After reading the article by El Sayed and
El Ghazaly (n.d.), discuss your views on the following:
1. Do you feel
ethical guidelines make a difference to marketers?
Personally, I think that marketers all make ethical
decisions based on their job requirements, just like anyone else. The problem I
see is that marketers are responsible for getting people to stay (either in
person or on the phone) around and to get them to end up buying the product or
service they’re selling. Assuming I was in their shoes, it would be difficult
to make ethical decisions because you don’t know what the other person see’s as
ethical or not. You are obviously trying to persuade the consumer to purchase
the product/service and you want them to continue to purchase so as long as
they follow the regulations set by the law and their company, I think they know
what decisions to make. After all, they are all people like us although
sometimes I think they forget that.
2. How can companies balance
the need to win with being ethical?
I think if a company wants to be successful and remain
ethical, they have to take the needs and wants of their consumers into account.
For example, if a marketer wants to remind you that your subscription is almost
up, they can do that through a simple, professional call that doesn’t make the
consumer feel invaded or disrespected. Often times, after I may cancel
something, the company will not stop following up with me. It’s as if they
didn’t hear me the first time. Additionally, they can try and offer the
consumer the best deal they have right away. That way on the second or third
contact the consumer doesn’t feel like the company tried to take advantage of
them the first couple of times. What if the person had agreed to the original
terms and they found out later they were offering a better deal? The reading
states “they make decisions in an organizational
environment that is less ethical than their own values and beliefs. Therefore,
marketing practitioners may be faced with conflict in structuring how to think
and act ethically toward consuming publics” (Sayed & Ghazaly, 2007).
I take that to mean, the marketer doesn’t think like they actually would at
home. I think that produces a number of problems for the consumer and the
company. The culture at the organization should dictate the ethical behavior of
the employees.
3. Is it ethical to
track your buying habits or web visits to target you for marketing purposes?
So I could go on and on about this topic but to be short,
no. I don’t think that it is appropriate for any company or government to track
any person’s habits. Let’s focus on businesses. There is a local store here
that always asks what zip code we are from in order to check out. Often times I
want to tell them that’s none of their business. What difference does it make,
I’m shopping here. What they are doing however is keeping track of where people
travel from to shop there. That’s a form of free marketing. Second, there
shouldn’t be any reason to track anyone’s purchases. Just because they purchase
one thing, one time, does not mean that they should be tracked. I think it is a
total unethical behavior that needs to end. It’s to bad that Google and Yahoo
use personal email scanning to market to their users and that they make
billions of dollars doing it. That needs to end!
4. As a leader, how
will you manage the ethical aspects of your marketing efforts?
In my current field we don’t market directly but we do
provide a service in which we want the users to return. We try and ensure that
return by providing excellent customer service, short delay times, and
feedback. As a leader, I will do my best to make sure that everyone uses there
best judgment and ethical decision making to handle each situation correctly.
Often times, we are able to look back on a situation and see what we could have
done better. I would want the people working for, and with me to try and make
those choices the first time around. By having a good customer service program
and excellent training, I think that we can have sound marketing procedures in
place.
Reference
El Sayed, H., & El Ghazaly, I.
(n.d.) 2007. Ethics-Based Marketing :: Ethical Articles ::. Retrieved July 4, 2015.
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