Marketing Fundamentals

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Marketing Ethics.

Concepts regarding Issues of Marketing Ethics.

Ethical Marketing Principles and Concepts.

Corporate Social Responsibility.

Conceptual Principles of CSR..

Conclusion.

Reference.

Introduction to Marketing Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Marketing ethics and corporate social responsibility are two important aspects of business management. The ethical factors join the workplace to have proper social-cultural principles and factors that every organization must follow to maintain organization working output. In this report, vivid descriptions about the marketing ethics along with certain principles and concepts are identified. The issues regarding ethical marketing have also been discussed here. The various problems arising out of ethical marketing have been allocated in this report. On the other hand, corporate social responsibility and its factors are also discussed in this report and its principles.

Marketing Ethics

The marketing of any products or services requires covering several factors involved in the process. Now while marketing requires a rigorous amount of plans and strategies to extract proper profit margin or increase the customer count. Besides all these factors which marketing requires holding the organization in its proper pathway. An organization without proper moral principles or ethics will not conduct a proper business in any market. Proper ethical research and marketing enable an organization to provide service accurately and properly, earning the faith of the customers (Laczniak, Murphy, 2019).

Concepts Regarding Issues of Marketing Ethics

Marketing ethics comprises several principles that comprise raising the standard of fairness in means of business, marketing decision makings, practices, and behaviour along with the certain factor of morality in the business organization (Vanhamme, 2017). Certain ethical issues and strategies that are needed to reduce or maintain such ethical issues are discussed as follows-

  • Conducting any research unethically or inserting stereotypical biases in the marketing research may mislead information, which can give rise to wrong moral backgrounds on business and will enhance the chance of failure to meet any goal that is allocated to the organization. For instance- Often in marketing, it is seen that any workplace or organization follows only one research point that is allocated for a long time. Now lack of proper research may give rise to a problem. If customer demand or type changes and company or organization marketing research don't have proper responsible marketing research conduct ability, then the organization will face a terrible amount of loss. For this, the company needs to have an appropriate management department that can provide accurate market research and new ideas for the company's wellbeing (Dwivedi, Ismagilova, Hughes, 2020).
  • It is often seen that the audience or customers in a certain market tend to lose faith due to certain factors like- customer data and privacy factors. The audience of the market tends to have faith in an organization when it comprises or follows proper principles. In many cases, organizations or a company lose its proper way of conducting marketing and lose customers or interest of the audience. The advertising part also needs to be identified here. For instance, an organization uses social media platforms for its marketing. Now to reach the marketing audience, it needs to understand the customer's emotion and demand. If the customer doesn't rely on the marketing system, then it will not provide any response, and that will be a negative outcome for such a factor. So it is important to allocate the principles and earn the faith of the audience to get hold of proper data. The principles will be discussed in this report also (Abdullahi, 2018).
  • Other issues comprise marketing data delivering channels, deceptive advertisement, bait, and switch practices are ethical issues that require proper discussion to eradicate the chance of organizational fraud—for instance- Providing advertisements of products less costly through delivery channels such as TV or e-mails. But when these products are approached, it turns to a costlier product or such products become unavailable. These factors of deceiving audiences or customers fall under such marketing ethical issues and the government must come up to aid in regulating the use of such unethical advertising by amending laws on such factors. Pricing fixing or Price wars and also price collusion is an important factor which, on one way, leads to unethical pricing of a product or displaying products as less costly, where the cost of the product is much higher. These issues are immensely important and need to be identified properly (Clow, 2016).

Ethical Marketing Principles and Concepts

The principles that Marketing Ethics must rely on are also to be allocated in this section are as follows-

  1. Transparency- In marketing ethics, transparency is important while providing details about any product to the customers. It will earn the trust of the audience and will engage them to provide their opinion regarding the product that is marketed (Ikonen, Luoma-aho, Bowen, 2017).
  2. Protecting Customer Data and Privacy- Marketing audiences tend not to provide any data for marketing due to this factor. In many cases, privacy can be bridged, and the data can be misused. So the organization needs to follow the principle of protecting the Data and Privacy of the customer by using proper management departments to manage such data properly and earn the faith of the customers (Véliz, Grunewald, 2018).
  3. Sustainability and Human Rights Commitment- Customers in marketing factors want to ensure whether the product displayed or provided is sustainable or ethically produced. The factor of product component is vividly important to earn the trust of the customer and increase the customer count as well as profit in the future of proving such product after marketing is over. So the factor of being truthful about products, ingredients, and components is important (Baldassarre, Campo, 2016).
  4. Meaningful Response to the customer- In an ethical marketing principle, it is important to provide meaningful responses regarding marketed products to increase the reliability of the customers. So it is important to employ capable marketing experts for clarifying doubt of the audience regarding the marketing factor. This principle is needed for any organization's success in the marketing sector of business management (Ferrell, Harrison, Ferrell, Hair, 2019).
  5. Unethical Approach to Products- This principle allocates a strict negative approach towards exaggeration, false comparisons, claims that are unverified, emotional exploitation. These factors mislead the audience or customers providing unethical negative approaches towards other products. So ethical marketing strictly prohibits such action under such ethical principles (Van Quaquebeke, Becker, Goretzki, 2019).

