Ib Business Info

4.2

Marketing Ethics, Audit and Objectives

Regulations

In many countries, governments have set up rules or guidelines for ethical marketing known as Ethical code of marketing practice. These codes mainly include:

Regulation of advertisements that must be decent, honest and truthful.

Consumer protection on prices and products. For example, prices must be displayed or a 500ml bottle must not contain 450ml of content.

Monitoring of unfair practices such as unfair price fixing by powerful firms to exit small firms.

Examples of unethical marketing practices

Bait and Switch-is one of the most common unethical practices. It consists of attracting customers (the bait) by advertising very cheap products which are available only to the first few buyers. Other customers, once attracted have to switch to more expensive alternatives. Budget airlines, mobile phones retailers and estate agents frequently use bait and switch techniques.

Health Fraud Advertisements

These are unproven promises of quick m cures such as losing 10 kilos in 10 days, or…

Get Rich Quick Schemes

These are schemes that are promoted to offer people the opportunity to become rich quickly without telling them of the high adverse risk.

Product Misrepresentation

This takes place when firms use brand names similar to well known trademarks such as:

Ransonic, which is very near to Panasonic

JNC, which is very near to JVC

Marketing Audit?

A marketing audit is an examination or review of the current marketing situation of a business. It identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) in relation to the business marketing activities.

The audit also analyses the degree of competition in the industry or market.

Audit Tools?

A marketing audit can be conducted by:

• Marketing SWOT analysis

Strengths: effective promotion, strong brands

Weaknesses: Small product ranges, poor distribution networks

Opportunities: possible expansion in new market, growing demand due to...