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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.

MARKETING DEPARTMENT POINT OF VIEW

 Product Development

 Pricing Policy

 Distribution Activities

 Promotion

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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.

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.

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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

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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