Ethics and Global Marketing
Lecture two:
Ethics and Global Marketing
Planning
What is marketing?
• Marketing involves:
– Focusing on the needs and wants of customers
– Identifying the best method of satisfying those
needs and wants
– Orienting the company towards the process of
providing that satisfaction
– Meeting organisational objectives
What is global marketing?
• Notion of a 'borderless' global marketplace
• Marketing operations that cross political and
cultural boundaries
• Maximising opportunities in the search for global
competitive advantage
• Adding to stakeholder value
• Exporting / International marketing / global
marketing
Global Marketing management
Lee and Carter, 2012
The marketing concept
• Segmentation
• Targeting
• Positioning
Building sustainable competitive
advantage
New products and processes for
international markets
The product lifecycle
The International Product Lifecycle
Sales
Home country
Country A
Country B
Time
Building sustainable competitive
advantage
Product portfolio management
High
Market Growth Rate
STAR
?
QUESTION
MARK
Growth stage
Introduction stage
Build market
?
Maturity stage
Decline stage
Harvest market
Divest market
CASH
COW
DOG
Low
High
Relative Market Share
Low
BCG/ Boston matrix
Ethical brand challenges
Ethical brand challenges
Definition of ethical marketing
'Ethical marketing refers to practices that
emphasise transparent, trustworthy, and
responsible personal and / or organisational
marketing policies and actions that exhibit integrity
as well as fairness to consumers and other
stakeholders.'
Murphy et al, 2012, Ethics in Marketing:
International Cases and Perspectives
An ethical perspective
• Ethical marketing puts people first
– Create products and services that have a
perceived and real social benefit.
– Essential for sustainable competitive
advantage.
• Ethics is an applied discipline.
Seven basic perspectives:
Approach from Murphy et al, 2012
1. Ethical marketing puts people first.
2. Ethical marketers must achieve a behaviour
standard above the law.
3. Marketers are responsible for whatever they
intend as a means or end with a marketing
action.
4. Marketing organisations should cultivate
better (i.e. higher) moral imagination in their
managers and employees.
5. Marketers should articulate and embrace a
core set of ethical actions.
6. Adoption of a stakeholder orientation is
essential to ethical marketing decisions.
7. Marketing organisations ought to delineate
an ethical decision making protocol.
Business perspective one:
• Societal benefit:
Ethical marketing puts people first
• Do not treat people as a means to a profitable end.
• Flouting this can add costs to the average
marketing transaction.
Net benefit to who?
• Society or the individual consumer?
–
–
–
–
–
Tobacco
Credit cards
Alcohol
Video games
Food
• These are the second-order, or even third-order effects
of marketing practice that can raise ethical questions
Business perspective two:
• Ethical expectations for marketing must exceed
legal requirements
– The law represents the lowest common denominator
of expected behaviour for marketers.
– The formalisation of restrictions by law typically lags
behind public opinion.
• Ethics and the law are connected but are not the
same thing
Political / Legal environment
• Three dimensions:
– The home country
– The host country
– The international trading environment
Ethics and the law
• Legal systems in some areas may be
underdeveloped.
• Country may not have a democratic
system
– Legal system may reflect the interests of the
ruling class.
Ethics and the law
• Ethics embodies higher standards than law.
• Ethics assumes more duties than law.
• Those companies that view themselves as
ethical marketers aspire to a higher standard.
• Even in democracies, the legal system
cannot be a substitute for personal and
organisational responsibility.
Ethics and Global Marketing
Lecture two:
Ethics and Global Marketing Planning
Tutor: Giovanna Battiston
 g.battiston@shu.ac.uk
Role play activity
Role play scenario
You work for a PR agency that specialises in handling accounts for firms
with products in multiple, global markets. Your firm prides itself on its ethical
position and has a code of ethics that it publishes on its website.
Your firm has grown rapidly in recent years and your Chief Executive, who is
also the founder of the business, has recently managed to secure an
opportunity to handle the PR for Unilever in the Far East.
You have been invited to an internal planning meeting to discuss this
opportunity.
You will assume one of the roles on the following slide and then prepare for
the meeting.
Roles
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Chief Executive (you will also chair the meeting)
Finance Director
Chairman
Company Secretary
Business Development Director
HR Director
Marketing Director
Head of Internal PR
Key Accounts Director
Regional Account Manager for the Far East
Head of Creative Design