What are Marketing Ethics?
Marketing is how we obtain our clothing, food, and the items we use every day. Not only does marketing surround us in the world we live in, it envelops us, permeating throughout every aspect of our lives. Marketing influences and reflects how we think about the world ( Brenkert, G.G).
Despite the importance of marketing, marketers face many challenges. Marketers have been criticized by their consumers as simply being wasteful, spending billions of dollars to persuade people to buy products they don’t need. Large retailers and corporations have been accused of exercising their economic power over smaller retailers and suppliers. For example, the Coca-Cola Corporation insists that those who handle their products do not handle Pepsi-Cola products. If they ignore this request, Coke will withdraw their products as well as favorable financing arrangements they have provided to their handlers. International marketers have been charged with imposing the values of their home countries onto the countries in which they do business by manipulating people to want things they cannot afford (Brenkert, G.G).
Despite the accusations, marketers have been praised for helping their suppliers improve their standards and improving the quality of production and delivery. They have been commended for contributing to the economic development of nations; addressing social concerns, and supplying people with goods, services, and knowledge of products that they would not otherwise possess. In addition, it has been said that marketing has played a positive role in improving the ethics of nations (Brenkert, G.G).