Introduction
Marketing is a very significant exercise for any company to excel. Globalization has enhanced interconnectivity of markets consequently stiffening competition among various companies dealing with similar goods.
The increased competition has resulted to corporate bodies striving to engage in aggressive marketing of their products. Desperate to increase sales many companies have to use what may be views as unethical when carrying out the product promotion. Successful marketing will definitely lead to corporate success but what happens when such is revealed to be unethical?
In this article I try to discuss marketing ethics entails and by picking a case study (Sony Erickson) I will show how by how stealth marketing has been used in an ethical manner. This article will show what ethical standards were violated, what happened and the consequences of such in the short and long term. Technically this article seeks to show whether there is any connection between marketing and corporate success.
Marketing Ethics
According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), marketers, in the course of their business, should “not harm, foster trust and embrace ethical values” (AMA 1). The association advocates for its partners to avoid any action which may be deemed harmful to the subjects.
Marketers should ensure that their actions do not result to people distrusting the marketing system and upholding ethics in the course of marketing. AMA has pointed out the following to the ethical values which ought to be upheld in the course of undertaking marketing: “honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency and citizenship” (AMA 1).
A brief overview of the above ethical values is significant for analyzing our case study in section 2.1 below.
Honesty: in regard to this value, marketers ought to be “forthright in dealings with customers and stakeholders” (AMA 1). It is important to note that stakeholder include all those who have an interest, directly or indirectly, in whatever is being marketed.
Responsibility: this will entail owning up the effect of the marketing choices that marketers engage in.
Fairness: marketers should strike a state of balance between “the needs of the buyer with the interests of the seller (AMA 1). AMA has categorically stated that its members should strive to achieve the:
Represent products in a clear way in selling, advertising and other forms of communication; this includes the avoidance of false, misleading and deceptive promotion. Reject manipulations and sales tactics that harm customer trust. Refuse to engage in price fixing, predatory pricing, price gouging or “bait-and-switch” tactics. Avoid knowing participation in conflicts of interest. Seek to protect the private information of customers, employees and partners. (AMA 1)
Transparency: AMA aims at ensuring that marketers are frank in the course of their duties. Among others, AMA strives to ensure that marketers “disclose list prices and terms of financing as well as available price deals and adjustments” (AMA 1).
Citizenship: in upholding citizenship marketed are expected “to fulfill the economic, legal, philanthropic and societal responsibilities that serve stakeholders” (AMA 1).
Case Study
The following case is an example where stealth marketing is used. By analyzing the example it will be shown weather the marketing strategy was used ethical or not.
In late July of 2002, the Sony-Ericsson Corporation hired 60 actors to travel to various cities across the country posing as tourists and ask people passing by to take their picture with the company’s latest and greatest creation: the camera phone. Sony-Ericsson did not set up any promotional materials at the sites, and the actors were instructed not to introduce themselves as representatives of the company.
Instead, the company wanted the entire situation to feel “natural” as the stunt was designed to make consumers feel like they had “stumbled” onto a hot new product. It is unclear how successful the campaign was, but the “fake tourists” did reach a large number of people, and the stunt received national media attention. (Weisberg, Pfleiger and Friedberg 1)
Stealth marketing per se has been viewed to be controversial. It has been argued that people have started paying less attention to all kind of product promotions and therefore the need to come up with a different means of product promotion (Kelly and Craig 1).
Weisberg, Pfleiger and Friedberg have noted that “the main objective of stealth marketing is to get the right people talking about the product or service without it appearing to be company-sponsored” (Weisberg, Pfleiger and Friedberg 2), they further simply view this as “getting influential people excited enough about a product that they will use and discuss that product with others” (Weisberg, Pfleiger and Friedberg 2).
It has been noted that in cases where stealth marketing is used: the marketers make an attempt not to disclose the connection they have with the product company thus making people being unaware that it is actually a marketing exercise resulting to people paying full attention to the exercise (Dacko 497).
Case Study Analysis
Sony-Ericsson used what is commonly referred to as stealth marketing. Stealth marketing has drawn sharp criticism from different scholars. It has been argued that stealth marketing is deceptive in nature: Professor Roy Langer was quoted referring to stealth marketing as “attempts to catch people at their most vulnerable by identifying the weak spot in their defensive shields” (Weisberg, Pfleiger and Friedberg 7). The use of stealth marketing as seen above in the case study goes against a number of marketing ethical values.
Transparency: stealth marketing as was used in the case of Sony-Ericsson lacked transparency. As AMA claimed, as noted in section 2.0 above, there is a need for a marketing exercise to disclose all relevant information about a marketing campaign. Sony-Erickson had set out on a marketing campaign and yet the campaigners never introduced themselves as such. Lack of transparency and honesty did not uphold the fostering of trust and the marketers acted in a manner that definitely could not instill confidence in the marketing system.
Causing harm: the people who interacted with the marketers in the above case study at the end of the day knew that they were being used without their knowledge.
There is a high possibility that this will not go down well with some people because of the feeling of being made fools. Take a situation of where person A is rushing to some commitment only to be stopped by person B seeking assistance; A realizes later that the time spent assisting B was actually used for marketing purpose.
A will definitely feel fooled, his time wasted and consequently he/she may end up having a low self-esteem. Maybe the time spent was just some few minutes – well the minutes were his/hers and they were robbed from him/her by deceptive means and that makes stealth marketing as used in the above case study unethical.
Short and Long Term Effects
No research has been carried out to identify the short term effect that this exercise by Sony-Ericson. Chances are that due to the fact that only a few number of persons were inconvenienced then the short effects, if any, must have been minimal.
It should be noted that this was an issue which touched on the way marketing was carried out and did not in any way touch on the value of the products; the marketing process did not misrepresent the properties of Sony-Ericson’s products and therefore any consumer could probably not have an issue with the products.
Again it might be hard to discuss the long term effect of the above case but it can be postulated. By the fact that the technique used to carry out marketing involved some elements of deceit then chances are that consumers will start distrusting the company especially when its products are in question. This will likely have a damaging effect on the marketing efforts by the company as it may have to go extra miles to gain the trust of the customers or pass any meaningful message across.
Conclusion
Sony-Ericsson did engage in marketing its product in a manner that has been viewed to have violated marketing ethics. By not ensuring the agents that were enrolled did not disclose that they were engaged in a marketing campaign for a new released handset, the corporation was acting unethically.
The short and long term effects of such have not been very clear but it is almost obvious that such kind of practice erodes the trust that people have in a company and thus there might be a possibility that people may shun marketing which has anything touching on the products of Sony-Ericsson.
Works Cited
AMA. Ethical Norms and Values for Marketers. American Marketing Association, 2011. Web.
Dacko, Scott. The advanced dictionary of marketing: putting theory to use. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
Kelly, Martin and Craig, Smith. Commercializing Social Interaction: The Ethics of Stealth Marketing. Social Science Research Network electronic library, 2008. Web. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1111976
Weisberg, Alexandria., Pfleiger, Alonna and Friedberg Jake. Undercover Agency. Ethica Publishing, 2008. Web. http://www.ethicapublishing.com/confronting/5CH11.pdf