Every company must observe a strict ethical code in order to maintain a good reputation. Ethical compliance must be revamped in order to keep the image of the company on track. However, this requires the company to take several steps to offer a solution to ethical compliance. A company must instill a new culture that will advance transparency (Bennet, 2009). A culture of openness and accountability must also be introduced in a company that is committed to revamping its reputation. A company also has to start an evaluation process for all activities and controls. However, this evaluation process must be characterized by objection and independence. Companies that take these measures are assured of ethical code maintenance.
A company that has suffered ethical issues in the past must take measures to bring back compliances. Hard decisions have to be made in order to ethically revamp the company. There are sacrifices that also have to be made to restore compliance. The first sacrifice is financial. A company must channel extra finance into ethical restoration. This is through extra training of staff. There also must be regular, independent, and objected evaluation (Pride, 2014). These processes are continuous and may take a long time. Therefore, they require money to be sustained. The company must be prepared and determined to make financial sacrifices in order to instill ethical compliance.
The second sacrifice to be made by a company for the sake of ethical restoration is the staff. As stated earlier in the paper, a company must apply a new culture that incorporates ethics. This can happen if disciplinary actions are enforced on those who breach the ethical code of the company. Therefore, the company must be willing to sacrifice some of the staff for breaking the code as part of instilling the new culture. The sacrifice is usually made in the spirit of changing the culture. Sometimes it is hard because the staff might be one of the most useful to the company (Pub, 2008).
A marketing mix is a tool of marketing that is crucial in the process of determining the offer of a brand. It merges product, price, place, and promotion. The mix is vulnerable to breach of the code of ethics, but promotion shares the largest part of the vulnerability. The reason for this is the direct interaction between promoters and potential customers. It is also an early stage of the marketing process where marketers try to convince potential customers (Bennet, 2009). Therefore, there are high chances of giving inaccurate information about a product during promotion. This is in the process of attempting to win customers.
Promotion’s vulnerability can be reduced by training and educating marketing representatives. They should be given a tutorial on ethical marketing before start promotion. The company should also ensure that they use a policy of openness and honesty to potential customers. This will commit the company to give correct information about the products during the promotion (Pride, 2014). The company will consequently prevent accusations of ethical breach due to inaccurate information. This will offer a solution to the potential ethical breach during the promotion.
References
Bennet, A. (2009).The Big Book of Marketing. New York, N.Y: McGraw Hill Professional Publishers.
Pub, G. (2008). Marketing Ethics. Hoborken, N.J: Blackwell Publishers.
Pride, W. (2014). Marketing 2014. Boston, M.A: Cengage Learning Publishers.