In todays society marketing ethics isn’t just a companies moral and legal obligation to conduct fair business practices but it is also a great way to attract new customers and business. Behaviour is deemed unethical when the values or expectations of the consumer, competitor or society as a whole are violated. The main areas of marketing that are prone to ethical problems are research, price and promotion of products or services.
The key ethical issues that are associated with market research involves privacy issues and stereotyping. The amount of personal data that people put online is unprecedented and is readily available for companies to access for research. This creates a bit of an ethically grey area in which the people view their information personal property when it is posted on a company website such as Facebook. Stereotyping is an issue for companies generalizing a large group of people either research or advertising purposes which often have harmful effects. Both these forms of unethical behaviour in marketing research have a detrimental effect on society as a whole.
The topic of price with regards to marketing ethics is a broad subject, with many pricing practices that are considered unethical. Two common pricing practices that are common are price discrimination and predatory pricing. Price discrimination occurs when the same product or service is sold to two different customers for two different prices. The reason for the price differentiation could be anything, such as making a wealthier person pay more for a product than someone who’s not as well off. This is a clear violation of the companies customer base. Predatory pricing is the act of setting product prices artificially low to discourage competition and serve as a barrier to entry. In this case price setting has a negative effect on the market competition.
The promotional aspect of marketing is has some pretty straight forward ethical issues which include honesty of the promotion and the delivery channels of the promotion. The promotion of a product needs to tell the truth about a product but is subject to “puffery” which does create a grey area. The delivery channels of a promotion that are often the subject of unethical practices are direct marketing, such as sam and telemarketers which constantly harass and pester society as a whole.
There is a wide array of possibly unethical behaviour in marketing; it is clear the best way to avoid committing such unethical acts is to first fully understand the issues that are prevalent in all aspects of marketing.