Marketing affects almost every aspect of our daily lives but is much more than "selling" or "advertising." It serves an important role in society. Before we can get into Marketing Strategy Planning and Evaluating Marketing Opportunities it will be helpful to review the definition of marketing and the ethic norms and values for marketers to help us address the many criticisms of marketing.
Definition of Marketing 
Our book, Basic Marketing: a Marketing Strategy Planning Approach, 17/e defines Marketing as:
the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization's objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing a flow of need- satisfying goods and services from producer to customer or client.
Compare that to the American Marketing Association definition:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large (Approved October 2007)
Note the similarities and difference between these two definitions.
Ethics Norms and Values for Marketers
The American Marketing Association also has developed a Statement of Ethics to guide its members' behavior. Below you will find the preamble and parts of key sections of this document. The full document can be found here: Statement of Ethics.
Preamble
The American Marketing Association commits itself to promoting the highest standard of professional ethical norms and values for its members (practitioners, academics and students). Norms are established standards of conduct that are expected and maintained by society and/or professional organizations. Values represent the collective conception of what communities find desirable, important and morally proper. Values also serve as the criteria for evaluating our own personal actions and the actions of others. As marketers, we recognize that we not only serve our organizations but also act as stewards of society in creating, facilitating and executing the transactions that are part of the greater economy. In this role, marketers are expected to embrace the highest professional ethical norms and the ethical values implied by our responsibility toward multiple stakeholders (e.g., customers, employees, investors, peers, channel members, regulators and the host community).
General Norms
- Marketers must do no harm.
- Marketers must foster trust in the marketing system.
- Marketers must embrace, communicate, and practice the fundamental ethical values that will improve consumer confidence in the integrity of the marketing exchange system.
Ethical Values
- Honesty - to be truthful and forthright in our dealings with consumers and stakeholders.
- Responsibility - to try to balance justly the needs of the buyer with the interests of the seller.
- Fairness - to try to balance the needs of the buyers with the interests of the seller.
- Respect - to acknowledge the basic human dignity of all stakeholders.
- Openness - to create transparency in our marketing operations.
- Citizenship - to fulfill the economic, legal, philanthropic, and societal responsibilities that serve stakeholders in a strategic manner
Marketing Criticisms
Marketing has its critics. Some people even say that marketers are in the business of lies and deception. Here is a sample of some criticisms of marketing:
- Advertising is everywhere, and it's often annoying, misleading, or wasteful
- The quality of products is poor and often they are not even safe.
- There are too many unnecessary products.
- Packaging and labeling are often confusing and deceptive.
- Retailers add too much to the cost of distribution and just raise prices without providing anything in return.
- Marketing serves the rich and exploits the poor.
- Service stinks, and when a consumer has a problem nobody cares.
- Marketing creates interest in products that pollute the environment.
- Private information about consumers is collected and used to sell them things they don't want.
- Marketing makes people too materialistic and motivates them toward "things" instead of social needs.
- Easy consumer credit makes people buy things they don't need and can't afford.
A Few Concepts / Terms to help address the Criticisms
Criticisms like these are not easy to answer. Many examples of marketing gone wrong make their way into the news everyday. Here are a few concepts and terms to help address the criticisms.
- Marketing Concept - the idea that an organization aims all of its efforts at satisfying its customers at a profit.
- Customer Value - the difference between the benefits a customer sees from a market offering and the costs of obtaining those benefits. Firms that embrace the marketing concept seek ways to build a profitable long-term relationship with each customer--and the lifetime value of the customer's future purchases.
- Command economy - government officials decide what and how much is to be produced and distributed by whom, when, to whom, and why.
- Market-directed Economy - the individual decisions of the many producers and consumers make the make maco-level decisions for the whole economy.
- Micro-macro dilemma - what is "good" for some firms and consumers may not be good for the whole of society.
- Social responsibility - a firms obligation to improve its positive effects on society and reduce its negative effects
How do we reconcile the definition of marketing and the statement of ethics with the marketing criticisms?
Choose one of the criticisms above and use the concepts and terms from the reading in Chapter 1 and this post to help address this criticisms in your comments to this blog post. Please keep your comments to 150-200 words.
I look 4Ward to your feedback.
Keep Digging for Worms!
