Product
• Ethical concerns can arise in the development of
products/services. Marketers are supposed to
identify and satisfy needs of consumers.
• Products offered do not always contribute to
satisfying existing needs but sometimes create
new needs through the promotion of
materialism. It appears not to be ethical from
marketers to forget the first role of marketing at
the benefit of mercantilism.
Product
• Ethical concerns can also appear in the
performance of products/services. Ethical
marketing activity should prevent poorly
made and unsafe products. Products not
made well or products delivering little benefit
or less benefit than promised are
commonplace criticism made to marketers.
Product
• More questionable is the case of harmful
products due to poor design or lack of
quality. Marketers should refer to the maxim
‘Do unto others, as you would have them do
unto you’ to judge whether a product is
acceptable or not. The quality of a product
should always have the priority on economic
concerns. Moreover, pre-tests should be
conducted to ensure the compliance of
products to safety standards.
Product
• Packaging can also be a source of ethical concerns.
Exaggerating packaging (for example through design) or
misleading labels cannot be considered ethical, because
they aim at deceiving consumers by making them believe a
pack contains more product than it does in reality or by
giving unclear/incomprehensible information.
• A company sells a litchi/raspberry juice that claims to be a
“refreshing and exotic”.
• Yet, this fruit juice contains more apple than litchi plus
raspberry together. The ingredient label indicates 27% of
apple juice, 15% of litchi juice and 8% of raspberry juice
(plus water, sugar and citric acid). The product is sold as a
raspberry/litchi juice, while it is closer to an apple juice.
Promotion
• The most commonplace ethical concern in promotion is
deception. The American Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
defines deception as “a misrepresentation, omission, or
practice that is likely to mislead the consumer acting
reasonably in the circumstances, to the consumer’s
detriment”.
• Deception is commonplace in advertising. For example,
overstating a product’s feature or performance is contrary
to the ethics. Deception in advertising can be either an
exaggeration of products’ attributes (for example, a
shampoo that helps fighting dandruff in 2 weeks whereas
results are significant only after one month) or a unrealistic
statement about products’ performance (for example, a pill
that would help lose 30 Lbs. in one week).
• A campaign by a famous beauty brand is to be
mentioned: an actress was engaged to
promote a false eye lash mascara… but the
actress wore fake eyelashes in the TV
commercial! The company undercame
negative feedback from offended consumers.
• Deception can also appear in sales promotion.
Consumers desire to obtain more for the same price
and are therefore sensitive to sales promotion like free
gift, price reduction or special offers. The ethical risk is
that companies may be tempted to take advantage of
customers by making promises and promotions that
cannot be kept.
• Most frequently found problems are rigged contests or
games (e.g., when winners are known by marketers
before the end of the contest or when no one wins the
game) and the use of deceptive or false promises (e.g.,
failure to provide a promised premium or failure to
provide a gift in conformity to what was promised).
• Another ethical concern is the invasiveness of
marketers in the everyday life of consumers
and the threats to consumers’ rights to
privacy. For example, it is not ethical from
marketers to send unwanted spams to
consumers, because such emails violate
regulations about consumers’ privacy.
Price
• Marketers should be allowed to charge any price
they want provided there is no price
discrimination among consumers and that prices
are all inclusive.
• However, too high prices are not ethical, when
they do not reflect the existing cost structure but
are a means to take advantage of consumers. This
is especially true in the case of monopolies,
oligopolies or cartels.
• Besides, advertised prices should always be
realistic prices that consumers will find in stores.
• The odd-pricing and partitioned prices practices
can also be questionable on ethical grounds. With
odd-pricing, marketers resort to odd numbers
(e.g., 29.99€) instead of rounded numbers (e.g.,
30€) because consumers tend to associate 29.99
with 20 rather than 30. Partitioned prices aim at
sharing the total price in several sub prices to
make consumers believe the price is lower than
in reality. If not used with sensitivity, these
methods cannot be considered as ethical,
because marketers manipulate consumers’
expectancies.
Place
• Consumers can be manipulated without knowing it
through subtle marketing techniques in distribution
outlets. For example, shelves at lower heights target
children, and stores can be organised in such a way
that it encourages consumers to pass through more
shelves. The ethical concern of such practices is
whether subliminal incentives are morally acceptable:
would consumers have bought the products even if
those marketing techniques had not been used? In that
case, is it possible to talk about ‘forced purchases’? Can
those techniques cause economic hardships to
shoppers by making them buy more than they can
afford?
• Ethical concerns are also linked with the segmenting, targeting and
positioning process.
• Efforts to target consumer populations can be subject to unethical
attitudes (e.g.: particularly vulnerable consumer populations, such
as children, the poorest minorities, and the uneducated).
• For example, the issue of higher insurance premiums to people with
poor credit ratings is morally questionable.
• Marketing to children also raises ethical concerns. Wharton
marketing professor Lisa Bolton asks the question: “Can [children]
really make fully-informed choices or are they being flooded with
marketing material that is going to alter their behaviour?”. That is
the reason why candies have been suppressed from the shelves
before the tills in French supermarkets.
Recommendation
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Marketers should always consult the following guidance levels :
Statutory regulation of the countries they operate in as well as the current
self-regulation in their profession and industry. Those regulations are a first
condition to ensure ethical marketing practices but are not sufficient.
Internal procedures are to be set to guarantee conformed marketing
practices. Such a procedure should be compulsory and systematic. This process
would imply that every marketing decision has to be submitted to a ‘ETHICS check’
before it is implemented (e.g.: before a product launch, an advertising campaign, a
change in prices…). The ‘ETHICS check’ stands for:
E – Effect: does the decision harm anyone?
T – Transparency: does the company mind if the decision is disclosed
publically?
H – Harmony with regulations: does the decision conform to statutory and
self-regulations?
I – Interests: is the decision in the long-term interest of the firm?
C – Consumers: would consumers consider the decision as fair?
S – Sovereignty: is consumers’ purchasing sovereignty respected?
• The marketing campaigns could only be launched if
they pass the ‘ETHICS check’.
• Pre-tests with consumers could also help marketers
implement more ethical marketing decisions.
Marketing projects should be systematically submitted
to a consumers sample to check how consumers react
to the projects and make the required changes in case
consumers declare the projects not conformed to
ethics on their points of view. Asking consumers’
opinions before the effective implementation of
marketing decisions seem the most appropriate way to
ensure ethical marketing practices.