Ethics may be defined as rules of conduct acceptable to a particular jurisdiction or a certain class of human actions or culture. They are legal proclamations set aside to guide a particular group, for example, medical ethics (Borgerson, 2012). On the other hand, the term legal connotes an act or omission that is acceptable by law or pertains to the law. In ethical marketing and advertising there are quite a number of moral principles that are very crucial.
On the other hand, advertising considered on the social level can have persuasive or pervasive influences, and it is, therefore, important that the messages used in the advertisement are correct and sometimes accurate or precise (Lacziniak & Klein, 2012). Advertising should also consider the intellectual property rights of other adverts to prevent a legal quagmire. In addition, the messages used in advertising ought to consider the thoughts, feelings and even the religion of the people concerned or the society. It should avoid nudity. Misleading information and concealed facts are not supposed to be used as this would be unethical as well as a legal anathema.
Misrepresentation is perceived by a court of competent jurisdiction as a breach of contract. A blatant violation of the freedom of contract has deleterious effects on the customers, and it trickles down to the public opinion of the product. For example, the McDonalds’ hamburger advertisement can be said to be misleading and misrepresented. In the advert, the product looks huge and is portrayed as having a double size, whereby in reality it is does add up to even a third the size of what is being advertised or it would be unethical to claim that a car made it to 50 miles when in reality it achieved only 30 miles (Borgerson, 2012). Another ethical issue in advertising is that it is manipulative in that, most of the people who are influenced by a particular advertisement tend to do certain things that were it not for the exposure to the advertising, they normally would not do them.
Some critics have suggested that advertising can influence people to go against their own free will (Fisher & Shaw, 2009). It may also be offensive; for instance, television adverts relating to sexual explicitness or unpleasant products such as haemorrhoid treatment. In this paper’s opinion, should be controlled or not be put on television at all. Since among the people watching, children are also involved and they may not understand and some of them may be influenced to try out things they watch from the television (Borgerson, 2012). In addition, advertising may in one way or the other encourage impulse buying. In other words, it causes people or consumers to buy what is not necessary, or they do not need. For example, and individual may end up buying things they would never use just because they saw them being advertised and were attracted to them or were curious about those particular products or items.
Direct-to-customer marketing is a way or strategy used to promote products, goods or services directly from the seller to the buyer or consumer without using an intermediary advertising such as magazines and radios. It is true to say that an organization or institution that encourages direct-to-customer marketing is directly trying to influence the buying decisions of the consumers (Lacziniak & Klein, 2012). They use strategies such as promoting their goods, for instance, direct mail, telemarketing or online selling that is worldwide and attracts different people from all over the globe. There are quite a number of advantages in using this type of marketing strategies. To begin with, it encourages closer interactions between the seller and the consumer. For example, by using online selling or telemarketing or direct mail, the organization or company using this kind of strategies interact more closely with their customers. Since it is a two-way communication and hence they tend to develop a better rapport with them by answering and attending to their concerns or questions (Fisher & Shaw, 2009).
In addition, direct-to-customer marketers tend to enjoy greater tracking of their promotions since they know who they are exactly targeting. Therefore, they are in a better position to measure the effectiveness of their advertising, for example, online sellers may track traffic from different online search engines where they advertise their products. This encourages greater measurability and, as a result, the marketers would know when to drop less promotional marketing strategies. Furthermore, a marketer may have several opportunities to close prospects in that it is easier to find out why a consumer may be hesitant to purchase a product probably because they may not have the money. As a result, they find ways to overcome such difficulties by, for instance, discussing them with the prospect buyers. They also may send additional information as one of the efforts to make their sales (Borgerson, 2012). Furthermore, it is possible for this type of marketers to provide the consumers with more transaction options, making it easier for the consumers to make purchases by, for instance, making order through mails or buy products on the marketers’ websites.
Compounding pharmacies are important elements in the field of prescription, patients use, drug manufacturing and distribution. It refers to physical pharmacies that have been authorized to mix (compound) chemical ingredients into medical drugs that may be used by patients depending on the prescriptions made by a doctor or any qualified and legally authorized person. The federal Food and Drug Administration is responsible for controlling almost all the commercial pharmaceuticals manufacturing. However, it should be noted that states are the sole regulators of pharmacies including the community drug stores. Each state therefore has laws and regulations that guide pharmacy requirements and standards and addresses matters such as licenses for the pharmacists and other employees who work there. It also includes the authority given to compound pharmaceutical ingredients into a patient-ready product.
The FDA is expected to act immediately in relation to any issues that arise regarding compounding pharmacies. Poor compounding may cause serious effects that may result to forming new federal regulatory schemes (Lacziniak & Klein, 2012). The FDA should be empowered to regulate the compounding process so as to avoid such effects. In this case, the FDA ought to correct existing regulations dealing with compounding, where it feels there is a gap, and it should also be authorised to supervise the licensed pharmacists’ activities. In addition, it should be empowered to adopt measures of the federal law. As a result, it ought to give licenses to the compounding pharmacies and control the compounding of drugs that are not in the market because they are illegal in any elements in the drugs are found to be unsafe (Borgerson, 2012). Therefore, there should be no compounding of drugs that are a copy of existing drugs in the market so as to ensure strictness on copyrights.
