Marketing and its role in Society

Should marketers be free to satisfy the needs and wants of people?
Normal goods
Normal services
goods considered bad for individual
goods considered bad for society
services considered bad for individual
services considered bad for society
Adam Smith's invisible hand
Morality, responsibility and conscience reside in the invisible hand of the free market system
What would that mean if followed?
The Hand of Government
"no moral responsibility beyond political and legal obedience."
It takes a law to make a crime.
A law to have meaning must be enforceable.
Who makes the laws and how good are they?
The Hand of Management
Managers must make independent, noneconomic judgements over moral and ethical matters that face them in long and short term.
requires ethical behavior at all levels of companies.

The acid test will be whether companies prosper that take the ethical management, societal marketing point of view. Marketing theory says that they should because people need and want socially responsible companies.
Are we willing to pay the costs?
Toward a set of guiding principles for public policy toward marketing.
Consumer and producer freedom
Curb serious potential harm
Meet basic needs of all somehow
Use scarce resources efficiently
Encourage genuine innovation
Provide consumers with relevant education and information.
Protect consumers outright in areas where competence in evaluation is unlikely.
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The Goal of Our Marketing System Should be:

To Maximize the Quality of Life Enjoyed by Ourselves and by Future Generations.

Criticisms of Business aimed at Marketing
Individual welfare issues
High prices
Deception in pricing, in promotion in packaging
(Is puffery O.K. ?)
High pressure selling (cooling off period)
Crummy products (unsafe or shoddy)
Planned obsolescence style, function,
materials
The poor pay more. -- It's true! -- Why?
because of location
because of extra costs
because of lack of consuming expertise
Social Welfare Issues
- "I'm a material girl and I live in a material world"
-False wants
transforming a thirst for water into a thirst for Coca-cola.
-Insufficient social goods or social costs created by private gain.
e.g. autos and roadways.
-Cultural pollution
punk rock?
sex, power, and status
overemphasized
-Excess political power
the media dependence on advertising keeps them from "biting the hand that feeds"

Business practice issues
Anticompetitive aquisition
Barriers to entry
Stewardship or exploitation of "public" resources .. frequencies, forests, water, soil
Predatory competition
Dumping
Gouging
Market Manipulation e.g. Enron
Consumerism
rights of buyers to know
to be protected
to influence business
new laws
Environmentalism
protect and enhance people's living environment
The essence of the argument is that the true costs of production are not being charged to the producers and if they were, many business practices would change.
packaging
pollution
destruction of otherwise renewable resources
creation of new environmental problems
e.g. commuting and parking
Are we guilty of cultural hedonism, living high today at the expense of future generations?
Return to Notes list.