Ethical standards are an essential issue on today’s social agenda. There is no reason to assume that the ethical standards can be violated even in informal conversation since they are the very foundations that govern human relations and create a favorable background for communication. In the business industry, commercial goals can be fraught with ethical dilemmas because, on the one hand, a business must make a profit in any number of ways, and, on the other hand, it is important to ensure that social norms are upheld at all times.
At first glance, it may seem that there is no violation of ethical standards in the scenario under consideration. One might think that the entrepreneur develops new pricing strategies and even cares about customers when he tries not to raise the price. However, if one looks deeper, it is noticeable that the entrepreneur is violating one of the AMA’s ethical tenets, namely honesty (AMA, n.d.). The store appears dishonest when it intends to reduce the size of the bag of chips and keep the price. There is a desire for commercial advantage in this action: by reducing the pack size, the business makes as much or more profit than before while keeping the pack price. However, the store must remain honest with customers without betraying their trust. Marketing transparency is also violated because what people in business do can be considered a shadow policy. Companies should be open and transparent on the part of management, which is not a trade secret. Since the size of a packet of chips can hardly be regarded as confidential, a business should have been more transparent to its customer audience. To put it another way, if customers can determine that the pack size has become smaller — for example, by empirical observation — but the price has remained the same, this is very likely to lead to a loss of customer pressure. If there are several such episodes, the store will eventually lose customers, because they will move on to a competitor.
Reference
AMA. (n.d.). Codes of conduct | AMA statement of ethics. American Marketing Association.