The Ethicality of a Firm’s Marketing Activity—Sanlu Group

Sanlu Group, a top China brand in Shijiazhuang, national inspection exempted quality product, best sales volume in the dairy industry in china market last fifteen years and commended with all kinds of honors before 2008 (1), nowadays occupied an image impression of immorality and sadness . In May of 2008, the first case of kidney stones result from the milk power occurred .As time goes on, more and more babies were found that they suffered from suffered kidney stones and all of them had eaten Sanlu milk power. According to the investigation of State Quality Inspection administration, Sanlu milk power was found to contain a chemical called melamine which can cause great damage to infant’s health(1). In this incident, at least six children have died, more than three hundred thousand children suffered kidney stones and more than thirty million children were impaired(2). On 12th February 2009, Sanlu Group was announced to be bankrupt.

In this case, Sanlu Group has made some mistakes in ethical values.

The first unethical activity of Sanlu Group is lack of honesty. The group claimed that Sanlu milk power was passed 1100 courses of inspection before they left the factory (3), aimed at providing high quality dairy products which can improve the physical constitution of Chinese to society(1) .But the fact is that they produced toxic milk power and millions of children were impaired. It ruined their honesty and goodwill to the customers and the stakeholders in the market.

The second unethical activity of Sanlu Group is lack of responsibility. As the hugest group of dairy in China, it was impossible that they could not observe melamine in the production process if they did inspect it. It also was impossible that they did not know what injuries to the users once they ate the milk power contained huge amount of melamine. As the uttermost milk power supplier in China, there were millions of users. It was extremely irresponsible that Sanlu Group ignored...