Business Ethics

Introduction, Ethics in Marketing Marketing and advertising plays a key role in a market society. The more competition there is, the more important marketing becomes. The Advertising Standards Authority states "no advertisement should mislead by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omissions or otherwise" (Wyburd, 1998, p. 43); all highly subjective criteria. There are many questionable areas in advertising such as the use of misleading or half-truths used to win customer and the subjective standards of decency often used to …

…risk disappearing forever. Conclusion "Ethics is about winning in the long term. Good business and good ethics are not a contradiction in terms" (Wyburd, p. 108). Self-regulatory guidelines are intended to be honored in light of their aims and principles. All marketers should support the guidelines in spirit and not treat their provisions as obstacles to be circumvented by legal ingenuity. Companies still appear to be dictated primarily by profit margin rather than "right and wrong."