The Ethical Challenges of Global Marketing

Abstract

Marketing ethics can, generally speaking, be looked upon as the adherence to the principles, values and standards of the marketing profession. The demands of marketing ethics go further than the demands of legislative regulations for they affect all manner of business decisions, procedures and activities. Each firm on the global market today is there primarily due to internet technology which makes possible a completely new way of doing business. This has resulted in competitiveness on a global scale and has caused an immense expansion of the markets of large, powerful, foreign companies. There are vast differences in the legislature of various countries in which a particular firm does business, and ethics goes further than does the law. Hence, ethically challenging business situations arise which are oftentimes difficult to grasp and to resolve. Research has shown that the differences between countries with regard to supervision, culture, upbringing, environment, religious and other precepts are sometimes so great that the entire strategy of penetrating foreign markets must therefore be altered. There are numerous instances of the questionable management of global firms regarding price policies, product management, distribution and promotion. A lack of ethicality therein results in a proliferation of unethical activity and in the long term is reflected in negative and unprofitable business dealings. In other words, bad business ethics is penalized in various ways. This can occur through a drop in popularity, market share decrease, profit decrease or any other form of criticism or ignoring of the firm and its products and services by the entire public to which it is exposed on the market.