Free Management Dissertations - - It Perpetuates Social Stereotyping Like The Female Body, As Depicted By
- It perpetuates social stereotyping
Like the female body, as depicted by super-thin undernourished models (Crane and Matten, 2004).
Therefore, can marketing communication ever be successful in business and at the same time be ethical? Nucifora Alf, an experienced marketer states that ..the industry (marketing) has much to answer for when it comes to the issue of ethical behaviour (2000:17).
But mostly it seems that advertising has debatably been selling us more than products, they have sold us a new culture and a new us. Ads sell more than products. They sell images, values, goals, concepts of who we are and who we should be. They shape our attitudes and our attitudes shape our behaviour (Nucifora, 2000:17). Westra and Werhane (1998) argue that marketing assumes, and thus promotes, values such as consumption linking to happiness, acceptance and status, the needlessness of denial and the adequacy of instant gratification. Therefore, marketing has been selling us a new image of who we are and what we should aspire and want to be, and this is measured only in material terms, and that happiness and fulfilment can be reached through consumption. More metaphysically, marketing has tended to encourage the identification of people with what they posses (Westra and Werhane, 1998:93).
The author believes this to be a very timely, interesting and complex topic to research. It is a topic that affects not only businesses, but also society at large. An al panacea to the conundrum will not be identified by the research, but it should provide an insight into the interrelationships between marketing, consumption and materialism, and into how ethical current marketing strategies really are.
Research Methodology Proposal
The following section will outline how the research will be planned, conducted and which designs and methods are intended to be used and also how the data will be collected. The research process onion (see Appendix I) by Saunders et al. (2003: 83) will be used as a guide.
1. Research philosophy
There is the Realist (Objectivist) corner; a positivistic approach with a stance of a natural scientists that believes in the external reality and the validity of quantitative research.
Then there is the Relativist (Subjectivist) approach; focusing on qualitative data and interpretivism, believing in the social construction of reality (Saunders et al 1997, 2003). The research will be based on a relativist philosophy, as it will make more sense to use a qualitative approach for this investigation and also because the author, (and the subject implies) believes in the social construction of reality.
The secondary data gathered, will mainly be from books, academic journals or online databases such as Ebscohost.com, and thus should be valid. However, the primary research will mainly be based on qualitative data, which can not be claimed to be valid.
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