Identify and describe a potential ethical dilemma that a marketer might face whe

Question

Identify and describe a potential ethical dilemma that a marketer might face when segmenting a market. How might this concern be appropriately addressed given the need to satisfy often conflicting stakeholders?

What are the 5 stages of the consumer buying decision process? How can you use this information to your advantage as a marketer?

What are the 5 stages of the consumer buying decision process? How can you use this information to your advantage as a marketer?

What is the difference between primary and secondary market data? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

What are 3 brands of the same product (e.g., breakfast cereal) that are positioned differently? How are they differentiated?

Describe the five characteristics of a good brand. Provide examples of brands that meet as many of these criteria as possible.

How do the pricing strategies for corporations differ from nonprofit organizations (NPOs)? Provide examples.

What product or service have you recently encountered that would be particularly suited for multi-channel or interactive marketing? Why? What are the benefits of multiple marketing channels? Are there any disadvantages? Explain.

What are the characteristics of marketing channels? What 3 factors should be considered when designing one? Describe an organization's (that is familiar to you) marketing channel.

What factors influence choice of media? What media would you choose to market a new line of cosmetics for women, and why? How would your choice change if it were a cosmetic line for men?

Define and describe the elements and potential benefits of integrated marketing communication (IMC), using a product of your choice to illustrate the use of IMC What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a humorous appeal in advertising insurance, versus a fear appeal? Provide examples of each.

"The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." So said Milton Friedman in a famous 1970 missive in The New York Times. How do you respond to this statement? Do you support or refute this notion? Explain.

Describe an example of societal marketing from your experience and/or research and evaluate whether or not it was/is effective, and why? Name the organization. Was the effort consistent with the mission of the organization?

Explanation / Answer

When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are--or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously--preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.

The discussions of the "social responsibilities of business" are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that "business" has responsibilities? Only people have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but "business" as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. The first step toward clarity in examining the doctrine of the social responsibility of business is to ask precisely what it implies for whom.

Presumably, the individuals who are to be responsible are businessmen, which means individual proprietors or corporate executives. Most of the discussion of social responsibility is directed at corporations, so in what follows I shall mostly neglect the individual proprietors and speak of corporate executives.

In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different objective. A group of persons might establish a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose--for example, a hospital or a school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objectives but the rendering of certain services.

In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation or establish the eleemosynary institution, and his primary responsibility is to them.

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