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DILEMMA FOR MARKETING MANAGERS

INTRODUCTION
Many smaller organizations often function with small
budgets and minimum attention to marketing. This is especially
true among business-to-business marketers. When small
organizations develop and implement marketing plans, those
plans usually contain large doses of inexpensive creativity. But
creativity may cross ethical lines. A significant issue facing
marketing decision makers in smaller, budget-constrained
organizations is whether creative and successful marketing
activity contains elements that strain acceptable ethical
behavior.
The job of marketing manager is day by day becoming
more challenging. A marketing manager faces many situation in
which he or she has to behave unethically.
Now a day, we can see that there is a strong competition
in almost every market or industry. It is very difficult for an
ethical person to survive in it. Every person faces the dilemma
of taking the decision ethically or not. We cannot satisfy every
stakeholder of the company. If marketing manager thinks about
the performance of company, he/she has to compromise
something for it.
In Industrial Marketing, there are fewer customers. The
company is always tries to retain the customers because
loosing one customer is like loosing a big share of revenue.
Marketing manager is always under pressure of retaining
customers anyhow.

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LITRETURE REVIEW
J. Scott Armstrong of The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania Studies in social psychology suggests that the role
of the marketing manager causes good people to act in ways
that are harmful to society. This is especially true for large
organizations. That study provides little hope that one could
educate marketing managers to be socially responsible. These
individuals already recognize the conflict; they view themselves
as good people; but they are obedient to their role as defined
by their primary reference group.
John J. Withey of St. Edward’s University says that
marketing practices should be regularly examined for their
ethical context so that potential dilemmas may be anticipated
and resolved. The special case of the small organization seeking
regional expansion summarized in this paper demonstrates how
easily ethical dilemmas can arise.

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WHY THIS TOPIC IS RELATED TO INDUSTRIAL

MARKETING
There are professional buyers in industrial marketing. In
industry, marketing manager has to perform his/her job in such
a way that the long-term relationship can be built. For this
reason there is a dilemma of marketing manager in decision
making.

Managers are forced to compromise their personal

standards to achieve company’s goals. So this is the most
important topic in today’s scenario to understand the typical
situation faced by the marketing manager.

In industrial marketing the customers are more powerful.

They are professional buyers. They do bargaining and also
believe in taking something extra with regards to product or
services. To retain these customers, marketing managers face
the dilemma of behaving ethically or unethically.

Individual ethics plays an important role in industrial

marketing. If a person believes in being loyal to the company,
he/she will never behave unethically with company but for the
betterment of the company he/she can behave unethical to the
customer.

Many a times marketing manager knows that the product

they are selling is not good or other better product with a low
price is already available in the market. In this situation
ethically what they are doing is not right but if they make
customers aware about other good product, they will loose the
customers.

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PROBLEM FACED BY MARKETING MANAGER

ORGANISATION POINT OF VIEW

• Why their C.E.O. involve in their Marketing Strategy
o Possibility 1 They Not Agrees On Their Marketing
Strategy
o Possibility 2: When The Marketing Manager Can Not
Achieve The Target'
o Possibility 3: It Probably Wasn’t The CEO Who
Decided The Definition And Scope Of 'Marketing',
When The Marketing Manager Was Created
o Possibility 4: The Marketing Manager Always Dress
For The CEO

• And Many Others.

SOCEITY POINT OF VIEW

• Why People Think Marketing Managers Are Selfish.

• Why Marketing Manager not socially Responsible.

• Why they sale harmful product like tobacco and etc to

society.

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MARKETING DEPARTMENT POINT OF VIEW

• Product Development
• Pricing Policy
• Distribution Activities
• Promotion

EXAMPLES
Good marketing ethics affect organizational success.
Ethics are the principals a person or department uses when
making a decision. Sometimes, the choices are clear cut right
and wrong. Often, they are more ambiguous ethical dilemmas.
Marketing departments face their own particular set of
uncertain problems pertaining to product development, pricing
policy, distribution activities and promotion.

Misleading advertising is a common ethical dilemma.

Although regulation provides formal boundaries of what an
advertisement can and cannot say, marketers must consider
the ethical boundaries. Defining when a claim is taken too far or
a problem is intentionally, or unintentionally, hidden from the
target market is one of the roles of ethics in marketing.

Another dilemma is the marketing of harmful products-for

example, tobacco and fast food. Marketers must decide how
much responsibility they take for the harm which these
products cause and how much they delegate to consumers or
producers. Again, the right choice is not always clear and this is
where good ethical marketers can step up.

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Marketers should attend to pricing ethics. Predatory

pricing, the practice of setting prices to drive out competition,
can be harmful to consumers so marketers must tread
carefully. Policy designed to foster a healthy marketing
environment must be balanced against profit requirements.

How cause-related marketing is managed can become

another ethical dilemma for marketers. The sincerity of a
company's interest in a particular cause-the environment or
education can impact on customers' and society's perception of
that company. Marketing departments responsible for the
relationship with a cause must manage it openly and honestly.

