Unethical Practices in Marketing
ETHICAL MARKETING……REALLY??????
The basic difference between Ethical and Unethical marketing is thin enough to be noticeable while crossing over.
When one is running from pillar to post, trying to get his/her business up and running, or for the sake of survival amidst the otherwise wolves ready to pounce and take one’s morsel away, one hardly gives the idea of resting one foot over ethics and jumpstarting the unethical phase a second thought.
‘Playing by rules’, as it may be termed for convenience of understanding, is more or less a decision made by the government and forcibly imposed on businesses which don’t play fair, and its always in one’s best interest to follow the guidelines with a grin, as otherwise one’s chances of becoming a poster boy for unethical behavior in business are fairly high.
One of the most important elements of marketing is being able to create effective marketing campaigns that do not cross the line from ethical to unethical. While there are some strategies that straddle that line and are open for debate, there are some that clearly fall on the unethical side of the scale.
ethics is a topic that has received a ton of press and attention over the last several years. In today’s business environment where government is continually cracking down on those that do not play by their rules, it is in your best interest to play nice. The last thing you want is to become a poster boy for unethical business behavior.
Here are five unethical marketing and business practices that you should stay away from if you want to avoid losing potential clients, angering your audience and hurting your business.
Selling a sub-par product or service.
If you’re going to create and sell a product or service which you know is not of a standardized quality, you will not be marketing it as the best thing since a sliced bread. Imagine yourself as a gold seller, you wouldn’t be marketing your gold as diamond just to increase its sales right. Be honest that it is very basic and not for experienced professionals. Yet there are some companies who deliberately showcase their products as superior much more than what they aren’t. in the field of electronics we can some India smartphone brands(Notably starting with a M and ending with a X :-p), create subpar products, sell them at a much higher price as opposed to what they actually cost to manufacture and portray it as the best in the world. Interes Or better yet, create something more worthwhile.
Contacting people without their consent.
Some companies without the consent of people advertise them of new launches of schemes. Telecom operators sell their customers numbers to various advertising agencies who in turn send junk advertisements to consumers. Just because I email you with a question or collaboration opportunity does not give you permission to add me to your newsletter email list. Make sure you are only contacting those that have opted-in to receive information from you. If you add email addresses to your lists without consent, you are spamming. Junk emails or messages are both unethical and can annoy a lot of people.
Deliberately misrepresenting what a purchaser will get/achieve/become with a product or service.
How many times do you get an email with an outrageous promise that seems too good to be true? Many a companies promise something else and deliver something else. Let’s take an example of the eluding advertisement of fairness creams. Apart from using the unethical practices of color biasness these companies are also promoting products which in reality do not provide anything promised. These are about products let’s talk about hundreds of emails selling you credit cards and scholarships to study abroad or companies asking for CV And what do you do with those emails? If you’re like me, you first unsubscribe from that list, report the email as spam and then delete it.
Refusing to respond to and correct customer complaints.
One of the worst things a business that relies on word of mouth referrals can do is ignore unhappy customers. How many times have we called a company’s customer care and have been disappointed as either they do not pickup at first, if they pickup they leave us hanging or in the end the demand is not fulfilled and there is no outcome of the time wasted. If you receive a complaint about a service you rendered, you should respond to it promptly and seek a resolution as quickly as possible. It is not only is the “right” thing to do, but you have a chance to turn a negative experience into a positive one and that may lead to a second chance with that customer.
Not having a clear and easy-to-understand privacy policy.
We see Facebook and other large social media sites running into this one quite frequently. Just recently Facebook was accused of stealing their customer’s private information and selling it to other users. Even thousands of private information was stolen from the google database when millions of email accounts were hacked. While their missteps are probably due to their rapid growth, there are plenty of others who hide information in confusing privacy policies. How are we supposed to trust various websites who ask for our debit or credit card information even before registering Things like the right to sell their members’ information to third parties or not clearly explaining how the information you share is used.
A related no-no in my mind is also making it a 10-step process to unsubscribe from a list. Or worse, not allowing people to unsubscribe at all.
Unethical Practices in Finance
We talked about unethical practices in the aforementioned statements so can we leave finance behind. Its not new to play with numbers and manipulate people. The unethical practices in accounting are more in proprietary, partnership and private limited companies. It is at lower levels in public limited companies and MNCs, though not completely unnoticeable
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Some of the unethical practices in financing and accounting are as under:
Deliberate abnormal delays in payments to (a) Vendors, (b) Dealers commissions and promotion costs.
This is not a new thing we all have heard of creditors and how most of the businesses work on credit basis, its not an unknown fact that no business can survive long unless it works on credits but there is a thin line between debts and frauds. Companies delay payments for a long time, more than promised and sometimes do not pay at all. This thin line in the delay of payments differentiates between an ethical practice and an unethical practice.
