SULC Unethical and Ethical Marketing Campaign Discussion

Please respond to the following:

• Consider the regulations that govern marketing to children and explore the Internet for a marketing campaign that you believe violates those regulations. Select a campaign and provide two solutions to revamp the selected marketing campaign in order to bring it back into ethical compliance. Determine two sacrifices that the selected company may have to make in order to regain ethical compliance.
• Watch the video titled “Ethical & Unethical Target Marketing in Business” (5:45 minutes), located here. Determine which of the 4 P’s (product, place, promotion, price) in marketing is most likely to e vulnerable to ethics violations. Provide a rationale for your selection. Provide two solutions to the potential lack of ethics you have discussed.

please respond to this peer posting:

I never really thought about how marketing is geared toward children before this week´s discussion. My perception was that a child would see something that attracted their attention and then they asked for that product from their parents. There is an actual science and process that marketers use to gain this demographic as a customer. Children may not know the back story behind what is being offered to them. They simply know that it is something that they want to possess for themselves. It is the adults in society that must police what is offered to our youth and make sure it is honest and ethical. One product that I feel might have violated the spirit of the law when advertising to children would be Kraft Foods Lunchables. Anyone who has an adolescent has packed one of these in a lunch box at least once. They usually consist of a protein, a cheese, a carbohydrate, and a snack. Kids love these because they get to build their own pizza or sandwich depending on the Lunchables they choose. To a child, they might think that this is what a healthy and balanced meal looks like. Most parents know this is not the case. Lunchables likely is inferring the wrong opinion of what a nutritious diet actually is. Kraft Foods can make adaptations to their products to change their path to allow for healthier options. One way to adjust their product would be to incorporate fruits and vegetables as a component of the package. Instead of adding a sugary snack as a dessert, inclusing a handful of fruit or a yogurt would be a better alternative. Not all meals have to end with a candy bar and if this ideal is instilled in children at a young age, they will remember this later in life. Lunchables could also be improved by integrating organic foods to their line-up. None of their current offerings have any kind of organic foods at all. If children are exposed to this without realizing that it is ¨?echnically healthier¨, they will not object to trying other organic foods and being on the path for smarter eating overall. While I do not consider these sacrifices, Kraft Foods might have a different perspective. At the very beginning, the company could possibly see a drop in profits because of the higher cost of assimilating organic fruits and vegetables into their products. In the long term, I feel, they will gain a larger customer base because of the healthier lunches they are providing. Parents will be willing to pay more for food that their children like and is better for their health. Kraft might also have to take the step to align other children´s foods to a higher standard. Once parents see the changes made to Lunchables, they will expect better items overall from Kraft. This will cause a domino effect and add a huge amount of work and cost to the Kraft family to organize their foods to the higher expectations the buying public will hope for.

Long ago I learned that ethics is something that once you lose it, it is very hard to earn back. The public might forgive a company for an indiscretion but they are unlikely to completely forget a bad experience. The 4 P? play a huge part in marketing and can be easily manipulated when used in advertising campaigns. Product, place, promotion, and price are all equally important when introducing a company to the public. Promotion, I feel, is the one that is the most vulnerable to ethics violations. The way an item or service is portrayed has the biggest area for interpretation and can be adjusted to the perspective of the marketing team. What is chosen to share with the buying public will determine their attitude toward the business and whether they will make a purchase or not. Customers deserve to know the truth about the limitations or expectations of what they are buying to ultimately decide if they would patronize the company again. There are several ways that advertisers can steer clear of ethical violations. By under promising and over delivering, this will be a cause of satisfaction for the consumer. Experiencing more than you expected from a product will only want the customer to make a repeat purchase and grow customer loyalty. Also, by presenting clear and concise outcomes for services or goods will help to avoid any unpleasantness on the client´? part. Customers should be told in advance what type of realistic results will come as the result of their purchase. For example, wrinkle cream is an excellent product to examine. Customers who use this cream should not be told that they will look ten years younger overnight. People will buy this lotion thinking it will fix all of their problems. In reality, this will result with an unhappy customer who will look to a different company that will better suit their needs.

Hawkins, D.I., Mothersbuagh, D., & Best, R.J. (2016). Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy (13th ed.).

New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.