The core principle of ethics in marketing is simple enough, and appears in virtually every textbook on marketing ever written: the function of marketing (advertising, salesmanship, promotion, etc.) is to help people to identify and obtain products and services that serve their needs.
This notion has been taught for decades, and most will pay lip-service to it, but it's very rarely put into practice. Some have consciously abandoned this ideal, others continue to cleave to it even though their actions are patently incongruous. As such, it's no wonder that no-one seems to be able to get relationship marketing "right." It's based on an ethical principle that is not understood or accepted.
Relationship marketing - in fact, marketing in general, be it sales, promotion, advertising, or whatever - is meant to begin with human needs, and then finding ways in which they can be served. But in practice, marketing often begins with a product or service, then seeks to find a way to convince people they need it.
The unethical marketer will attempt to pressure the prospect (who, at this point, is more accurately considered to be "the mark') into purchasing it anyway, and there are any number of ticks that can be used to get the mark to pay for something that is of no appreciable benefit. There are a myriad of tactics for doing so, which largely boil down to deceiving the customer into thinking that they need a product so that you can get them to buy things they don't need.
In that sense, relationship marketing is an attempt to get back on the right track: to seek to understand the customer, that you might become more familiar with his needs, that you might offer him solutions to them (even if it means creating a new product or service). But in many instances, it seems to be going off-track: it begins with gathering information about the customer, but the information is used as a means to more effectively deceive them into purchasing an unneeded product.
This is largely the fault of old-school metrics: the success of marketing is measured by the number of products sold, rather than the number of needs met. The two are not synonymous: as taking the former approach places emphasis on pushing product, regardless of whether the prospect has any need for it. The latter acknowledges that there is a certain amount of need, and does not place emphasis on selling any amount of product over and above the amount of need that exists for it.
All of this seems somewhat abstract, so an example might help to concretize it: consider the example of a company that has developed a highly effective antivenin for all north American snake bites - which would be a boon, in that present antivenin requires the precise identification of a species. Given that about 8,000 people a year receive venomous bites (and for purposes of trivia, nine to fifteen die), the maximum amount of need is 8,000 doses per year.
If the supplier is perfectly ethical and perfectly effective in identifying the source of need, they will seek to sell 8,000 doses per year - exactly enough to fill the need that exits. A supplier can still claim to be ethical in selling more than that amount, in order that hospitals and clinics might have it on hand in case they need it, admitting that they are unable to predict with much accuracy when the need for it may arise.
If the supplier instead sets a goal to sell a specific number of doses, without considering the need, it will find itself in unethical territory (intentionally or unintentionally). There might be any number of "reasons" that could be offered for setting a sales goal of 100,000 units when the actual level of need is far less - but in the end, the "reasons" are merely excuses for unethical behavior. The motive is no different than that of any con-man or swindler: to sell as much as possible, even if customers don't need the product.
And this is precisely where marketing fails its stated ethics, to serve the needs of the customers. It's said that a good salesman can sell ice to an Eskimo - and this is the goal that seems to drive behavior. But from an ethical perspective, a "good" salesman would realize there is no need to be served, and offer that customer a different product for an actual need, or seek to offer his product to those who could derive a benefit from having it.
No comments:
Post a Comment