Marketing

Everyone would agree that marketing is probably the most important tool for a firm to promote its products and services. But I think nowadays a lot of companies are misusing this “powerful weapon” to confuse their consumers. From mass marketing fraud through telephone, mail, and the Internet to deceptive price advertising, more and more customers find marketing is an annoying thing rather than a bridge connecting them to the outside world.

Yesterday I watched the news that according to many consumers informed, Carrefour and Wal-Mart involved in commercial fraud to deceive consumers. Some typical cases would be a cotton sheet’s price tag showed cost price was $16.9 and it was on sale for $5. But it has been find out that the cost price was $11.9 in fact. Also, Wal-Mart sold dumpling flour for $2.1 while its cost price in fact is $2.4 but marked $3.1.

Wal-Mart and Carrefour’s behavior has seriously violated the consumer rights and interests. I think that all supermarkets’ should collate the commodities sold in their supermarkets seriously so as to avoid the inconformity between price tags and settlement price. If find problems, supermarkets’ principals should put right without delay and return back consumers’ overpaid.

Yesterday, Carrefour apologized to the public for their faults. They showed that it is because of the imperfection of price system lead to the inconvenient and displeasure of consumers. They said they are upgrading their system.

However, it is quite common for firms to engage in illegal pricing practices, such as predatory pricing, price discrimination and deceptive reference prices to unfairly attract more customers. Therefore, a more strict laws and regulation must be enforced to prevent the illegal pricing strategy.

Source for the photo: johndobbin.blogspot.com