Business Ethics Case Study

This essay analyzes a case study involving ethical dilemmas in marketing. Rachel, a marketing professional, faces pressure from her boss to use deceptive tactics to gain customers. The essay explores the conflict between aggressive marketing strategies and ethical business practices. It discusses the importance of maintaining customer trust and the long-term benefits of ethical decision-making, even if it means sacrificing short-term gains. The essay also examines the role of compliance and ethics programs in promoting ethical conduct within organizations, highlighting the limitations of compliance-only approaches and the need for value-based ethics. Finally, it touches upon the restrictions on product and service marketing, using examples like tobacco and children's advertising, and the importance of protecting free speech under the First Amendment when marketing campaigns face opposition.

Business Ethics
Student Name:

Deceitful spammer or marketing genius
Rachel was working on a post to manage customer relations through online communication.
Her company was fighting in a very competitive market. Even though company was doing
well, Rachel’s boss wanted to tap a large customer base aggressively. For this, he wanted to use
any means to capture the customers. Rachel tried to put her best efforts to get the results as
required by her boss, but did not get success in that. Her boss gave the new idea of deceiving
customers with some other personality’s name. Rachel did not want to cheat the loyal
customers of the company.
They could have tried to find out the possible causes of failures of strategies to be followed by
Rachel. She used website link implantation which did not succeed. Based on the interest of the
customers, new methods or ideas can be developed (Adelstein& Clegg, 2015). A market survey
could be very helpful in this regard. Rachel was successful in convincing her boss not to use the
deceiving idea to contact more customers. This was beneficial for the company in the longer
run. Customers ultimately like company trustworthiness.
Following the ethically right decision might not be very effective immediately. But, it helps to
gain customers’ confidence in the company’s core values. Customers like to associate with a
name on which they can trust. Taking the decision of not following "Cindy Anderson" strategy
resulted in great customer satisfaction for the company. Core values and ethical considerations
of the company persist in the competitive market.

Ethics and Compliance Program
Compliance and ethics plans are policies implemented in the organizations to promote ethical
conduct and law abiding. There are supportive procedures and cultural attributes which follow
the ethical conducts to make it more effective. Compliance and ethics programs standardize the
management practices; increase their implications in the organizations. These programs provide
blueprints of ethical systems to ensure behavioral ethics and regulations at workplace. They
play a significant role in smooth operations, efficient and ethically better work culture at the
organization. Company will be able to deal with any conflict situation without affecting its
values and other sections of the firm. Proper implementation of compliance and ethics
programs can build strong core values and ethically correct work culture for the firm(Heller,
2000).
“Compliance Alone Won't Keep Your Brand Safe”, authors wants to say that many companies
have ethical programs in place but still they failed and lost a lot of resources. Ethical program
alone cannot be effective unless they integrate value based ethics into the compliance program.
Value based ethics can be identified by connecting with people and analyzing their behavior.
Compliance program should not be a mere regulatory guideline; rather it should include
personal value and societal norms in it.

Products or Service Restriction
Marketing of products or services is quite ubiquitous in business. However, there are several
restrictions that are imposed by regulatory authorities in the name of fair trade practices. There
are few products whose marketing in the digital or print media is quite restricted such as
tobacco products. Cigarettes and other tobacco products cannot be directly advertised to the
general public because of health reasons. A lot of hue and cry has been created during the
decision of not allowing advertisement for tobacco products as there are strong interest groups
supporting both sides of the argument (Majluf&Navarrete, 2010). However, finally it was
legislated and put a strong hindrance to free marketing of such substances. Similarly,
advertisement of chocolates targeted at children directly is prohibited. The decision for such
ban was taken during a UN convention where a lot of multinational companies had taken part.
After that multinational chocolate companies mostly refrain from such advertising campaigns
which are directed at children.Therefore, there are several instances where advertisements are
restricted for products and services.

Protection of the First Amendment
Marketing campaigns can be quite innovative in order to increase their appeal towards their
intended audience. Marketers need to find new avenues to make an emotional connect with
their prospective clients. In a bid to make such efforts a marketer can go beyond the purview of
public domain and infringe into sensitive issues such as religion or social customs. There is a
general trend nowadays to highlight any social issue related to woman empowerment or child
labor in marketing campaigns in order to make a lasting impression on the minds of the
audiences. Sometimes such campaigns take on the old atrocious religious traditions to prove a
point. Such initiatives do not go well with few factions in the society and they may call for
banning of such campaigns. These people are mostly right wing people who are not open to
new ideas or practices and want the age old practices to continue(Vogel, 2011). They may even
protest or agitate in order to restrict circulation of such campaigns. There have been several
such cases in the past where they vandalize the offices or outlets of the concerned company in
order to perpetuate a sense of fear among the people who raise their voice. However, the
marketer can ask for protection under First Amendment in such scenarios. Since it is a
democracy and a free country where everyone can put forward their views and thought
processes, such stifling of ideas or creation is not at all welcome. Therefore, in such unjustified
situations one has to stand up and fight for their rights under First Amendment.

REFERENCES
Adelstein, J., & Clegg, S. (2015). Code of ethics: A stratified vehicle for compliance. Journal of
Business Ethics.doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2581-9
Heller, J. C. (2000). Beyond a code of ethics for bioengineers: The role of ethics in an
integrated compliance program. Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering, 28(3-4), 507–™
511. doi:10.1615/critrevbiomedeng.v28.i34.260
Majluf, N. S., &Navarrete, C. M. (2010). A Two-Component compliance and ethics program
model: An empirical application to Chilean corporations. Journal of Business Ethics, 100(4),
567–579. doi:10.1007/s10551-010-0696-6
Vogel, D. (2011). The ethical roots of business ethics.Business Ethics Quarterly, 1(1),
101.doi:10.2307/3857595