Free Management Dissertations - Dissertation Proposal: Marketing, Consumerism, Materialism And Ethics: The
Dissertation title proposal:
Marketing, consumerism, materialism and ethics: The modern marketing conundrum
An investigation of whether it is possible for a marketing manager to behave in an ethical way and still be successful in business. And whether marketing in itself is ethical, considering the consumer and material society that has been created in the Western world.
Introduction to the topic
Firstly an outline of what comprises the marketing strategy and activity is given by Dibb et al. ...a marketing strategy encompasses selecting and analysing a target market (the group of people whom ones organization wants to reach) and creating and maintaining an appropriate marketing mix (the tactical toolkit of product, place/distribution, promotion, price and people) that will satisfy those customers in the target market (Dibb et al., 2001:16). Ethical issues could be determined in many marketing aspects, from selecting a target to the prices determination (example of the pharmaceutical industry and their (ab)use of the supply-demand concept, as studies showed that the most common used pharmaceuticals had out of proportion price increases in comparison to inflation rates, Ferrell et al. 2002). However, to investigate all of the possible aspects of this topic is not possible for this dissertation, and therefore it is proposed to look at the consumerism and materialism and how it has/is influenced and maybe even been created through marketing activities. It will also outline that the trend for such high consumption is not all desirable and thus will question the ethics behind the whole concept of marketing. Also are there many marketing tactics used nowadays which are on the thin line between of what one perceives as ethical and what not. On the other side of the spectrum is that business can not survive without marketing efforts in nowadays fierce competitive global market.
Materialism is the importance a consumer attaches to worldly possession (Lipscomb, 1988:42). Materialism in our consumer society is said to have reached its pique (Baudrillard, 1970, cited in Heath, 2002) and material possessions are considered to be an important pointer of whom and what we are. Nowadays in America (and arguably generally in Western societies) materialistic terms define the success a person has in life (Hoffman, 1996). Crane and Matten (2004) even argue that traditional values have been replaced by the ethics of consumerism encouraging instant gratification and hedonism. And that the morality of self-interest has gained much more social legitimacy recently (Hendry, 2004) can arguably only have helped this trend. This can be illuminated by the fact that the per capita consumption in Western Europe has grown over 50% since the 1980’s (Crane and Matten, 2004).
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