Marketing, Ethics of

Marketing ethics is the systematic study of how moral standards are applied to marketing decisions, behaviors, and institutions. Because marketing is a process inherent to most organizations, marketing ethics should be viewed as a subset of business ethics; thus, much of what is written about business ethics applies to marketing ethics as well. At the outset, it is also useful to distinguish between positive and normative marketing ethics. Positive marketing ethics looks at marketing practices from the standpoint of “what is.” For example, specifying the percentage of organizations that have codes of ethical marketing practice or tracking the number of violations that deal with deceptive advertising would be examples of positive marketing ethics. In contrast, normative marketing ethics deals with how marketing ought to operate ...