Marketing Ethics: Ethics And Ethical Ethics Of Deceptive Advertising

Ethical marketing is less of a marketing strategy and more of a way of life that enlightens all marketing efforts. It seeks to promote honesty, fairness, and responsibility in all advertising. Some businesses pursue ethical marketing because they feel that is what customers expect from them. Some consumers buy products and services because they feel that the products, services, or companies are ethical. In response to this consumer demand, organizations have increased their focus on ethical marketing. Marketing employees must be aware of the principles of self-interest and personal virtues. As they make decisions they must

In American consumer society, it is common knowledge that businessmen are rarely 100% truthful. Exaggerated advertisements, cheapened materials, and other similar practices have become part of business. The topic of debate, however, is whether this dishonesty in business is ethical. According to Albert Carr in the article “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?”, bluffing is morally acceptable within the parameters of doing business.

Advertising is a tactic used to grasp the attention of the public and inform them about a product service or business. There are multiple advertising strategies that a business or person can use to fulfill a purpose, but not all of them are ethical. All advertisements should be legal, decent, honest, and truthful. Advertisements should not contain statements or visual aspects that offend any standard of decency. Advertisements should not abuse the trust of consumers or exploit their lack of knowledge. Advertisements should not play on fear, undermine human dignity, incite violence, or any unlawful behavior.

When an advertisement or promotion has any representation, omission, or practice that misleads consumers, there is a deception (Richards, 2013). This paper analyzes the legal, ethical, and social responsibility ramifications of the false

Marketing has been used as a forefront for promoting the sale of products, and services to customers for centuries. We see examples of marketing every day channeled through mediums such as television, radio, newspapers, product packaging, and massive billboards on the side of the road. As humans, we are naturally wired to fall for the so called ‘next best product’, the ‘intriguingly eye catching packaging’, and the ‘lowest price’. However, what we are not able to see, are the true intentions of the marketer, and whether his/her intentions are ethically sound.

Ethical marketing has become one of the most critical issues in the business world. It refers to the use of marketing and promotional activities that do not harm the norms, values, and beliefs of the members of the society in which the organization operates (Murphy & Laczniak, 56). Ethical marketing has a direct impact on an organization's public image and sustainability in the industry (Groucutt, Forsyth, & Leadley, 63).

In order to address these challenges, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature on marketing ethics over almost 50 years offers a citation analysis and develops a unique marketing ethics impact factor (MEIF). We contribute to the field in three important ways. First, it presents a state-of-the art picture of marketing ethics research. This provides an account of the research focus in each decade, assesses the importance of specific topics in the debate and identifies existing research gaps. Second, we identify the most influential papers and researchers in the marketing ethics area. Third, we evaluate the most important journals in terms of their impact on marketing ethics. To this end, we have developed an MEIF. This improves the ability to judge a journal’s influence on this particular sub-discipline.

There are thousands of advertisements aimed to intrigue children, ranging from advertisements on television, in magazines, on social media and in online games. Many of the advertisements are suited to children and don’t introduce ethical dilemmas although some have been considered unethical and as a result have been changed and evan banned from being published or presented. Ethics are moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity. Advertising can represent real ethical crisis’, especially in children’s advertisements. Business use promotional strategies to create interest in customers and as a result maximise sales. Although not all business evaluate the impact that advertisements have on consumers, in particular children, therefore regarding the advertisement as unethical.

The relationship among factors that influence ethical behavior can be shown in a framework in which societal culture and norms, affect business culture and industry practices, affect corporate culture and expectations–all of which affect and are affected by personal moral philosophy and ethical behavior. Ultimately the nature and the principal of ethical marketing emerge. All the components have been discussed below in details: .2.1FACTORS: It includes the Societal Culture and Norms, Business Culture and Industry Practices and the Corporate Culture and

As the awareness of ethics and social responsibility have been growing within U.S. corporations the ethical implications of marketing and advertising have become a more prevailing subject, especially that of marketing products directly to children. According to “Marketing and Ethics” ethical marketing seeks to promote honesty, fairness, and responsibility in all advertising (Freeman, Fritz & Mead, 2010). The American Marketing Association has set a statement of ethics in place that is supposed to govern and guide marketer’s actions through their stated ethical values. The six ethical values; honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency, and citizenship are the representation of the collective idea of desirable and morally correct conduct. (“Statement of Ethics”) These six values of the statement are supposed to set the standard for these companies to measure their marketing actions. These standards of ethics are important for the marketers to keep in mind as advertisement campaigns directed towards children are continuing to grow. According to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, companies spend about 17 billion dollars annually marketing to children. (“Marketing to Children” 2008.) This includes anything from television, product placements, or packaging designs.

