Relevance of Ethics in Marketing Education Essay Example

The first step to combat ethical dilemmas within marketing is at the source. The source is the teaching of ethics in universities. Ethics education improvement is a major priority in the United States, particularly among institutions with Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation. The AACSB takes the subject so seriously that it provides mandatory standards within its accreditation criteria (AACSB, 2005) and provides a dedicated Ethics Resource Centre for those teaching ethics modules (AACSB, 2004) (1168). There are two aspects that make up a good quality of teaching ethics. Schools would have to create and or adopt a standalone ethics course that would be incorporated across the curriculum specific to each course. The standalone courses should be specific to each course. Having these class taught throughout the degree program creates an ethical background that with each passing semester becomes more reinforced. Finding faculty to teach the standalone classes possess some difficulty. One way to find proper faculty would train currently enrolled faculty members in formal ethics training. The second option is to hire new faculty who are a trained ethicist to teach the standalone ethic courses (467). Active learning would be a positive way of teaching ethics. The use of roleplaying and debating among students creates an engaging learning method.  Having guest speakers from accredited business owners within the community portrays real life situations that students can view easily around them and promote local business while teaching ethical importance. A history of ethics could also be added to the curriculum for students to view how unethical practices occur and the consequences that followed. Three instances that could be taught happened recently is Enron, the Volkswagen emissions test, and the false promotional video by Nikola. These three instances are few of many that could be taught to students. Having an unethical instance taught to students can be positive: having the instances be recent allows student to see how frequent and easily preventable these instances can be. 

An ethical approach that should be taught along side marketing is the common good theory. The theory of the common good suggests that the market is merely a mediating institution that serves to promote the efficient and fair provision of goods and services while simultaneously protecting individual rights (303). This theory would be the most advantageous for marketing. This theory dates to more than 2000 years ago from writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. It assumes that an individuals’ good is inextricably connected with the good of the community and society’s members are bound by the pursuit of common goals and values. Individuals can pursue self-interests while at the same time challenging themselves to pursue goals in common with society. The theory algins very closely to the ethical values that marketing should follow. The idea of both an induvial and society benefit from each other at the same time fits the same idea that both marketers and society benefit from each other. The products that a marketer markets to society should not be destructive to society but improve society. The buying and use of the product should benefit markets by accepting the marketers’ strategies and using the products as directed. The following of this theory would create a mutualism system helping both participants by helping each other’s interest.  

Gaining consumer trust is area of importance in the field of marketing. Trust can be defined as allowing oneself to become vulnerable to others whose behavior one can not control. The trust between marketers and consumer should be well established for each other to benefit. Trustworthiness can be broken up into three parts being integrity, ability, and benevolence. Throughout recent history studies have proclaimed “…that people who believe integrity and honesty are higher priorities than ability or performance, tend to behave more ethically, and that people are generally slower to forgive and forget trust breaches due to integrity-related failures than they are to trust breaches stemming from ability-related failures” (32).  An individual who lakes integrity or benevolence can be a greater risk for a company compared to a less skilled individual who has high integrity or benevolence. 

An ethical principle that could help marketing professionals gain consumer trust is a mid-level principle called the mutuality principle. It avoids the purely selfish policy of being ready to take advantage of the ignorance, special need or carelessness of the other party to lead him towards a transaction that is not in his own interest (28). This principle requires sellers to establish real reciprocity between his or her products and what he or she receives from the consumer. By seeking reciprocity the seller is actively ensuring to the consumer that the product is useful.  

Strategic planning and branding are a way for marketers to gain consumer trust. To maximize long-term profitability, the foundation of any marketing strategy should be the acquisition and retention of long-term consumer trust (34). The gain of long-term consumer trust means a profitable future for marketers. A problem occurs if ethical behavior is not the top priority from the beginning. The problem being that long-term stakeholder trust is in jeopardy. History provides example of where society responds negatively to unethical products and services. A current example is the tobacco industry and how they first promoted tobacco. Though it did take some years to realize the unethical promoting on April 1,1971 President Richard Nixon signed the legislation banning cigarette ads on television and radio. Twenty-seven years later in 1998 the Master Settlement Agreement accord was reached requiring the tobacco industry to pay settling states billions of dollars annually forever. The accord stopped cigarette manufactures from targeting the youth and using other marketing tactics to promote smoking. The Truth Initiative is a group that helps spread awareness of tobacco and vaping which has recently affected many induvial and the youth. This example of unethical marketing shows the long-lasting effects of how unethical marketing can hurt an industry and promote unhealthy and life threating addictions. 

Most of the unethical practices come from pricing. Pricing funds the firm and their current endeavors. Pricing is apart of the four P’s (product, promotion, place, and price) including in marketing courses. Price is the only P that does not represent a cost to a firm. Marketing professionals know that pricing is essential for profits.  Price gouging, price fixing, hidden cost schemes, and bait and switch schemes make up unethical pricing.