Ethical, social and environmental aspects of marketing

Ethical issues in an RM approach

Ethical problems occur only when an individual interacts with other people. Ethical conflicts then occur when people perceive that their duties towards one group are inconsistent with their duties and responsibilities towards some other group.

Kavali et al. (1999) tried to identify a number of potential ethical conflicts in the following marketing relationships:

• Between different divisions in the company (e.g. between HQ and subsidiaries)
• Between the company and its customers
• Between the company and its competitors
• Between the company and its suppliers

Kavali et al. (1999) suggest that RM inputs can positively affect ethical behavior by affecting categories of ethical factors and preventing a number of ethical problems from arising in the first place.

The following framework may be used as a guide for marketing managers to plan and implement morally justified RM operations (Takala and Uusitalo, 1996). The guide consists of four parts.

• The ethics of keeping promises and telling the truth
• The ethics of equal treatment of customers
• The ethics of commitment
• The ethics of communication