Marketing's Positive Contribution To The Common Good: Organizational Essay Examples And Challenges.

The Role of Marketing in the Customer Era

Question:

Discuss about the Marketing for Contemporary Business Organizations.

The present business era is the customer era rather than the manufacturer era few tears ago. Thus, in the current business scenario of customer era, marketing plays an important role in helping the organizations in making mark in the market as well as in the mind of the customers (Malthouse et al. 2013). Moreover, gone are the days when marketing refers only to the promotion and advertising of the products to the customers. Currently, marketing involves a more holistic approach by the marketers or the business organizations (Same and Larino 2012). This is due to the reason that, in the present business state of affairs, marketing also involves the social welfare be effectively determining the requirement of the society.

Contemporary business organizations are more concentrated to enhance their social reputation and goodwill to assist them in marketing their products in the market. Thus, in the current business scenario, marketing involves the common good for all the associated stakeholders. Moreover, with the increase in the consciousness among the customers regarding the environment, marketers are more relating their marketing activities with sustainability and society (Wood 2012). This report will discuss about the notion that marketing makes a positive contribution to the common good with the help of various organizational examples. Moreover, issues such as ethical, legal and economical in impacting the marketing will also be discussed here in this report.

As discussed earlier, contemporary marketing approach involves social welfare and common good. However, in doing so, one of key issues being faced by the marketers is the economical issue. This is due to the reason that, involving the whole society in the marketing activities leads the marketers incurring a good amount of cost, which may reduce the viability of the marketing activities. Contemporary business organizations maintain a certain budget in accordance to their affordability to carry out their marketing activities (Huang 2012). Thus, in this case, if the activities and the stakeholders for the marketing programs get increased then it will have more cost for the business organizations or the marketers. This may lead to the reduction in involving the society and environment in their marketing activities.

On the other hand, another economical issue that may be faced by the marketers is the economical status of their marketing area. If the target market is economically weak or poor then the involvement of the society and environment in the marketing activities will have some outcome. However, if the target market is already well developed and there is no need of involving the society then it will reduce the economic viability for the marketers (Aghdaie and Alimardani 2015). Moreover, involving holistic approach will incur more cost in marketing in the developed target market compared to the less developed or developing target market.

Contemporary Marketing and Social Welfare

According to Laczniak and Murphy (2012), the contemporary market scenario is more society oriented compared to firm oriented. Thus, all the business organizations are trying to create a distinctive image among the customers by involving the larger sections from the audience. This is doing good for the society and on the other hand, the organizations are also being benefited from increase in the goodwill and reputation, which helps them to further penetrate in the market. However, according to the authors, contemporary marketers are mainly facing dilemma in deciding between the economical viability and covering a larger sections of society.

For instance, Kia motor is one of the leading automobile manufacturers in the world having vast product portfolio. Recently they came up with an advertising campaign for one of their hybrid vehicles (Macleod 2017). The approach of their advertisement is oriented towards the environmental degradation and the need for having greener products. Thus, through this advertising campaign, they on the one hand advertised their eco-friendly products to the customers along with aware the customers about the degradation of the environment. This advertisement is one of the prime examples of social marketing covering larger audiences doing good for all the stakeholders. However, in this advertisement, the core marketing objective is to promote their new hybrid vehicles. Now the economical dilemma that they will face is that, though through their marketing campaign they are promoting the need for fighting environmental degradation, but the product that they promoting as a tool to fight environmental degradation is quite expensive and beyond the reach of larger part of the society. Thus, the key motive or objective of their marketing campaign may not be fulfilled.

Ethical issues are being also faced by the marketers in making the positive contribution to the common good along with maintaining the environment stewardship. Ethics is one of the key issues that are being emerged in the current business scenario of marketing campaign (Hastings and Domegan 2013). This is due to the reason that, in the present era of competitive market scenario, various allegations are being emerged about the misleading marketing campaigning. Thus, in the case of the social marketing, ethical issues are also being faced by the marketers. One of the key examples of ethical issue is the garnering the customer information by the marketers. Accumulation of the customer data is important for the social marketing due to the reason that, it helps the social marketers in determining the requirement of the customers effectively. However, in determining and collecting the customer data, social marketers are facing ethical dilemmas due to the fact that, gathering the data of the customers without their consent is the breach to the privacy. Thus, this issue will create obstacle for the marketers to involve and offer products for the larger section of the audiences.

The Economical Dilemma of Involving Society in Marketing

Another ethical issue that may be faced by the marketers is the adherence to the varied cultural aspects of the society. This is due to the reason that, in providing positive contribution to the common good, it is important for the marketers to involve all the ethnic groups in the society. However, contradictions may arise from the fact that every ethnic group in the society is having considerations (De Mooij 2013). Thus, it will be difficult for the social marketers to adhere to the distinctive and different considerations in the society in designing their marketing campaign. The particular approach that they will chose may have ethical issues with the other groups in the society.

