Marketing Adverse EffectsMarketing Adverse Effects“An orthodox view in marketing ethics is that it is morally impermissible to market goods to specially vulnerable populations in ways that take advantage of their vulnerabilities” (Palmer & Hedberg, 2013, p. 403). Brenkert’s position in “Marketing and the Vulnerable,” offered the first utilitarian view that targeting vulnerable people, as the target audience is unethical and can cause adverse impacts upon their self-esteems (Arnold, Beauchamp, & Bowie, 2013). According to Brenkert, any product or service being offered should only communicate a fair and true view upon what is being sold (Arnold et al., 2013). Various methods of attracting customers used by marketers allow them to be able to obtain work. One way marketers are able to accomplish this is by offering something that the customers may desire; however the product itself may not actually do what it says it will (Palmer & Hedberg, 2013). For example, a company who offers a product that supposedly is full of health benefits and is great for the body, but still not actually have any proven facts documented in data showing that the product is in fact healthy or not.
Brenkert does not support particular types of marketing, like the example shown above; because he feels this type of marketing process will target innocent people (Arnold et al., 2013). In essence marketers that make claims that a product is a certain way and will do specific things for its purpose, without actual studies being held to prove whether or not it is factual claims or not, can cause some issues to occur in the long run (Palmer & Hedberg, 2013). It seems what Brenkert is referring to is that in due time customers may come to realize that what have been claimed to be may actually turn out to not be true, in turn causing the company to have a higher probability for failure to occur . Brenkert acquired his particular viewpoint from gather information from a few well-known marketers, like Philp Kotler (Arnold et al., 2013). Kotler has quite a few supporters behind him; due to his ethical beliefs and reasons. Others aren’t quite on board as they
The Problem
Arnold & I have a couple of key points that might get confusing to readers. First of all, I think a lot of people don’t read about marketing. That said, I have spent a couple of years working with companies that were making a lot of promises that they actually did; these promises are often quite high in value. If the promise was “100% 100%, 50% free”, that is one big promise. If it was a $100 billion dollar, highly profitable company with a lot of potential (including a large marketing budget), then a brand of 100% freedom (a $5 billion dollar company which doesn’t have to spend on advertising for many years) would actually have been a massive investment for the company. Arjuna, for example, is one of the only companies in Norway to offer 100% freedom. This, I think, represents a much greater concentration of risk than that.
Let’s look at Arnde Bredelen, the Swedish entrepreneur, who at the start was not sure how to make a small profit on his company and then spent many years working with customers in the Swedish startup community to get the “biggest” deal. A number of years went by and Bredelen actually succeeded because he made quite a lot of small investments, most notably in buying and selling the business to an investment banker.
With his very good business background, which is no longer with us, I feel strongly that the problem boils down to a few things I’ve read in the literature about how money can be a great motivator, rather than a necessary part of “doing the right thing”. It was at least on my radar before I read the fact that he actually did work through some “solutions” to his problem but it was quite easy to come to his opinion that he did not try his best at all. He still has many small investments to make up for, and the only effective plan for his success was to spend an increasing portion of his “bigger” sums on marketing and to improve his personal marketing approach. With the exception of the aforementioned idea which led to much disappointment to some of his customers (Arnold &), the only way out of this is through good and sustainable business planning.
One of the most effective ways I’ve found to improve my company’s business plan involves not only improving its overall quality of life but also being more responsible with the way all those efforts are being spent, making sure that the employees are doing what is needed, what they’re doing, giving them the opportunity to learn the business practices, and giving them real and measurable results. That is why it’s much easier to start developing your business plan right now and more profitable. It takes a lot of diligence to get to where you should be starting out. However, we can all get to the point where we are making the right investments or are putting in the amount of effort to actually make the decision to invest in your business that has the right result. I am proud that Arnde came to this point and that has allowed us to focus on the most effective ways when it comes to maximizing revenue.
And now that I’ve read the above, I will be having to admit, that what I’ve described above is a little bit different from what was initially stated as an “actual plan”. The solution that Arnde and I would get to with real-life issues which need to be settled with a better way of working together is to:
• Keep talking about how you want to do things this way with all the people that would get involved but you think it would be too complicated for them.
• Provide tangible solutions when the problem