How their product affects the environment is of increasing

concern to marketing departments. 'Green' practices can
improve the good standing of a company and marketing
department in the community. Marketers may be challenged by
the costs of some environmentally-friendly choices but must
consider their responsibility to society.

Many other ethical issues confront marketing executives.

How clearly and in what way consumers are informed of price
or size changes must be weighed against costs. Marketing
departments of resellers must consider the ethics behind their
mark-up policies. Distribution issues include quality of
transport. For example, fresh food requires healthy transport
conditions.

Ultimately, ethics relates to organizational performance in

generating goodwill for a particular company. This goodwill
should translate into sales. Ethical behavior by the marketing
department will make the department and even the company a
more attractive place to work as the company's good reputation
will transfer to its employees. Motivated, proud employees will
improve performance. Bad marketing ethics will destroy a good
reputation which is arguably much harder to build than sales
numbers.

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HOW TO SOLVE ETHICAL PROBLEM AND

MAKING DECISION

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This is The Rational Problem-Solving Process; I had taken it

from book The Principles and Practice of Marketing of David
Jobber from McGraw hill Education. This is chapter 12 Ethical
problem solving and decision making.

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Problem awareness
A major responsibility for all managers is to maintain a
constant lookout for actual or potential problems. Managers do
this by keeping channels of communication open, monitoring
employees’ current performance, and examining deviations
from present plans as well as from past experience. Four
situations usually alert managers to possible problems: When
there is a deviation from past experience; when there is a
deviation from a set plan; when other people communicate
problems to the manager; and when competitors outperform
the overall organization. The Dynamics of Diversity box shows
how try to keep ahead of the competition. Being aware that
problems exist is not always easy, however. People may be
genuinely unaware of a problem’s source or reluctant to
acknowledge that a negative situation actually exists. The
problem may appear threatening to them, they may fear
reprisal from a supervisor for their share of the responsibility, or
they may not want to be considered inept.

Problem definition
If the problem is not defined clearly, any attempt at
solving it will be doomed to fail because the parties involved
will not really know what they are working on (as the saying
goes, ‘rubbish in equals rubbish out’). All the remaining steps
will be distorted because they will be based on insufficient or
erroneous information. Lack of information often inhibits the
generation of adequate alternatives and exploration of
potentially negative consequences. All necessary information
should be gathered so that all relevant factors can be analysed
to determine the exact problem that must be solved. The goal
is to determine the root causes of the problem. If instruction
forms are constantly misinterpreted, for example, are the forms
incomplete, or is the required information poorly supplied?
Causes should not be assumed; instead, all plausible
alternatives should be investigated before settling on the most
probable cause(s). Hasty assumptions can also result in
symptoms being mistaken for sources of problems.

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When symptoms are eliminated, it is often mistakenly

assumed that the problem has also been eliminated. This is like
receiving medication from your doctor to control a skin rash,
which is only a symptom that something is wrong. The
medication clears the rash, but the actual cause of the problem
is not identified until you and/or the doctor look for clues. When
you discover that the onset of the rash coincided with the
arrival of a new plant in your living room, you have identified
the problem: an allergy to that plant.

Decision-making
After information has been gathered and goals have been
clarified, situations assessed, and problems identified, the next
step is to develop a particular course of action that will either
restore formerly acceptable conditions or improve the situation
in a significant way. Since there is usually more than one way to
solve a problem, it is critical to keep open to all possible
solutions and arrive at several alternatives from which to
choose.

Action plan implementation

A decision and action plan is of little value unless they are
effectively implemented. How the action plan is to be
accomplished connects the decision with reality.
Implementation includes assigning tasks and responsibilities,
and establishing an implementation schedule. Take a look at
the Eye of Ethics box as to what happens when a government
implements a decision in the foot-and-mouth crisis.

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Follow-through
Following-through entails the development and maintenance
of positive attitudes in everyone involved in the implementation
process. There are several guidelines to help establish the
positive climate necessary for the implementation steps which
follow:
• Visualize yourself in the position of those doing the
implementing so that you understand their feelings and
perspectives.
• Establish sincere respect and concern.
• Make sure necessary resources are available.
• With this kind of positive climate set up, there are several
sequential steps in the follow-through process. They
include establishing the criteria for measuring success,
monitoring the results obtained, and taking corrective
action when necessary.

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CONCLUSION
Marketing practices should be regularly examined for their
ethical context so that potential dilemmas may be anticipated
and resolved. The special case of the small organization seeking
regional expansion summarized in this paper demonstrates how
easily ethical dilemmas can arise. Marketing manager is a chain
between customer and company. He/she has to compromise
something to satisfy both. Marketing manager usually gets
confused about whom to give more priority. There is no general
rule for that, it depends upon situation.

Many companies consider themselves as ethical but in

practical, their employs have to behave unethically in some
situation to run the company successfully.

From this study, we also find that, the role of marketing

manager is very challenging. They have to do compromises of
their personal morals to perform the job.

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