1.

FOUR BUSINESS SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Ethics

The societal marketing concept requires marketers to build social and ethical
considerations into their marketing practices. They must balance and juggle
the often conflicting criteria of company profits, consumer want satisfaction,
and public interest by developing market ethics policies that serve as the
organization’s guidelines. These policies should cover distributor relations,
advertising standards, customer service, pricing, product development and
general ethical standards that must be followed in the organization.

According to Ferrell (2005), ethics is defined as rules (standards, principles)

governing the conduct organizational members and consequences of
marketing decisions. These rules determine what is acceptable and not
acceptable in the business in order to build trust, honest and transparent
among its stakeholders or business participants such as customers and
suppliers. A business may ruin its reputation by practicing unethical value
such as deceiving, misinforming customers, unnecessary high products cost
and unfair treatments of customers. These may decrease business profits,
loss of customers or shareholders, decrease trust and sales of a business as
no one would want to associate with a business that has a bad name. Firms
that develop higher levels of trust function more efficiently and effectively
and avoid damaged company reputations and product images

For a good reputation business needs to practice ethical value that increase
goodwill among stakeholders, increase profit and trust by providing quality
products, sell products at fair prices, create and maintain positive
employment practices, give investors a fair return, remain active in social
responsibility, and create transparency.
Economic

Marketing practitioners should act as stewards of society in creating,

facilitating and executing the efficient and effective transactions that are part
of the society’s greater economy. Business should not just consider making
money out of community members but should also make their communities
better places for everyone to live and work. Most common way to
demonstrate this is through donations to local and national charitable
organizations, hiring of unemployed people in the community, offers
investors a healthy return on investment such as paying dividends and
paying of tax.

Philanthropic

Consumers have more concerns on how well is the market serve their
interest. Markets often receives societal critics, some critics may claim that
the market doesn’t make any contribution toward the society and it is
practicing hurt to individual customers, to some business and society as a
whole. Business is the pillar of the society and it should support and
improve the welfare of the society whenever it can. Business should
contribute towards the development of the community and help during the
needy time such as disaster time, and donating funds or goods to the society
and offering of free education to the need and vulnerable.

It is philanthropic responsibility of the business to help the needy and

vulnerable people in the society and engage them in different activities that
will improve their living standards. A good example is of philanthropic is of
some corporates in Namibia that had contributed and donates materials to
prevent covid19.

Legality
A business must be governed by laws in order to operate in a discipline way
and all business participants should be protected. A business should be
legalized to operate in the area it operates and the product or service it
offers must be authorized and approved as it has no harm to the society.
The society should be given proper control information and warnings of any
hazards product or service and this can be done in the language the
community can understand.

A business may operate whatever activity it wants, but only within the
boundaries of regulations. Regulations and legal obligations must be
complied in order to operate a business, such as environmental law,
consumer law, labor law and tax law. A business that may contravene any
law can be sued and this may lead to its closure. Marketing activities that
may have negative effects on the environment must be diligent monitored
and avoided as possible.

2. FOUR MAJOR FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE CONSUMER BUYING

BEHAVIOR

Cultural factors

Cultural factors are the factors an individual can learn within the family at a
very early stage and at other institutions. There are three factors of cultural
namely; culture, subculture and social factors. These factors have a
significant effect on consumer’s buying decision as they influence an
individual on what to buy, why and where to buy.

Culture is the most basic cause of a person's wants and behavior. According
to Edgar H. Schein (1985) culture is a set of basic beliefs, values, wants
perception and behaviors learned by a member of society from family and
other important institution.
Every society has its culture it believes that influences them on buying
behavior. As a child grow, they normally learned or exposed to different
values such as success and achievement, activities such as food production
and involvement, efficiency and practicality, progress, material comfort and
humanitarianism. All these values may influence them on what to consume
or buy. Marketers should therefore analyze, understand and know cultural
differences as it varies from region to region or country, and try to spot
cultural shifts in order to discover new products that might be wanted by the
society and adjust to the culture of that society where he operates. failure to
adjust to these differences can result in ineffective marketing and loss of
profit.

The culture can be further divided into Subculture which is a group of people
shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations such
as religions, geographical regions and racial groups. Many subcultures make
up important market segments, and marketers often introduce products and
marketing programs tailored to their needs.

Social class are society’s relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose
members share similar values, interests, and behaviors. Social class is
measured as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth, and
other variables. Members belongs to this class, such as the upper, middle
and lower class possess different buying behaviors. They buy products that
advocate or suit their social status, for example, the upper class are always
buying luxury goods.

Marketers are interested in social class because people within a given social
class tend to exhibit similar buying behavior. Social classes show distinct
product and brand preferences in areas such as clothing, home furnishings,
leisure activity, and automobiles.

Social factors

Social factors are factors that are prevailing in the society where a consumer
lives and have influence on consumer buying behaviors. This are reference
groups, family, social roles and status that may influence consumer directly
or indirectly on purchasing decisions.
Reference group is referred as role models, mentors or people that inspire
and influence others because of skills or characteristics and provide points of
comparisons to individuals. consumers are often influenced by reference
groups that they don’t belong to, and since they want to look like them, they
try to buy same products or brands of their references