Research On Marketing Ethics

With the constant development of the market economy of our country, enterprises offer abundant products day by day to the society and the masses of consumers. At the same time, the constant aggravating market competition and the competition law which selects the superior and eliminates the inferior make some enterprises adopt the mean which violates law and marketing ethics to try for customers and obtain heavy profits, such as producing and selling fake and forged products, luring consumers buy those products that they do not need, making and propagating sham ads, exaggerating functions of products etc. These immoral marketing deeds not only destroy fair competition principles , but also damage interests of the massed of consumers and the society, influence the enterprises'own prestige and image and do not benefit the long term development. So marketing ethics has growing importance in our country. This thesis is arranged as follows. Chapter one introduces the background of research, the meaning of research, and lastly introduces the research contents and framework.Chapter two focuses on literature reviews. First, this thesis traces the evolution of marketing ethics. And then , the thesis introduces main theories of marketing ethics, stress recommends The Prima Facie Duty Framework,The Proportionality Framework,The Social Justice Framework and The Hent-Viele Model. Chapter three focuses on analyzing the phenomena and the aftermath of immoral marketing deeds in China. The section one probes into the immoral marketing deeds in products,price making,promotion,distribution. The section two analyzes the aftermath of immoral marketing deeds, including deteriorating the environment of company, heaving the marketing cost, damaging benefits of society and consumers etc.Chapter four contributes to the analysis on determinants of decision making on marketing ethics. the determinants can be identified as external factors,individual factors and organizational factors. Individual factors contain the demographic factors,the moral cognitive development, values ,religion, personality and pressures from family. The organizational factors consist of the corporate cultures, the ethical climate, the structure of organization, significant value etc, and the external factors refer to thesocial environment, laws, the pressures of the consumers etc.Chapter five gives suggestions on how to improve the ethical marketing decision-making. This thesis argues that the government should actively undertake the following tasks, such as to complete the laws and regulations, to speed up the setup of the society credit system etc. As to the industry, the association should develop and perfect the codes of ethics for companies in the same line and provide ethical guidelines. The other societal strength includes the supervision from the news media circle and the instructions from the education circles. Besides above forces, the company can do much to improve the ethical marketing decision-making, they have to foster moral leaders, moral corporate culture, moral marketing strategy and moral control by endeavors on their organizations and institutions.