BU352 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Marketing Ethics, Price Skimming, Consumer Protection
Ethics – Chapter 18
What is Marketing
• Marketing is a set of processes for creating communicating, delivering and exchanging
offerings that have value for customers, clients, and society at large
Attitudes About Ethical Standards of Various Professionals
• The accumulating and display of material possessions
• Satisfying transitory appetites and created wants
• Seeking positional goods for social status and social bonding
• Consumers take their identity from their possessions
• Fantasy and imagery influence buying
• Advertising privileges superficial values
• Image-saturated environments press consumers to buy
• Globalization transmits the consumer society
What is Consumer Culture
• Associated with a specific historical period – now
• Characterised by brands carrying meanings and are used by consumers to construct their
identities
• Large volume of manufactured goods, planned obsolescence
• Almost everything is for sale
• Mass media and fashion systems
What are the Problems with This?
• What does that $14 t-shirt really cost?
• Total cost is $5.67 with a markup of 60%
• Fast fashion is the 2nd most toxic industry after oil
Consumerism
• A social movement aimed at protecting consumers from business practices ….
• Organizations like the Greenpeace are telling consumers that these businesses are not doing
the right thing
The Influence on Personal Ethics: Why People Act Unethically
• What makes people take actions that create so much harm?
• Are all the individuals who engage in questionable behavior just plain immoral or unethical?
• Decisions often have conflicting outcomes, where both options have positive and negative
consequences
The Scope of Marketing Ethics
• Business ethics: examines ethical rules and principles within a commercial context the
various moral or ethical problems that might arise in a business setting and any special duties
or obligations that apply to persons engaged in commerce
• Marketing ethics
Ethics in Product Decisions
• Consumer safety
• Product liability and reliability
• Special needs
• Environmental consequences
Ethics in Pricing
• Price skimming
Document Summary
What is marketing: marketing is a set of processes for creating communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, and society at large. What is consumer culture: associated with a specific historical period now, characterised by brands carrying meanings and are used by consumers to construct their. Image-saturated environments press consumers to buy identities: large volume of manufactured goods, planned obsolescence, almost everything is for sale, mass media and fashion systems. What are the problems with this: what does that t-shirt really cost, total cost is . 67 with a markup of 60, fast fashion is the 2nd most toxic industry after oil. Consumerism: a social movement aimed at protecting consumers from business practices , organizations like the greenpeace are telling consumers that these businesses are not doing the right thing. Ethics in product decisions: consumer safety, product liability and reliability, special needs, environmental consequences.
