Sale Ethics Is an Oxymoron

Is Sale Ethics is an Oxymoron?

Many salesman who are dealing with daily day to day sales need to know the sales ethics, however many salesman did not follow the sales ethics due to the restriction of time and dead line, which prohibit them from following the ethics code. Thus the saying that sales ethics is an oxymoron come to exist. Many people argued that while individual factors play an important role in the ethical practice of day to day business , however eventually it comes down to the sales management to set standards and rules when it comes to day to day trading ethics. This paper will discuss in depth about do sales ethics is an oxymoron and why.

Ethics is the study of behavior of how people ought to act toward each other (Namee 1992). Many people equate this to legal issue however it only not cover legal issue but it also cover moral issue. In some circumstances legal action may not equate to ethical action. In 1980s where there is financial scandal in the United States due to the insider trading and failure of stock and bond brokerages cause a financial crisis, though in that period of time it is not illegal but it seems highly unethical. Thus this show that ethics itself goes beyond the law (Namee 1992). Salesperson have hard time following with ethics due to the pressure from the meeting the goal. Thus many salesperson didn’t follow the codes of ethics resulting in a reputation that sales ethics is oxymoron since most salesperson do not follow codes of ethics. It is also because of the different cultural norms and values across country, is safe to presume that moral conflicts or ethical dilemmas will always happen (Goudy 2003).

One of the case of multinational company that violate the codes of ethics is Subway, in 2013 Subway is accused of misrepresenting of the word ‘Footlong’. Subway advertise that their sandwich is name Footlong for the length however the Footlong sandwich did not measure up to the foot long length (Muller 2013). Subway have...