International Management Borders and Cultures

Question: Discuss about the International Management for Borders and Cultures. Answer: Introduction This essay is framed to enhance learning and knowledge about business ethics in marketing. In general, the ethics in marketing refers to principles or code of conduct, which every marketer and business entity has to follow. The essay provides the types of marketing ethics and their relevance in business. The essay will critically evaluate the significance of ethics principles and ethical values of marketing for sustainable business growth and success of an organization. Harvey Norman and McDonald are the two organizations that are selected in this essay for understanding ethical issues faced by business firms in marketing. This would be helpful to understand practical relevance of marketing ethics in corporate sector. Ethics in Marketing: Marketing ethics can be defined as the set of rules, norms, values and code of conducts, which guide in marketing decisions, instructions, actions, and strategies to ensure their ethical values and to ensure that they are ethically eligible to be implemented (Patrick et al, 2012). Marketing ethics is one of the branches of the business ethics. Marketing ethics is of two types, which are normative ethics and positive ethics. Normative ethics is the set of principles and methods, which provides justification of what is wrong and what is right in the marketing practices. As well, positive ethics explain the morality and common sense, which helps in taking the ethical marketing decisions. Ethical issues in the marketing are the situation or problem, where a company fails to meet ethical values in its marketing initiatives. Marketing ethical issues may occur in advertising, marketing segmentation and targeting, marketing research, privacy, personal selling, sales management, marketing strategy and actions, packaging, and labeling. Furthermore, the emerging ethical issues in marketing are fear appeals, distortions, false statement, false claim, and wrong information about the product or services (Ferrell et al, 2013). Apart from this, marketing research involves manipulation, deception, disguise and inappropriate information of research purpose. These are the basic issues currently emanating in the marketing research of the companies (Smith et al., 2012). Along with this, the most critical ethical issues, which are faced by Australian firms, are misleading information about product specification, quality of product, racism, cognitive dissonance, infringement, and altern ative invoice, deception, manipulation, packaging and labeling of the products. Ethical Issues of Harvey Norman: Harvey Norman is one of the largest multinational retail sector organizations having an Australian origin. The company is dealing in various products such as electronics, furniture etc. Harvey Norman came in headlines of the newspaper in 2011, when it did some unethical marketing of their products. The organization misleads the customers by the wrong way of advertisement method to buy their product. In this advertisement campaign, the organization did advertisement with the tag of 3D Finals Fever slogan. On that time there, AFL and NRL tournaments were going on. The organization used this tournament popularity to sell its 3D TVs. The organization urged the consumers to watch the final of AFL and NRL tournaments in 3D by purchasing their TV. They did this advertisement in the whole country despite of fact that there was no availability of 3D broadcasting in the whole country. In Australia, few cities were having the 3D broadcasting facility on that time. Court of Australia found Harvey Norman was guilty for misleading the consumers under its marketing strategy and imposed fine of $1.25 million on the organization. Due to this incident, the trust or reliability of the organization in the market got hurt and the organization lose its big market share. This way, the unethical marketing by Harvey and Norman affected the revenue of organization negatively. In 2013, organization also does one more unethical thing by misrepresenting the consumer rights for the warranty period. It imposed various unethical terms and conditions that impacted the interest of consumer negatively such as consumer have to inform the organization under 24 hours of damage of product, consumer also have to give some amount as a processing fee for repair and replacement of product under warranty period (Jager, 2013). Australian Competition Consumer Commission (ACCC) took the organization to court for this and urge the court to impose penalty on the organization. Sometime organizations used these types of strategies to increase the total revenue and market share despite of that these things are unethical. Sometimes, these strategies also gave negative results and due to that, organization may lose its present market share. This thing was happened with Harvey Norman in 2011 and 2013. Ethical Issues in McDonald: McDonalds is a big brand in global fast food industry. It is very famous in the world and McDonalds has many customers. McDonald sells hamburgers, French fries, Fried chicken and soda. Its products are very delicious and price is very cheap as compared of other companys products. There are some ethical issues faced by McDonalds in selling fast food (Ferrell et al, 2013). The company sold chicken wings after