İŞLETME ETİĞİ

Some marketing practices such as advertisements aimed at misleading and manipulating consumers, selling products harmful to the environment and health, pricing policies that push consumers to make decisions under pressure, unfair treatments among distribution channel members, etc., arise ethical concerns related to marketing.

Different factors are influential in the formation of marketing ethics, as decision makers and practitioners. Above all, the personal characteristics that make up the personalities of decision-makers and practitioners affect ethically their marketing decisions and behavior. The characteristics, objectives, vision, mission, strategy and policies of the organization and the administrative mentality constitute the organizational factors that affect marketing ethics.

Marketing activities are criticized based on its impact on individual consumer, society as a whole as well as environment, on other businesses. Effects on technology is not a criticism of marketing.

Materialism promotes symbolic features rather than pure functional features of products, such as prestige or status. Material people tend to be less satisfied with their perceived standard of living as they desire to possess even more things constantly. Therefore, unconscious, irrational or pure hedonic consumption hinders sustainable consumption.

Greenwashing means a range of communications that mislead people into adopting overly positive beliefs about an organization’s 
environmental performance, practices, or products.

Product safety, counterfeiting, recycling, packaging are related with ethics in product while anticompetitive pricing is related with ethics in pricing.

Obsolescence refers to a product being out of date or not useful any longer. There are four types of planned obsolescence which are; (1) technological or functional obsolescence, (2) psychological or style obsolescence, (3) systemic obsolescence and (4) obsolescence due to the failure and breakdown of the product.

Advertising ethics includes the following elements: The purpose of advertising to be clear and legitimate, the compatibility of the content of the advertisement with the general moral principles of society, not deluding, and not disparaging the competitors.

The more conscious the customers are in their consumption decisions the more they will force businesses to make ethical decisions.

There are four aspects why consumer education is needed related to conscious consumption: (1) informed choice (consumers should have knowledge about goods and services), (2) value system (consumers should know how to share and care as part of society), (3) recognition of responsibilities and rights (consumers should be aware of their rights), and (4) catalyst for action (consumers should be able to take action to get their rights in problems they face).

The Moral Development Theory, as initially defined by Jean Piaget, then refined by educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, represents the transformations that take place in an individual’s way of thinking.

One of the assumptions of the model is that Ethics is a standard for judging the rightness not of action per se, but of action of one person relative to another.

Integrative Social Contracts Theory which provides a framework for solutions to ethical issues that may arise among different groups and is therefore appropriate for the marketing domain as marketers often engage in cross-cultural activities mainly focuses on social roles, priorities and the stress of superior norms in the decision process in terms of marketing ethics.

High-pressure selling drives consumers to purchase products, Deceptive practices in pricing, promotion, and packaging, Poor goods and services to disadvantaged consumers are about  marketing’s impact on individual consumers. Acquisitions of competitors harm the firms and reduce the competition is about marketing’s impact on other business. Increase in private goods requires more public services and results in social costs (e.g. as the number of car ownership increases, it entails more highways, parking spaces, police services and causes traffic congestion, air pollution, natural resource shortages) is about marketing’s impact on society as a whole

Advertising ethics includes the following elements: The purpose of advertising to be clear and legitimate, Being honest, Not disparaging the competitors, Not deluding, Product safety, and so on.

Materialism is the attitude of some people who attach more importance to money and material things than spiritual values.

Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea.

Charging high prices in low income areas is one of the unethical practices in retailing because consumers there do not have adequate mobility possibilities to go out of their neighborhood to shop.

Muncy and Vitell (1992:298) define the consumer ethics as “the moral principles and standards that guide behavior of individuals or groups as they obtain, use, and dispose of goods and services”.

Personal traits and values is one of the factor affecting the formation of consumer ethics.