Corporate Social Responsibility

Social accountability is the main structure on which an organization mainly holds. Any organization without proper responsible social accountability leads to chaos in the workplace and business structure. Practising corporate social responsibility is important to establish the vendetta of corporate citizenship, which includes properly established factors of society, culture, and economic environment that are prevalent in an organization. (Grayson, Hodges, 2017)

Conceptual Principles of CSR

The principles that every business organization required to follow to commence the business smoothly are as follows-

  1. There are certain internationally proclaimed business Human Rights that are needed to be followed. This includes cultural equality and social engagement rights that are proposed in organizational ethical factors also.
  2. No complicity in Human Rights abuse and proper policy of punishment for the guilty or those abusing Human Rights are to be properly discharged by the organization. This is an important Corporate Social Responsibility principle. 
  3. Freedom of association is another principle that Corporate Social Responsibility depicts upon business organization to follow for a smooth and effective workplace culture for best corporate outcomes.
  4. Compulsory labouring or any kind of forced working of labourers should be eradicated as it violated the regulation of labour workers. The labour should not be denied any labour rights or forceful or compulsory working is eliminated from any organization according to the principles of CSR.
  5. Child Labor is one of the most disturbing factors in any organization or workplace. So the abolition of such an issue is the main upheld principle assigned in Corporate Social Responsibility. This principle ensures the proper checking of any Child labour practised in any organization or workplace in the global business market is the most enhancing principle.
  6. Discrimination in respect to social strata or workforce occupation is put to negative parameters. This principle ensures that social respect is properly provided to the employee joined in the workplace in any position or coming from any cultural background. The elimination of discrimination is the main factor in this principle.
  7. Environmental challenges are common in any business market. The organization must properly take precautionary steps regarding the environmental changes that can occur in the business world. This principle enhances any organization to work on the factors identified properly.
  8. Enhancing environmental responsibility is an important factor as it promotes several aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility. For instance, it is providing social and cultural support in the workplace.
  9. The development of environment-friendly technology enhances the chance of encouraging proper workability and analysis of the output provided by the workforce for the company. This principle has a special enhancement for the futuristic development of CSR principles (Franzoni, Ait Allali, 2018).

Conclusion on Marketing Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

The marketing ethics helps to maintain and provide proper data regarding certain marketed products to the customer or market audience. So it is very important to maintain a biased management system in any organization to maintain proper marketing ethics. Also, corporate social responsibility and its principles help to maintain the proper structure of corporate citizenship, eradicating discrimination in the workplace.

Reference for Marketing Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abdullahi, S. I. (2018). Measuring consumer perception of ethical issues in advertising: evidence from Nigerian advertising audience. Middle East Journal of Management, 5(3), 191-206.

Baldassarre, F., & Campo, R. (2016). Sustainability as a marketing tool: To be or to appear to be?. Business Horizons, 59(4), 421-429.

Dwivedi, Y. K., Ismagilova, E., Hughes, D. L., Carlson, J., Filieri, R., Jacobson, J., ... & Kumar, V. (2020). Setting the future of digital and social media marketing research: Perspectives and research propositions. International Journal of Information Management, 102168.

Ferrell, O. C., Harrison, D. E., Ferrell, L., & Hair, J. F. (2019). Business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and brand attitudes: An exploratory study. Journal of Business Research, 95, 491-501.

Franzoni, S., & Ait Allali, A. (2018). Principles of Islamic finance and principles of corporate social responsibility: what convergence?. Sustainability, 10(3), 637.

Grayson, D., & Hodges, A. (2017). Corporate social opportunity!: Seven steps to make corporate social responsibility work for your business. Routledge.

Ikonen, P., Luoma-aho, V., & Bowen, S. A. (2017). Transparency for sponsored content: Analysing codes of ethics in public relations, marketing, advertising, and journalism. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 11(2), 165-178.

Laczniak, G. R., & Murphy, P. E. (2019). The role of normative marketing ethics. Journal of Business Research, 95, 401-407.

Van Quaquebeke, N., Becker, J. U., Goretzki, N., & Barrot, C. (2019). Perceived ethical leadership affects customer purchasing intentions beyond ethical marketing in advertising due to moral identity self-congruence concerns. Journal of business ethics, 156(2), 357-376.

Vanhamme, J. (2017). Doing and publishing research in marketing ethics.

Véliz, C., & Grunewald, P. (2018). Protecting data privacy is key to a smart energy future. Nature Energy, 3(9), 702-704.

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