Ethical and Unethical issues in Marketing Management

 Marketing:

 It is the process of getting potential clients or customers interested in your products and services. Marketing involves researching, promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services.

Marketing Management:

marketing management is the process of planning, executing, and tracking the marketing strategy of an organization. This includes the marketing plan, campaigns, and tactics used to create and meet the demand of target customers to drive profitability and client trust.

Ethical issues in marketing:

Pricing Ethics:

There are various forms of unethical business practices related to pricing products and services.

Bid rigging is a type of fraud in which a commercial contract is promised to one party, however, for the sake of appearance several other parties also present a bid.

Predatory pricing is the practice of the sale of a product or service at a negligible price, intending to throw competitors out of the market, or to create barriers to entry.

Misusing consumer data:

 If you're not tech-savvy, you might not be aware of how you (or third parties) are misusing your customer data. The issue is that the fallout from these practices will affect your business, not the guilty party. Your customers will fault you for not being aware of what was going on. 

Ensure your website and the data you collect are safe and kept private from third parties. Consult with an expert if necessary to ensure your customer data is safe from being manipulated and sold to other parties. 

Unethical issues in marketing:

Anti-Competitive Practices:

There are various methods that are anti-competitive. For example, bait and switch is a type of fraud where customers are "baited" through the advertisements for some products or services that have a low price; however, the customers find in reality that the advertised good is unavailable and they are "switched" towards a product that is costlier and was not intended in the advertisements.

Diet Coke – An Example of Unethical Marketing:

Just because these drinks have the label “diet” on them, does not mean that you should jump to the conclusion that they are healthier for you.

It is Loaded with aspartame, cyclamates, and saccharin, artificial sweeteners in diet drinks have been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals. Diet Coke is an example of unethical marketing where the company, Coca Cola is making false advertising claims. One particular marketing campaign that Coca-Cola launched was endorsed by Karl Lagerfeld the Chanel designer who claimed to have lost 80 pounds on a diet composed mainly of Diet Coke. Karl says “I drink Diet Coke from the minute I get up to the minute I go to bed … I drink nothing else.”

Coca-Cola should not be using Karl Lagerfeld’s radical dieting ways as a means of promoting its product. Rather, they should limit such extreme statements and use regular everyday people in their ads so as not to give the wrong message about Diet Coke being directly correlated to a “healthy” body.