The world continues to rapidly evolve in the global village. As a result, the interaction between consumers and produces has become complex. Hence, techniques should be used to reach out intended consumers. One of these techniques is the use of target marketing. Aaker, Brumbaugh and Grier (2000, p. 128) asserted that target marketing is a technique that firm uses to identify and select a small group of consumers from within a larger population. Porta (2010) believed that a target market is practical, most especially for small businesses, because no one can afford to target everybody. Hence, building a solid foundation for a business requires that typical customers are identified. In line with this assertion, this paper will provide for the ethical implication of target marketing in terms of reaching specific groups of consumers. Further, two groups of consumers will be chosen, and how the marketers attempt to sell them

Everyday, everywhere we are inundated with advertisements. Whether it be while you are walking down the street, shopping at the supermarket, or even in the safety of your own home enjoying some tv in your down time. Advertising, whether it be big or small is everywhere; and in fact there are many issues with it. Advertising that promotes a service or product in a deceptive way is highly unethical. This is because it doesn’t provide the customer with enough information that they need in order to make a good, educated decision. And on another note, advertising is manipulative because of the way it promotes consumption at such a large scale. Some of the main reasons for advertising being dishonest are because it displays false savings, it exhibits unnecessary upselling and possibly most importantly, it fuel’s wasteful consumerism. The significance of this problem, comes in the form of the large sums of money people waste on products they don’t need and once purchased, realise they don’t want. Frankly it is just too overt to look past.

The poster-child for this issue, according to the L.A. Times, is Martin Shkreli, who in 2015 bought the parasitic disease treatment-drug Daraprim and then proceeded to raise “…up its price 5000%, from $13.50 a pill to $750,” after buying the one company that makes the drug (Hiltzik). Actions such as these have been occurring for decades, but only with the recent incident of Turing Pharmaceuticals has drawn light to the problem of drug pricing. Because of this, the Senate formed a special committee to investigate four companies: Turing Pharmaceuticals (owned by Shkreli), Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin, Inc., and Rodelis Therapeutics

Advertising to children should not be considered unethical or be deemed related to childhood obesity as there are many factors that play into obesity that are being denied or overlooked if the blame is put on advertising. Often, advertising is merely used as the scapegoat. Further, the primary intent of advertising food is to increase brand awareness; not to increase consumption. As defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary, advertising is “the action of calling something to the attention of the public,” its purpose is not to force individuals to perform an action, rather just make their product/service more known (“Advertising”). According to Kant’s Duty-Based Ethics, since the intent of advertising is not to increase obesity in the consumers’, it cannot be deemed unethical. Overall, research shows that most children under the age of 6 cannot distinguish between programming and advertising; therefore, this further attests to advertising not being harmful to kids and their health. In general, excess weight gain in young people is similar to those in adults, including factors such as a person’s behavior and genetics. Therefore, there should not be a focus on advertising to kids alone; if there needs to be more regulations with advertising in terms of advertising to kids, then regulations should be made in advertising to adults as well.

There is a general saying; ‘we deceive to gain advantage and to hide our weaknesses’. People, especially advertisers normally deceive their consumers in order to reap from their ignorance. Deception is the use of trickery or deceit to get what one wants. It entails many types of omissions, whose main aim is to distort the complete truth (Carson, 2010). Advertisers have perfected this art of deception to hide from their product weaknesses and gain profit in the end. Society considers deception as a relational transgression, which normally leads to betrayal and mistrust among individuals. Deception can take many forms that may include propaganda, dissimulation, distraction, concealment, camouflage and even self-deception (Carson, 2010).