Ethics and Global Marketing

Lecture two:

Ethics and Global Marketing Planning

What is marketing?

• Marketing involves:– Focusing on the needs and wants of customers– Identifying the best method of satisfying those

needs and wants– Orienting the company towards the process of

providing that satisfaction– Meeting organisational objectives

What is global marketing?

• Notion of a 'borderless' global marketplace• Marketing operations that cross political and cultural

boundaries• Maximising opportunities in the search for global

competitive advantage• Adding to stakeholder value• Exporting / International marketing / global marketing

Global Marketing management

Lee and Carter, 2012

The marketing concept

• Segmentation• Targeting• Positioning

Building sustainable competitive advantage

New products and processes for international markets

The product lifecycle

The International Product Lifecycle

Sales

Time

Home countryCountry A

Country B

Building sustainable competitive advantage

Product portfolio managementM

arke

t Gro

wth

Rat

e

Relative Market Share

High

High

Low

Low

STAR

CASHCOW DOG

?QUESTION

MARK

Growth stage

Build market

Introduction stage

?

Maturity stage

Harvest market

Decline stage

Divest market

BCG/ Boston matrix

Ethical brand challenges

Ethical brand challenges

Definition of ethical marketing

'Ethical marketing refers to practices that emphasise transparent, trustworthy, and responsible personal and / or organisational marketing policies and actions that exhibit integrity as well as fairness to consumers and other stakeholders.'

Murphy et al, 2012, Ethics in Marketing: International Cases and Perspectives

An ethical perspective

• Ethical marketing puts people first– Create products and services that have a

perceived and real social benefit.– Essential for sustainable competitive

advantage.

• Ethics is an applied discipline.

Seven basic perspectives:Approach from Murphy et al, 2012

1. Ethical marketing puts people first.

2. Ethical marketers must achieve a behaviour standard above the law.

3. Marketers are responsible for whatever they intend as a means or end with a marketing action.

4. Marketing organisations should cultivate better (i.e. higher) moral imagination in their managers and employees.

5. Marketers should articulate and embrace a core set of ethical actions.

6. Adoption of a stakeholder orientation is essential to ethical marketing decisions.

7. Marketing organisations ought to delineate an ethical decision making protocol.

Business perspective one:

• Societal benefit:Ethical marketing puts people first

• Do not treat people as a means to a profitable end.• Flouting this can add costs to the average

marketing transaction.

Net benefit to who?

• Society or the individual consumer?– Tobacco– Credit cards– Alcohol– Video games– Food

• These are the second-order, or even third-order effects of marketing practice that can raise ethical questions

Business perspective two:

• Ethical expectations for marketing must exceed legal requirements– The law represents the lowest common denominator

of expected behaviour for marketers.– The formalisation of restrictions by law typically lags

behind public opinion.

• Ethics and the law are connected but are not the same thing

Political / Legal environment

• Three dimensions:– The home country– The host country– The international trading environment

Ethics and the law

• Legal systems in some areas may be underdeveloped.

• Country may not have a democratic system– Legal system may reflect the interests of the

ruling class.

Ethics and the law

• Ethics embodies higher standards than law.• Ethics assumes more duties than law.• Those companies that view themselves as

ethical marketers aspire to a higher standard.• Even in democracies, the legal system cannot

be a substitute for personal and organisational responsibility.

Ethics and Global Marketing

Lecture two:

Ethics and Global Marketing Planning

Tutor: Giovanna Battiston

g.battiston@shu.ac.uk

Role play activity

Role play scenarioYou work for a PR agency that specialises in handling accounts for firms with

products in multiple, global markets. Your firm prides itself on its ethical position

and has a code of ethics that it publishes on its website.

Your firm has grown rapidly in recent years and your Chief Executive, who is

also the founder of the business, has recently managed to secure an opportunity

to handle the PR for Unilever in the Far East.

You have been invited to an internal planning meeting to discuss this

opportunity.

You will assume one of the roles on the following slide and then prepare for the

meeting.

Roles• Chief Executive (you will also chair the meeting)

• Finance Director

• Chairman

• Company Secretary

• Business Development Director

• HR Director

• Marketing Director

• Head of Internal PR

• Key Accounts Director

• Regional Account Manager for the Far East

• Head of Creative Design