CHAPTER 14 : ETHICAL ISSUES IN MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Companies should follow ethical standards and rules and apply them to their marketing communications practice.
Unethical practices can be found in many marketing communications tools.
Chapter objectives
- Understand what morals and ethics mean both in general and in marketing communications practice
- Distinguish the different points of view with respect to ethics and the rules that marketing communications
professionals may follow in order to behave in an ethical way
- Learn about the major ethical issues in marketing communications : stereotyping, controversial messages,
targeting vulnerable groups such as children, and using covert marketing techniques such as stealth marketing
and buzz marketing
- Understand how marketing communications tools such as advertising, public relations, selling promotions and
packaging are sometimes used in an unethical way
- Get an idea about regulation and self-regulation principles and organisations with respect to marketing
communications
- Understand how companies may benefit from corporate social responsibility programmes
Ethics and marketing communications
- Morals: beliefs or principles concerning what is right and wrong
What you should do and what you should not do. It directs people as they make decisions.
- Ethics: principles that serve as operational guidelines for individuals and organisations
It is putting principles in practice. It is not an absolute thing, it is held in the social consciousness (attitudes
and feelings) of an organisation or a population. They are the application of morality.
There are 2 principles that can guide your ethical behaviour, but there is no such thing as an absolute ethical
principle :
- Deontology: duties, some actions are intrinsically right or wrong ~ idealism
Killing a person is always wrong, cheating is wrong, lying is wrong.
- Teleology: consequences, good or bad depends on what happens as a result of the action ~ relativism
‘End justifies the means’ approach, will lead to utilitarian points of view.
It is used to find wars ethically acceptable : if you have to kill 10.000 people to save the life of 100.000
people, it is okay. If you have to lie to make someone happy, it is a lie for a good reason. Teleology
rule is the most followed!
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, IDEALISM
Low High
RELATIVISM Low Exceptionists Absolutists
High Subjectivists Situationists
There are some ethical principles :
- Distributive justice: rewards are allocated in proportion to the contribution made to organizational ends
It could be ethical if you people more that contribute more to the result of a business. This is how salespeople
are mostly paid (commissions).
You could also pay people more because they need the money more, this is the basis of child allowance.
- Ordinary decency: lying, cheating and coercion are always considered unethical.
- Moral equity : perceived fairness, justice, acceptability
- Relativism : guidelines, requirements of the social / cultural system
- Contractualism: implied obligation, contracts, duties, rules.
I signed a contract, so I should not do this or that.
Ethical concerns in marketing (communications)
This is a list of the most often debated issues.
- Environmental and social values
Marketing communications is often based on earning money. So maybe by this you ignore the environmental
and social values. E.g. to have a cotton t-shirt, it asks a lot of water, so it is not eco-friendly. If you buy your
clothes in Primark, you can have child labour.
- Honesty, honour, virtual and integrity
- Creating a materialistic culture of conspicuous consumption
Conspicuous consumption = you buy stuff to impress other people. So there is a criticism that marketing drives
people to have more material things.
- Playing on emotions
Marketing communications is being accused of playing on emotions and not using rational and objective
information. But the human being behaviour is mostly driven by our emotions!
- Simplifying real human situations into stereotypes
This is true, there is a decade long problem with stereotyping gender, age, culture...
Advertisers keep on using stereotypes, especially gender stereotypes, this because most of the people who
watch these ads life in these stereotypes.
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, - Exploiting anxieties
If you don’t buy this, you will be very unhappy and your neighbour won’t like you anymore.
- Hidden persuasion
This is done with brand placement, native ads on Facebook...
- Maximising appeal and minimising information
You get persuasive cues and not much rational information.
- Trivialising human emotions
If you don’t buy this, you will be sad for the rest of your life.
- Reducing people to the role of irrational consumer
We are irrational consumers to begin with, we buy stuff because we like it, we don’t do it often on rational
objective criteria.
Do marketing communications mirror or shape society? The truth is in the middle : if marketing communications
do not work, that would imply that all marketing investments are useless; if marketing communications work all
the time with everyone, it means consumers do not have a conscious will.
The notion of social acceptability changes over time and varies from one culture or country to another. It is the
areas of taste and decency that most difficulty arises in defining ethical marketing communications.
Ethical decision-making models and rules
How should any person take a decision on what to do or what to do not.
- Caveat emptor (the one who buys should pay attention) : maximising profits within the law
This is when you want to be completely unethical. You have to watch out as a buyer and the company has to
stay in line with the law. The law is the only benchmark for ethical behaviour, and that what is legal must
therefore also be ethical.
- Ethics code
You should stay within the law, but this is not enough, you should also follow some ethical principles. E.g. you
should be careful when targeting vulnerable groups, like children : you should take into account that they
don’t advertising fully and you may not mislead them, you may not advertise to -12 year olds directly....
- Consumer sovereignty
Don’t do anything that takes advantage of the vulnerability of consumers. Sometimes consumers don’t have
the capability of knowing your marketing tricks. You should properly inform them and you should give them
the choice, don’t force them.
- Capability (vulnerability)
Is the target market vulnerable in ways that limit consumer decision-making and are consumers’
expectations at purchase likely to be realised?
- Information
Do consumers have sufficient information to judge and can consumers go elsewhere?
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