Marketing messages

Marketing Communications and Ethics

Marketing communications should be genuine and accurate (Petty & Andrews, 2008). There are false commercials for cigarettes, beer, and various fashion items. The beer commercials depict a happy person after consuming a bottle of the brand. This is not true since following the handover, one is puzzled and does not know what to do. This is the type of marketing messages and advertisements that I find objectionable and consequently unethical because they contain no truth. I usually find them repulsive since they are untrue and their goal is to persuade clients to buy items that are harmful to their health, such as cigarettes and beer. Although the ads about beer are age specific you find that some youths below that age buying the beer for them to drink after they see the appealing messages on the TV. This is unethical even if the purpose of the message or ad is to increase sales.

Greater Regulation for Marketing Messages

This brings the concept of greater regulation to direct and monitor the influence of the many marketing messages in different groups of people. According to Schiffman et al, (2013) “Unethical marketing occur in every marketplace and are related to the elements of marketing mix which are the design of products, packaging, advertising, and distribution”. Greater regulation results to marketing integrity. Marketing integrity, in turn, enhances organization efficiency (Cressy, Cumming & Mallin, 2012). This means that the marketers should understand customers’ behavior before coming up with the marketing messages. They should also analyze how the marketing messages will influence a group which is not the target market. When the regulation is high, the legislation will also be highly enforced. This is because regulation includes including heavy fines, imprisonment, and termination of a business if a business does not comply with the regulatory requirements.

References

Cressy, R., Cumming, D., & Mallin, C. (2012). Entrepreneurship, governance and ethics. Dordrecht: Springer.

Petty, R. D., & Andrews, J. C. (2008). Covert marketing unmasked: A legal and regulatory guide for practices that mask marketing messages. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 27(1), 7-18.

Schiffman, L., O’Cass, A., Paladino, A., & Carlson, J. (2013). Consumer behaviour. Pearson Higher Education AU.