Making Socially Responsible And Ethical Marketing Decisions: Case Study Sample

Tobacco to Third World Countries

 Making Socially Responsible and Ethical Marketing Decisions:
Tobacco to Third World Countries
It is a good long-term strategy for the tobacco companies as teenagers would be assuring their business has a future and its loyal consumers, as those teenagers would be smokers for many years before deciding to quit it. Another most likely segment of the targeted population, beside the teenagers, are the people from the under-developed countries. Tobacco is a luxury good; it is a sign of a higher status in their vision, vision that has also been created by the tobacco selling companies through their ads that show wealthy, capable of pursuing all of their dreams, handsome and successful individuals smoking.
Unfortunately, even if those ads and the lifestyle promoted by the tobacco companies are the ones that keep their business on, gaining them profits, they are in fact causing much harm through smoking related diseases.
Even so, people have a choice to smoke or not to smoke and the tobacco companies should take action and find strategies to sell their products in much more ethical ways, in ways that do not take advantage of the young ones in any society or of needy.
One strategy that the tobacco may use is to air their tobacco ads at the night time and none in the day time, so that the youngsters will not be able to see them; tobacco ads should be considered strictly adult content. Also, all the tobacco companies should let the population know the bad effects of smoking during these ads. Being totally forthright and honest with the consumers is a much more ethical way to deal with the situation.
The tobacco producers should not be allowed to use the substances, such as tar and nicotine in different proportions, but instead provide the same quality everywhere. Taste is not a good reason to provoke more evil than you already do, but instead the companies could invest in doing more research in order to come up with better-tasting cigarettes that are more natural, using less chemicals and natural foils.
Government should put higher taxes on tobacco, discouraging their promotional ads so that, at least their young, the teenagers who can be so easily influences, would not be interested to start smoking and get addicted. Also, the government could use a certain amount from the profits made from selling cigarettes in order to fund research projects.
If in spite of all of these barriers that should be set, the tobacco companies may still want to conduct their business, they would have a much smaller amount of clients, due to the fact that the price of the tobacco should be much higher, reason that will prevent many of their previous consumers from smoking.
The price of ethical behavior is indeed very costly, but very necessary in a world already consumed of too many diseases, beside the ones provoked by the use of tobacco.
As a clear example of more and more tobacco companies should do for a much ethical behavior, is the case of the British American Tobacco company. They have managed to implement a Social Responsibility in Tobacco Production (SRTP) programme (Bat.com, 2015).
Even if it is costly, this programme addresses the environmental and the social issues associated with growing and processing tobacco. It focuses on the economic and the social issues of third world countries, such as exploitative child labor, human rights and labor standards. Also, it implies research and development that protects the environment, the agricultural practices, as well as the better quality of the products they sell (Bat.com, 2015).
The question one should ask is whether the tobacco industry can ever be legitimate and ethical. Unfortunately, no individual or company acting on its own may answer this, as it is in the hands of a broader society to determine if sometimes is or is not legitimate.
If people believe, for example, that tobacco is a product whose use should be prohibited, then the governments could act and just ban it. However, there is no doubt that if it were for tobacco to be discovered in the modern times, nowadays, when its bad effects and bad implications to health are known, for sure it would have never been allowed to be put into use and sale.
Either way, the governments all over the world are rather disinclined to actually ban tobacco, as there are approximately 1 billion people who smoke and who wouldn’t agree to that prohibition. Due to these facts, it has been agreed in most of the places that tobacco is an adult products and that it is an area for legitimate and informed choice.
Having all of the above in mind, there is only the option on how the informed choices are being met. There are, on the one hand, unscrupulous companies, that are willing to sell as much as possible without any care for the consequences of their actions, description which unfortunately fits a large amount of the companies activating in the tobacco industry. One the other hand, there are some companies on the “better” side, investing in research in order to develop products that are less harmful.
A company that is managing its environmental impact carefully (just like in the above example, through the implementation of SRTP), that is treating the people in the supply chain with respect, bringing support and possibilities for development and improvement in the society where it activates, is actually giving something back.
Written above, could be an example of a made up definition for a tobacco company that is socially responsible, ethically inclined. Even if most of the people must not agree to the terms put together in this “definition”, everyone must recognize the lesser evil, of a company that is not ignoring the harm caused by the product it sells, a company that is attentive to the environment and to the society where it activates.
Under these statements, I believe that the tobacco companies should not be stopped from marketing their products, but only impose them a certain structure of an advertisement, a certain hour or place to be displayed for the better selection of a public that is adult and can make the informed decision of whether to smoke or not.
Also, other measures that could be taken would be to increase the anti-smoking commercials, the documentaries explaining the consequences smoking has to health, as well as the anti-smoking campaigns.
Governments could raise the taxes on the tobacco companies and their sales, forcing the prices of the cigarettes to go as high as this would become a strictly” luxury” product, so that fewer people will be able to use it.
Meanwhile, all we can do is to encourage the view amongst the companies that sell products that kill, that they need to be serious about changing the way they do business, more aware of the needs of the world, addressing the problems stated above.
Under these conditions, and as long as tobacco is considered to be a legal product, all we can do is to accept the principle that tobacco companies are able to run as socially responsible companies.

References

Bat.com,. (2015). British American Tobacco - Social Responsibility in Tobacco Production programme. Retrieved 8 March 2015, from http://www.bat.com/srtp