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory based on methods that are straightforward in deciding morally right actions depending on the situation at hand. It relates to outcomes that arise out of neglecting one option and choosing another or in other words, choosing between right or wrong. Therefore, in this case, PharmaCARE use of Colberian intellectual property would be unethical because the theory suggests the use of one option at the expense of another. The PharmaCARE, which offers free and discounted drugs to low-income consumers, does not put into consideration the effects of the drugs to the people; it justifies the use of Colberian intellectual property rights which are not moral. It also is not in line with deontology because this theory suggests that everyone has a duty based on rules; it also suggests that human beings have certain moral rights and duties and the ethical choices made should be in accordance to those rights and duties. In addition, the PharmaCARE in relation to the theory of virtue of care, it is not appropriate in that the theory implies that virtues are a matter of good habits that are developed and trained in different communities. However, it coincides with the ethical theory of ethics of care because it was aimed at helping and supporting individuals. In my own moral opinion, however, using Colberian intellectual property without proper payment or acknowledgement is not right. It was no appropriate for PharmaCARE to deplete the Colberian resources and not aid in rebuilding it.
Intellectual property is a very important asset in contributing to the success of the global economy. Therefore, it is true to say that PharmaCARE has contributed the economic growth of the country as well as in the entire United States of America. The protection of intellectual property in America is successful as it is recognized worldwide as having a good system of intellectual property regime as it has protected many goods and assets, because the process used are affordable and suitable for various businesses that need to be acquired. It covers a large variety of services including trademarks that protect companies’ identities and brands that may be acquired at federal state level; or patents that guarantee protection companies’ new inventions or copyrights that protect creative expressions presented in recorded form. Therefore, PharmaCARE has taken advantage of the fact that the United States of America has a successful system of intellectual property. It has a transparent and predictable legal system that is necessary for solving disputes (Lacziniak & Klein, 2012). It, therefore, has the advantage of using the undiscriminating legal system available that would help in increasing its intellectual property assets.
It is clear that the PharmaCARE has benefited greatly from the Colberian nation, mainly because the people sacrificed their lives and land to it. PharmaCARE could compensate the people of Colberia by paying them a reasonable amount or employing them to work in their company. They should also have come up with ways of rebuilding it, for example, by planting trees and restoring the parts of the environment that were destroyed in the process, by contributing money that would be enough to support the rebuilding of the nation.
PharmaCARE can be compared to another well-known pharmaceutical company known as CompCARE, a company where it was discovered that AD23 drugs were causing heart attacks. Another example is that of Pfizer Company, which was faced with a similar situation with its drug known as Lipitor that resulted in causing many deaths, but eventually the company ended its production of the drug.
The shareholders of the PharmaCARE and WellCo companies experienced an increase in dividends. The higher the price of a company’s stock is, the higher the returns and, therefore, in this scenario, the stock price was recorded to be high. This is not however a continuous process because at some point there is expected to be a slow decrease in the returns and the price of dividends. With that in mind, therefore, shareholders when joining a company expect that the payment on their shares would be higher than the price at which they initially bought it at. Hence the important aspect in this case is that the business ignores its reputation so as to maintain high profits and please shareholders. However, the truth if known would not be pleasant not to mention that in as much as it may be enjoying the profits the business would not last long. Therefore, if CompCARE was sold to WellCo and they did not know which products had caused the massive death, WellCo would have little to answer to the shareholders. Shareholders may ask for compensation for the price they gave for the shares due to the expected losses on its stock prices that may not be recovered.
In my opinion, PharmaCARE does not live up to its brand, because, despite initially having a good reputation of having good products and making high profits, it was later discovered that those products were dangerous with the potential of causing heart attacks. To avoid these, it would have carried out extensive and critical research on its product to make sure that it was safe for human consumption. They should not have been allowed to sell the drugs in large quantities, and they should not have encouraged doctors to fax them a list of patients who were of low income and needed the drugs. They should have responded immediately and taken responsibility when the first discovery of its drugs causing heart attacks was made; instead they continued supplying the drugs instead of inspecting the cause of the problem.
PharmaCARE could however have made changes that were more ethical by stopping the compounding of those drugs after realizing it caused harm to the society at the first instance when the discovery was made. They should also have compensated the victims or the families of the death victims who died, as a result, of using those drugs. They should have put into consideration and make human life a priority by not giving them drugs that had not been fully researched on.
In conclusion, therefore, a company or business entity ought to balance the need to market a product with regards to ethical and legal responsibility so as to achieve its goals successfully. There are plenty federal laws and the marketers should be aware of them and realize that they have a responsibility of protecting the consumers as well as their companies.
References
Borgerson, J. (2012). Ethical Issues in Global Marketing. Avoiding Bad Faith in Visual Representation, 570-594.
Fisher, D. C., & Shaw, J. B. (2009). Human Resource Management. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Lacziniak, C. W., & Klein, T. (2012). Ethical Marketing. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.