Delays in paying wages, interest to financiers, incentive, bonus to employees.
Now there are many other stakeholders in the organization apart from the suppliers or creditors and these are the more integral stakeholder i.e. the employees who work under you and your financiers. Some of the other unethical financial practices can include not paying proper wages to the full time or casual labors available to you, not paying salaries on time or some time not paying at all for a couple of months, lack of incentives for overtime and/or extra work done by the people and last but not the least paying proper dividends to your financers.
Holding up bills of vendors on silly reasons and ultimately buying from others to avoid payment to earlier vendors.
This is something which is more often observed within small vendors or industries with small scale budgets mostly concerned with manufacturing of regular consumer goods or general stores. Shop owners hold up the bills of vendors or suppliers on silly reason and ultimately buy stuff from others. This practice is unethical in a sense that this is an espionage to the word of mouth and this in addition to forgery and malpractice also disrupts the reputation and goodwill of the business in the market and among suppliers.
Not prompt in statutory payments of ESI, PF, Sales Tax and Excise Duties.
It would be highly unfair if I do not mention this point in this list, I mean c’mon we all that there might not be any single businessman who doesn’t cheat on the tax system of the country however minute the forgery may be but it still costs the government a hell lotta fortune. From small scale businessmen to huge names (hello Mr. Malya). Delay or forgery in the payments of ESI, PF, Sales Tax and Excise Duties is an unethical practice which needs to be discontinued in the long term survival of a business organization.
Cheating employees of their dues towards medical expenses, leave travel assistance, children education fees etc.
When we join a company we are provided with a lot of promising offers from the company, a lot of schemes being presented to us a lot of false benefits being advertised but how many of them are fulfilled. The companies fail to provide the employee welfare and are not ideally delivered what they are contracted for. In this case the employees have every single law to file a case against their employer in case their Job contract perks are not being fulfilled.
There are a couple more unethical practices used in finance that I can touch on but this list would go on and on and of course I don’t wish to bore you with technical definitions or big long statements you have google for that. So some of the other practices as listed below are :-
· Opening of current accounts in different banks to avoid adjustments against loans by earlier banker.
· Creating bogus bills of purchase to show higher costs and hence losses to avoid bonus payment to employees.
· Collecting loans from private financiers at higher rate of interest to help kith and kin and to get kick-backs.
· Quick release of payments to known or adjustment parties and delaying payment to others.
· Taking private finance only from those who are ready to do personal favours to the finance department head.
Unethical practices in HR
Of all the hierarchical issues or issues, HR ethical issues are the most troublesome ones to deal with or manage. Issues emerge in business, compensation and advantages, modern relations and wellbeing and security.
Diagrammatic representation of HR Ethical Issues
Cash and Compensation Plans
There are moral issues relating to the compensations, official perquisites and the yearly motivation designs and so forth. The HR administrator is frequently constrained to raise the band of base pay rates. There is expanded weight upon the HR capacity to pay out more motivating forces to the best administration and the defense for the equivalent is put as the need to hold the last mentioned. Further moral issues crop in HR when long haul remuneration and motivating force designs are structured in meeting with the President or an outer advisor. While settling on the payout there is weight on favoring the interests of the best administration in contrast with that of different representatives and partners.
Race, gender and Disability
In numerous associations till as of late the workers were separated based on their race, sexual orientation, beginning and their incapacity. Not any longer as far back as the advancement of laws and an administrative system that has institutionalized representative practices towards one another. In great associations the main separating factor is execution! Also the intensity of documenting case has made put associations on the back foot. Administrators are prepared for adjusting conduct and keeping away from biased practices.
Employment Issues
Human asset specialists face greater problems in worker procuring. One difficulty comes from the weight of enlisting somebody who has been prescribed by a companion, somebody from your family or a best official.
One more issue emerges when you have effectively enlisted somebody and he/she is later found to have displayed phony reports. Two cases may emerge and both are basic. In the primary case the individual has been prepared and the position is basic. In the second case the individual has been exceptionally refreshing for his work amid his short spell or he/she has a one of a kind mix of abilities with the correct sort of demeanor. Both the circumstances are adequately dilemmatic to leave even a prepared HR campaigner in a fix.
Privacy Issues
Any individual working with any association is an individual and has an individual side to his reality which he requests ought to be regarded and not encroached. The representative needs the association to ensure his/her own life. This individual life may envelop things like his religious, political and social convictions and so on. Anyway certain circumstances may emerge that order snooping practices with respect to the business. For instance, mail examining is one of the exercises used to follow the exercises of a worker who is accepted to be occupied with exercises that are not in the bigger advantage of the association.
Thus there are moral issues in HR that relate to wellbeing and security, rebuilding and cutbacks and representative duties. There is as yet a discussion going on whether such exercises are morally allowed or not. Cutbacks, for instance, are not any more considered as untrustworthy as they were thought of previously.
