Every type of career requires professional ethic in order to keep the entire society developing in a peace and safe process. In terms of marketing ethics, a company must be honest and fair to it’s consumers regarding the targeting consumers, pricing, and advertising.

Companies should be honest and clear regarding any information provided by their advertisements. It is unethical to hide any potential fees or conditions in the advertisement. It is companies’ responsibilities to ensure the quality of products being advertised is same as the products being sold in the market. Consumers are expecting the real information as well as price acquired from the advertisement.

I remember one advertisement that I have came across was somehow “wrong”. It was a automobile advertisement from a big auto company in the world. The advertisement said” Finance a brand new 2013 car with as low as $350 for 84 months”. This line was written with super big bold fonts. The total price of the car was about $60000. It made no sense to finance this car with that low monthly payment. After I looked more carefully about the advertisement, I found that there was another line with tiny small fonts saying” bi-weekly payment with $9000 down, 4.8%APR,conditions apply”.  I also went to the dealership and talked to one of the dealer. Besides the stated down payment and interests, they also charge a total of $1000 as documentation fee. With all of these extra fees, the real cost of getting a new car is not that affordable anymore. It is the dealer’s responsibility to inform consumers the real cost of a car, not just attracting people to their shop with extremely low  price, then extract as more as possible from consumers. Nowadays, government has regulation regarding the automobile advertisement. Dealers have to include any potential fees into the price that listed in the advertisement. Dealers should compete with the rest of market by their qualified services, but not by attractive advertisements.

Peng Zhang,  September 17,2013