There have been and will continue to be dramatic shifts in the manufacturing of products and the market structures used to bring these products to consumers in the United States. Increasingly U.S. manufacturers and marketers will be affected by the global marketplace. Increased production and new technologies lead to an increased number of goods appeared each year on the market. Innovative ideas and solutions are popular among marketers who try to attract new customers and popularize new lifestyles. Despite the great opportunities and benefits proposed by these new products, most of them are useless and even threatened for health. Body Building pants is one of those products which bother a lot of consumers and litter media (see Appendix 1).
The idea is that Body Building pants will help obese people to lose weight and become beautiful and slim without any physical activity and fitness. Everything they need is to wear these pants and wait for the results. From a technical perspective, small pulses inside the belt generate small waves and activate motor nerves and then cause muscle contractions. I suppose that the ethical implications of the product introduction are health effects and positive body image. in this case, advertising serves three basic purposes (Drejer, 2002). First, it makes the consumer aware of Body Building pants; second, it informs the consumer of the characteristics of the product in a manner that will make the consumer purchase the item; and third, it is hoped by the seller that the advertising and the quality of the product itself will make the customer insist on demanding that particular product by name. Some people criticize that the massive advertising often required to achieve customer product awareness and acceptance produces unnecessarily high prices; others claim that in the long run, it reduces prices through competition, advertising costs per item because of increased volume, and cost of production per item because of the economics of scale (Boatright 1997).
The main problem is that lack of psychical activity and training cannot be replaced by small impulses and waves as claimed in the ad. Several well-known sales practices have come under federal control and action in recent years. Many of these practices and other deceptive selling practices are also controlled by state and local laws. One step beyond but still a part of deceptive practices is outright fraud in selling (Drejer, 2002). Much of this is done by manufacturing and selling counterfeit or bogus products as name-brand products. Body Building pants are a useless product that does not help people to become slim and beautiful. Thus, its advertising has an impact on three major areas: the economic area, the social area, and the information area. The economic area of Body Building pants advertising gets involved in the costs versus benefits and improved well-being of society as a result of advertising. The social issue involves the influence of advertising on persuading people to buy things they do not need or want, insulting their intelligence, and its adverse influence (Boatright 1997).
The only thing I would change is the message of the ad. I would fairly state that this product could help (thus, it is not true) only a limited number of people with low body weight. It does not improve the body image of people with huge body mass index and with obesity problems. The case of Body Building pants is a vivid example that business and ethics do not mix (Boatright 1997). There are many honest, moral, highly ethical businesses and businessmen; however, when stories come out about illegal practices companies continuing to manufacture and battle with the federal government on regulations. The product should not be marketed because it does not fulfill its main function and manufacturers just cheat consumers.
The government, business, and society are going to have to work together more closely in the future if reasonable standards and progress are to be made in this area. There also continues to be considerable talk and lip service about business and government working together more closely and being more cooperative with one another. Society’s demands on industry have been extensive and industry has tried in most instances to respond favorably to this initiative. In some instances, these demands have caused the stakeholders new problems, for which they blame industry (Drejer, 2002). More likely, though, is that the changes in consumers, the environment, technology, and the marketplace win be so great that the impact of marketing on traditional fixed location retailing will be more revolutionary than evolutionary. The argument that the consumer, rather than the institution, drives the retailing wheel is central to this position (Boatright 1997). The oversupply situation illustrated above has resulted in almost saturation levels for many products and even product categories. Thus, it leads to a lot of useless products appeared on the market. The main problem is that consumers trust companies and advertising believing in the unique qualities of the product. To control their futures, as retailers become more powerful and more demanding in the marketplace, manufacturers will form alliances or consolidate and concentrate to protect themselves in an attempt to develop some sort of market equilibrium (Boatright 1997).
Marketing appears to be in a new phase of development, one emphasizing its contributions to the social system. It is progressing from the entrepreneurial and decision focus to that of social concern and hence, a more professional orientation. Marketing is becoming more conscious of ethical considerations and societal responsibilities — its humanistic domain. It is enriching its scientific and technical approaches to problem-solving with a humanistic thrust of social concern and social roles. Although business ethics has been the subject of concern of many writers, the result so far is little clarity and direction for managers about ethical business action (Boatright, 1997). While many authors tend to personalize the business, we should note that business and marketing per se have no ethics — people do. Thus, advertising or selling is neither ethical nor unethical, but advertisers and personal salesmen are. Ethics is the discipline dealing with what is right and wrong, with moral duties and obligations, with a set of moral principles. The basic problem of marketing ethics is one of personal commitment-whether the executive is trying to do what is right and avoids doing what is wrong. Second, there is the problem of standards or norms by which to judge an action. Third, there is how norms are applied to specific situations (Buchholz and Rosenthal 1998).
In sum, the case of Body Building Pants shows that a major ethical problem for marketing executives is the lack of objective standards by which to judge actions. Moral and ethical principles and generalizations are fine as abstract guides and rules, but executives encounter difficulties in trying to apply them to specific situations, to the challenges of handling concrete problems of moral perplexity. A code of relative marketing ethics or situation ethics, ethics applicable to particular sets of circumstances and reflecting the individuals involved in a decision, may govern certain decisions. Permanent, objective, ethical standards are not available. What was deemed ethical at the turn of the century need not be today, and today’s ethical decision may be tomorrow’s unethical solution.
References
Boatright, J. (1997). Ethics and the Conduct of Business, 2nd edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Buchholz, R. and Rosenthal, S. (1998). Business Ethics, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Drejer, A. (2002). Strategic Management and Core Competencies: Theory and Application. Quorum Books.
Appendix
