Marketing, Ethics of

General Perspectives

Because marketing is the organizational process focused directly on exchange, ethical issues in marketing have existed since the inception of trade. The Roman philosopher Cicero counseled merchants to avoid raising prices too high in times of shortage, lest they alienate their customers, who might shun them when supplies were more abundant. However, the analysis of marketing ethics from a more systematic and analytical standpoint has only begun to develop in the past 40 years. Since the mid-1960s, the literature on marketing ethics has grown substantially. A recent 2005 ABI/Inform literature search using the term marketing ethics as its search query generated a list of more than 400 citations to the literature—all of which presumably addressed marketing ethics in some scholarly form or fashion. While cynics view the term marketing ethics as an oxymoron, no doubt due partly to the frequent questionable activities of some used car dealers, advertising copyrighters, and telemarketers, there exist clear and articulated standards of proper behavior that are “peer endorsed” by marketing practitioners. In other words, marketing managers themselves have expressed their opinions as to the ideal obligations inherent in the honest and forthright [Page 1337]conduct of marketing. Perhaps the best known of these codes of conduct is the American Marketing Association's (AMA's) “Statement of Ethical Norms and Values for Marketers.” This document—endorsed by the largest professional organization of marketing practitioners in the world—and available for review at http://www.marketpower.com (search: code of ethics) specifically states that marketers serve not only their company enterprises but also act as stewards of society in creating, facilitating, and executing the efficient and effective exchange transactions that are part of a greater economy. The AMA statement recognizes the duties that marketers have to all stakeholders (e.g., customers, employees, investors, channel members, regulators, and the host community) as they discharge their job responsibilities. This document explicitly warns that marketers must not knowingly do harm in executing their selling responsibilities, that marketers have a duty to foster trust in the marketing system, and that they should embrace basic marketplace values, including truth telling, genuine service to customers, avoidance of practices acclaimed to be unfair, and an adherence to honest and open communications with clients. Significantly, it states that marketing organizations have responsibilities of “citizenship” just as individuals do. Documents such as the AMA Statement represent hard evidence that there are bedrock ethical standards and values that have been agreed on by numerous marketing practitioners.

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