meantime, the rest of the organization feels they can conduct
their behavior in the same manner because their leader is setting the example. The organization has now set the tone for an
unethical culture. With that said, I
will also question the impacts of marketing decisions on the business and
customers. The organization has a bright
future as long as everyone in the organization can unequivocally answer no when
a potentially unethical decision is in question.
References:
Auger, P., Devinney, T. M., Louviere, J. J., &
Burke, P. F. (2010). The importance of social product attributes in consumer
purchasing decisions: A multi-country comparative study. International
Business Review, 19(2), 140-159.
El Sayed, H. & El Ghazaly, I. (n.d.). Is marketing evil? marketing viewed as a
tool. Retrieved from http://www.ethicsbasedmarketing.net/2.html
Hadley, M. (2016, March 15). Lord & taylor
settles FTC charges over paid Instagram posts.
USA Today. Retrieved March 15, 2016, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/03/15/lord--taylor-settles-ftc-charges-over-paid-instagram-posts/81801972/
LaFollette, H.
(2007). The practice of ethics.
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
No comments:
Post a Comment