What Are Marketing Ethics?

Marketing ethics is a moral standard used to determine whether marketing activities are correct, that is, to determine whether corporate marketing activities are in the interests of consumers and society, and whether it can bring the greatest happiness to consumers and society. Marketing ethics are companions to the market economy. Under the conditions of a market economy, modern enterprises must emphasize marketing ethics and implement honest marketing in their marketing activities. Whether a company's marketing behavior meets ethical standards has always been a controversial research topic in the field of marketing.

Marketing ethics

Marketing ethics is adjusting business with all

(I) Problems caused by unethical behavior in modern marketing

The immoral problems in marketing activities have adversely affected society, enterprises and consumers.

1. have an adverse impact on society

The first is environmental pollution. Such as the pollution of the product itself and its packaging and the environmental pollution caused by the manufacturing process. The second is misleading social and cultural values. For example, unhealthy factory names, store names, and brand names cause text pollution; many concepts such as "materialism first", "sex", "status", and "high consumption" instilled in many advertisements have misled people's values and made people mutually Compare and advance consumption. Some marketing activities also cause bad social and political impact. The third is to increase social costs. For example, while satisfying people's needs, cigarettes have also harmed their physical health and violated the rights of non-smokers. As a result, diseases and mortality caused by smoking have increased, and social medical expenses have increased. Another example is that the increase of automobiles not only makes various infrastructure facilities such as roads, parking lots, traffic management, and police more strained, but also causes social costs such as traffic congestion, air pollution, and accidents and injuries.

2. Damage to consumer interests

Although consumers are called "God" by marketers, consumers have not tasted the taste of "God" in many aspects, but have become victims of the marketing system. The first is the damage of products to consumers' interests. Some products are harmful, such as cigarettes, alcohol, etc .; some products are of substandard quality, which will cause personal and property safety to consumers, such as electrical appliances leakage, beer bottle explosions, etc .; and some produce fake and shoddy products, which will make consumers It is not only economically, psychologically, personally and financially damaged, but also adversely affects peers and society, such as fake brand-name goods. Second, fraudulent marketing harms consumer interests. The sky-high prices, fraudulent packaging, and excessive promotions all hurt consumer interests. In addition, consumer misuse and misconduct caused by unclear product instruction manuals occur from time to time.

3. Has adversely affected the business

With the gradual improvement of the market economy system, consumers have become more and more mature. How can ordinary people be deceived a second time? For similar products, ordinary people have been fooled several times in a row, and they will certainly sniff the whole behavior. For example, the Guanshengyuan mooncake incident not only made the factory's mooncakes unsaleable, but also caused the entire mooncake market in China to fall into crisis, with the result that it hurts and harms itself, and eventually ends in bankruptcy. Therefore, the end of marketing ethics will be the end of the market. Now more and more companies realize that using unethical marketing methods to deceive customers for a while, but they can't deceive customers forever. Although this behavior may bring improper benefits to the enterprise in the short term, it will definitely damage the corporate image in the long run. Marketing ethics must be emphasized in modern corporate marketing activities. Deciding the success or failure of the competition is not only the reputation of the company, but also the credibility and reputation. Reputation is the life of an enterprise. Once reputation is damaged, it will be difficult for a company to stand up and eventually die. Therefore, visionary companies and marketers can treat customers sincerely, obtain customer information, and value the establishment of long-term relationships with customers, increasing the repeat purchase rate of customers, so as to establish a good and A long-term corporate image will ultimately realize the economic benefits of the enterprise.

4. Harm to the industrial chain

There are many emerging industries around the world that violate marketing ethics during promotion. If leading companies do not comply with marketing ethics and ignore the health and safety of consumer groups, it will directly affect the reasonable development of such industries in the future. Many companies use loopholes in the law to make large profits, which seriously jeopardizes the rules of the entire emerging industry, and many people who like speculation follow suit. In this case, it will be more harmful to the whole society like a snowball. Once the entire industry collapses and harms the consumer population, a large number of corporate employees will face unemployment. The government's economic and employment pressure will inevitably increase. To deal with the social effects of the collapse of this industry. If you want to re-establish the image of this industry later, it is difficult.

It can be seen that, if the company does not follow the ethical principles in marketing activities, it may succeed for a while, but it will seriously damage the public image of the company. Therefore, an excellent company should focus on marketing ethics to improve its reputation.