cooking of 90 minute, but according to rules of government, company cannot sell chicken wings after cooking of 30 minute. Furthermore, Staff of the McDonald store changed the expiry date of the products. Apart from this, staffs picked up beefs, which had fallen on the ground and they packed it in the packet. According to the rule of McDonalds, its pies should be sold in the 90 minute after fried of pies. Staff should have marked expiry date on the packet of products but staff did not mark exact date of pies (Deresk, 2011). Staff did this, because they want to reduce cost and want to earn more and more profits. According to McDonalds statement, it promised to customers the sale of only fresh products with high quality and safety, but many times in the quality testing by the respective organization it was found that the quality of food was not good. The organization was selling food after expiry date. Apart from this, it was not fair what they did for making more profit. According to ethics of marketing, McDonalds should not sell the products after expiry date. It could be harmful for customers health; many customers denied buying products of McDonald, because customer got hurt and it broke the trust of customers. It assured safety of customers health but its product was not safe for customers health. McDonalds announced that they keep cleanliness and never compromise in products cost and quality. But McDonalds did not performed, what it has promised to customers. Its staffs sold food, which had slipped on the ground from their hand. Furthermore, customers perception had changed towards McDonalds; they thought its products are harmful for health. Customers changed their brand loyalty and they purchased other companys fast food. Along with this, McDonalds should be honest to customers and it should not have broken the trust of customers it would be dangerous for both of them (customers and company). Company should have served food with high quality an d safety, and should not have broken the commitment. There is another marketing ethical issue faced by the company. McDonalds focused on children for marketing of products. It provided happy meal for kids. It became famous, because it gave toys with happy meal foods. In 2010, Monet Parham sued on McDonalds because her daughters were arguing with her for happy meals. Whenever the daughters of monet perham urged her to purchase happy meal for her and when she denied then her daughters were crying (Rucki, 2010). She fed up from the behavior of her daughters that was the reason she sued on the McDonalds. She claimed that deceptive advertising influenced her children for happy meals. Apart from this, McDonalds had developed unhealthy eating habits through their advertising of happy meal. McDonalds focused on children, because kids are unable to buy food if kids will go along with their parents, their sales will be increased because parents will also purchase the food for self with their kids. Furthermore, McDonalds made this strategy to mak e more profit Just because kids could persuade their parents and parents always fulfill wishes of kids. Conclusion On basis of above analysis, it can be concluded that ethics plays important role in effectiveness of marketing practices. Failure of organizations to comply with ethics principles may deteriorate brand image and sales of company in market. It is identified from the essay that there are two types of marketing ethics such as normative ethics and the positive ethics. Along with this, it can also be concluded from above analysis that unethical way of marketing, or companys failure to adopt ethical marketing can lead to law suits and regulatory disturbances against company. This can affect the sales and profitability of company in negative way. On basis of above essay, it can be recommended to organizations to design their marketing practices attentively. References Deresk, H. (2011). International management managing across borders and cultures. USA: Prentice Hall. Ethical issues faced by McDonalds (2015). Retrieved from: https://reportstation.com/2714/mcdonalds/ Ferrell, C. and Keig, D. (2013). The marketing ethics course: Current state and future directions, Journal of Marketing Education, 02-10. Jager, c. (2013). Harvey Norman Stores To Face Court Over Consumer Rights Violations. Retrieved from: https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/06/harvey-norman-to-face-court-again-over-consumer-rights-violations/ McDonalds (2016). McDonalds launches food safety checks at all outlets. Retrieved from: https://www.shanghai.gov.cn/shanghai/node27118/node27818/u22ai66773.html McDonald's (2013). McDonald's Lawsuit retrieved. Retrieved from: https://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/15/business/la-fi-mcdonalds-lawsuit-20101215 McDonald's (2013). Retrieved from: https://www.commondreams.org/views05/0522-20.html Patrick, E., Gene, R. and Prothero, A. (2012). Ethics in marketing: International cases and perspective. England: Routledge. Rucki, A. (2010). McDonalds "Deceptive" Marketing to Children. Retrieved from: https://businessethicscases.blogspot.in/2013/02/mcdonalds-targeting-children-through.html Smith, N. and Murphy, P. (2012). Marketing ethics: a review of the field. England: Sage. WG (2015). What is Business Ethics?. Retrieved from: https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-business-ethics.html