Ethical, social responsibility and legal factors are veritable strategies for sustainable growth and profitability. Marketing citizenship entails adapting strategies suitable for fulfilling the economic, ethical, legal and social responsibilities of an organization per the expectation of key stakeholders. Many companies today are incorporating socially responsible and ethical practices to achieve organizational marketing goals. Marketers need to monitor changes and trends in the value of society when creating socially responsible, ethical and legal practices to align with long-term goals.
Social responsibility, ethical, and legal issues differ from each other and have a significant impact on marketing. Social responsibility refers to the obligation of an organization to maximize positive impact on society through communicating decisions that will impact the community. Some areas of social responsibility include consumerism, employees, natural environment and community relations (Laczniak & Murphy, 2014). One of the significant reasons for the continuous success of Starbucks Corporation is its involvement in creating a sustainable environment. Consumers demonstrate commitments and loyalty to pay more for products and services that show social commitment. Marketing ethics, on the other hand, refers to principles and standards that define acceptable conduct in marketing like honesty, fairness and responsibilities (Adda et al., 2016). Ethical decisions in marketing, especially those relating to the marketing mix, are crucial in fostering mutual trust in the marketing relationship. Legal issues in marketing are essential since every business operates within the jurisdiction of the legal system (Laczniak & Murphy, 2014). Every nation has a commercial law that influences every aspect of the marketing mix and the environment in which a business occur. Legislations are vital in marketing since they encourage competition and ensure fair markets of goods and services. The legal issue provides marketers with fair trade practices, product safety and protection of the environment.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The Triple Bottom Line is a system used by businesses to assess their profit through corporate social solutions. Triple Bottom Line guides the businesses in measuring the profit generated socially (people), environmentally (planet) and economically (profit) (Hammer & Pivo, 2017). The social bottom line measures the company's profit in human capital, including its position in society. Social bottom line is improved by ensuring fair and beneficial labour practices and corporate community involvement. The triple bottom line to sustainability takes into consideration the impact of business on the environment (Kimball, 2016). Based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), environmental sustainability are measured based on use and consumption of renewable energy, amount of recycled materials, amount of water withdrawn from local sources and emission of NOx, SOx, and GHG gases (Hammer & Pivo, 2017). Economic sustainability under the triple bottom line is measured in terms of the extent to which the business impacts the economic environment. It accounts for the extent to which business help local suppliers, pay employees adequate to stimulate economic growth and section of materials that are economically suitable for investment. Based on Schultz leadership, the goal of Starbucks is to develop CSR programs that follow Triple Bottom Line by helping people, saving the planet and generating profit (Kimball, 2016). Starbucks Corporation ensures employees and customers create a sustainability environment free from pollution. Starbucks is committed to giving large portions to shareholders and also promote local coffee producers .
Every organization has codes of values and principles that govern individuals and group’s actions of what is right and wrong. Consumers have a significant influence on ethical behaviour in marketing. Ethical decision making in marketing ranges from protecting the health and safety of consumers, presenting factual information and straight-forward advertisement. When making ethical decisions on the quality of product, pricing, promotions, the organization need to ensure customer satisfaction by protecting data and privacy of consumers (Ingram et al., 2005). Although highly committed and loyal customers may forgive the company for behaving unethically where the harm is low, progressive dissatisfaction drives the consumers away. Losing a loyal customer is costly to a business owing to the huge amount of time used to gain a new customer compared to cost and time of retaining an old customer (Adda et al., 2016). A reputation arising from unethical marketing practises like overpricing, planned obsolescence, low-quality products denies the company an opportunity to obtain new customers. Therefore, when making an ethical decision in marketing, an organization should consider its influence on customers to promote a positive reputation.
Communicating ethical behaviour to the public is a good thing for the organization, customers, employees and top executives. Communicating ethical values increases the public's confidence that the organization is not engaging in illegal and unethical practises (Stevens & Brownell, 2000). Also, the public gets confidence that the management is not harassing its employees, stealing from other companies or compromising the quality of its products by using unsafe and unhealthy ingredients. Communicating ethical behaviour also ensures the organizational management continue setting up standards that influence healthy practices (Stevens & Brownell, 2000). Lastly, communicating ethical behaviour strengthens corporate culture. The attitude of employees and actions of management are shaped towards achieving the desired ethical behaviour.
Ethical marketing behaviours influence legal issues like privacy, consumer legislation and standards of goods. Companies need to ensure that their ethical practices follow the legal requirements of the country they operate. For instance, Starbucks stores in Thailand have to sell the brand at low-price to make it affordable to low-income producers. Also, companies have to follow employment law which stipulates the minimum salary for employees and OSHA safety standards. Every ethical behaviour is thus subject to a wide range of laws and regulations.
References
Adda, G., Azigwe, J. B., & Awuni, A. R. (2016). Business ethics and corporate social responsibility for business success and growth. European Journal of Business and Innovation Research , 4 (6), 26-42. http://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/Business-ethics-and-corporate-social-responsibility-for-business-success-and-growth.pdf
Hammer, J., & Pivo, G. (2017). The triple bottom line and sustainable economic development theory and practice. Economic Development Quarterly , 31 (1), 25-36.
Ingram, R., Skinner, S. J., & Taylor, V. A. (2005). Consumers’ evaluation of unethical marketing behaviors: The role of customer commitment. Journal of Business Ethics , 62 (3), 237-252.
Kimball, D. C. (2016). Corporate social responsibility at starbucks: 2016–2017 issues for discussion . SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals.
Laczniak, G. R., & Murphy, P. E. (2014). The relationship between marketing ethics and corporate social responsibility: Serving stakeholders and the common good. In Handbook of research on marketing and corporate social responsibility . Edward Elgar Publishing.
Stevens, B., & Brownell, J. (2000). Ethics: Communicating Standards and Influencing Behavior. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly , 41 (2), 39-43.
