How can companies balance the need to win with being ethical? As a leader, how will you manage the ethical aspects of marketing/selling something you are working on or getting sponsorship?
Thriving organizations' first and most important goal has always been serving their stakeholders, including investors, customers, employees, suppliers, and vendors, and what inclines companies to maintain a higher degree of stakeholder satisfaction is robust ethical identity.
Trust plays a pivotal role in marketing and cannot be underestimated. Business ethics, if implemented correctly, creates trust between an organization and its stakeholders. Furthermore, if maintained long-term, trust constructs reputation, a tremendous factor contributing to an organization's financial health. The businessman Waren Buffett says: "Lose money for the firm, even a lot of money, and I will be understanding; lose reputation for the firm, even a shred of reputation, and I will be ruthless." Reputation, which Buffett emphasizes, cannot be achieved without adequately implementing business ethics.
Ethics must be ingrained in all marketing elements to help an organization achieve its goals. Marketing is a critical department within a company's operation because "the functional area most closely related to ethical abuse in firms is marketing" (Dincer, 2014, p.1). This practice poses higher importance because communicating and openly satisfying customers are directly attributed to marketing (Volle, 2013, as cited in Dincer, 2014).
Establishing marketing ethics is a multi-facet process that should be regarded from individual and organizational perspectives. The general corporate ethics is the integrated personal moralities. Individuals' ethics reflect on the organization's marketing, and as Murphy and Laczniak (1981, cited in Dincer, 2014) state, marketing is most proximate to the public view and societal analysis and critique. Therefore, building a reputation for a company begins from within, where employees are treated ethically and are taught ethics.
I am an immigrant born elsewhere and lived in four different countries before migrating to the United States. Ethical standards, whether on a business or personal level, are different in the East. I am confident that marketing ethics in eastern countries is on minimal to zero rates. Economic directly affects ethics, yet again on a business or personal level. Due to unpleasant economic conditions in most other nations, businesses' first goal is to survive. Therefore, ethics are sacrificed for survival. Customer satisfaction is not even a factor; owners' is. Unlike the U.S., in most African, Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and European Eastern Block nations, business ethics is not about building a regular and trustful customer relationship; it is about making wealth for the business owners.
As a high-schooler, I worked in a pharmacy for about a year. My wage didn't base on hourly or salary arrangements; It was a commission-based job. So, the more I sold, the more I earned. I was trained as a salesman. During my training, I was repeatedly told that what mattered was Sales—what, to whom, how never mattered.
We sold medical equipment, dietary supplements, over-the-counter medicines, and prescribed drugs. The salespeople were instructed by the pharmacist (also the owner) to market prescribed medications in the free market for double or triple the regular price. A few years later, I moved to another country, and there I witnessed that counterfeit dietary supplements were packed and labeled as American products and sold to the public - American products, from medications to clothing to vehicles, are extremely popular all over the globe. On more extensive scales, companies stole others' Intellectual Properties (IPs), reproduced them, and marketed them under their brand.
Although my current job is mainly operational, it partially involves sales, too. I have instructed my team members to ensure that they describe all features and details of the product and service we provide to our customers as they actually are. All employees involved with sales-related activities have also been instructed to point out the negative attributes of the marketing products. Furthermore, I have explicitly laid out a policy that prevents the team from being pushy to selling an item and have informed the staff that acting otherwise would be considered customer harassment, which the company has zero tolerance for. Not offering commissions by the firm has also helped me achieve this objective.
Our customers rely on us and take our word without a second thought since we have established trust and reputation by maintaining high business ethics.
Thus, marketing is not evil. It is possible to remain ethical and accomplish marketing goals simultaneously.
References:
Dincer, and B. “An Overview and Analysis of Marketing Ethics.” International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 4, no. 11, 2014, hrmars.com/hrmars_papers/An_Overview_and_Analysis_of_Marketing_Ethics.pdf, 10.6007/IJARBSS/v4-i11/1290.
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