Choosing the Cross: Examining Character in Market Management

Choosing the Cross: Examining Character in Market Management

Melbert Jones

**** University

Choosing the Cross: Examining Character in Market Management

Businesses hire advertisers, consultants, and marketing firms to ensure profitability and sustainability of their companies, yet despite these multiple modalities to ensure market superiority, brands have “failed to maintain the perspective on the outside world necessary to cope with changes that would affect their future” (Askew, 2009, p. 1). In 2008, Chinese dairy manufacturers were embroiled in scandal for supplementing their products with melamine (a false protein) causing 300,000 infant illnesses and many deaths (Thompson, 2009), resulting in most companies closing from the public backlash while others survived. The companies that survived had well known integrity and character in their business practices. Dr. Martin Luther King (n.d.) said, “In the end, we will remember not the words or deeds of our enemies, but the silence of those we thought were our friends;” the Chinese chose to turn their backs on the companies that remained silent while their children languished in the hospitals. Quality of character is often over looked by companies clawing their way toward market domination and yet it is the key ingredient to long-term success.

Character is not a new phenomenon; the bible is full of courageous acts, and none more relevant to Christians than the acts of Jesus before crucifixion. Jesus knew that he was to die, but instead of running, hiding, or lying, he told his disciples in Matthew 26:54, “how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled” (New American Standard Bible). Jesus went against the easy way out because he saw a greater purpose; sometimes being a marketing firm of character means taking the hard way out. McDonalds, holding on to ancient and unethical marketing means, failed to change their marketing strategy in light of numerous reports of childhood obesity and the unhealthy...