As stated by Charter (2017), greener marketing is the most prominent and popular form of marketing being used and initiated by the social marketers. According to him, initiation of greener marketing campaign helps the marketer to effectively connect with the target audience more accurately. With the help of the greener marketing, customers tend to perceive the particular business organizations as sustainable and reliable, which in turn enhance the goodwill and reputation of the marketers.  However, according to him, there are various ethical issues to be faced by the marketers in involving the greener approach. One of the key issues is effectively targeting all the sections in the society with the singular approach. According to the author, initiation of greener marketing campaign may not have the desired impact on the audiences who are not directly impacted from the environment degradation.

Budweiser is one of the most prominent and leading beer brand in the world. They are also known for initiation of various innovative and distinctive marketing activities. However, in early 2017, they came up with an advertisement featuring the story of their founder’s background story of being an immigrant in the United States (Fortune 2017). The key motive of this advertisement is to connect with the recent issues regarding the immigration policy in America. However, the advertisement faced ethical issue from various section of the society due to its controversial theme. They faced backlash and calls for boycott of their brand. Thus, it is a prominent example of the ethical issues being faced by marketers in initiating the social marketing.  

Lawsuits and other legal issues are also being faced by the organizations in initiating their social marketing involving different social issues and challenges in the marketing activities. One of the key legal issues being faced by the social marketers is the facing lawsuits for misleading or false campaigning (Graff, Kunkel and Mermin 2012). Various allegations are being made against the marketers that they are involving social issues and challenges in their marketing campaign, which do not have any relation to their products and is confusing the buyers. Thus, in choosing the social issues also, the marketers should also be careful regarding the chance of facing lawsuits. Another key legal issue being faced by them is the breach of the privacy policy of the customers (Richards 2014). As earlier discussed in the above section about the emergence of the ethical issues in gathering the customer information, breach of the customer privacy may also attract lawsuits against the marketers.

Ethical Issues in Social Marketing

Thus, it becomes difficult for the marketers to initiate for the social marketing without having the accurate information about the requirement and trend in the market. Moreover, other ethical issues such as not adhering to the diversified cultural differences and considerations of different ethnic groups also cause legal issues for the marketers (Kolah 2012). This is due to the reason that, the ethnic groups being deprived or felt offended by the marketing campaigning of the marketers may attract lawsuits from them. Thus, in order to reduce the probability of attracting lawsuits, marketers have to design their social marketing campaign accordingly.

According to Seiders and Petty (2013), social marketers mostly face legal issues in initiation of social marketing in the food and beverages sector. This is due to the reason that, food and beverage sector is the sector where public health is being directly related. Thus, the chance and probability of attracting lawsuits from various stakeholders in the case of misleading campaigning is more in this sector. Moreover, according to the authors, the implication of the legal issues is more compared to other issues for the marketers due to the reason that, government and other regulatory bodies are being involved in the legal case. Thus, it will have more impact on the affecting the goodwill and reputation of the business organizations.

Coca cola is one of those organizations, which are known for their effective and extensive marketing activities around the world. However, they have also faced various legal issues due to the initiation of misleading or mismatching social marketing activities. Few years ago, Coca cola launched a marketing campaign named “Coming Together”. This campaign was being launched by them to counter the criticisms against Coca cola of selling high calorie carbonated drinks (Hellmich, 2017). The aim of this campaign was to relate to the global issue of growing obesity due to the inhaling food having high calorie count and to create a social awareness drive against this issue. Though the motive behind the campaign was good and ethical but due to this campaign, Coca cola also faced lawsuits from various NGOs. This is due to the reason that, according to various sources, Coca cola itself is being accused of selling carbonated drinks having high calorie count and quite contradictory they are even creating awareness against the emergence of growing obesity among the young population (Hellmich, 2017). Thus, it is creating confusion among the customers and it is being perceived that Coca cola is selling healthy products, which is not the case. Thus, lawsuits are being claimed against them demanding the removal of the campaign, which was later removed.

Organizational Examples of Social Marketing

Conclusion

Thus, from the above critical analysis of the notion that marketing provides positive contribution to common good, it can be concluded that, initiation of social marketing holds positive value in making differences in the society. It is being discussed in this report that, the initiation of the social marketing by the marketers helps in creating awareness regarding various social issues in the society. However, there are various issues being faced by the marketers in view to their social marketing. Various issues are being discussed in this report and it can be concluded that, legal, economical and social issues are the key originated issues being faced by them. Various live examples are being used in this report, which will help the marketers in identifying the gaps in initiating the social marketing and enhance the effectiveness of their own marketing campaign.

Reference

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Charter, M. ed., 2017. Greener marketing: A responsible approach to business.

De Mooij, M., 2013. Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes. Sage Publications.

Fortune. (2017). People Want to Boycott Budweiser Over Its Super Bowl Immigration Ad. [online] Available at: https://fortune.com/2017/02/05/budweiser-super-bowl-commercial-immigration-boycott/ [Accessed 9 Oct. 2017].

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