Abstract
Social marketing aims to improve the health and wellbeing of society; however the development and implementation of interventions may have ethical repercussions for both intended and incidental targets, and in general ethical terms. To date there is little systematic analysis in the literature of these issues or possible solutions. There is a lack of unambiguous ethical frameworks to guide social marketers, with different outcomes possible under intention-focused (deontological) reasoning versus consequence-focused (teleological) reasoning. While ethical checklists and codes of ethics have been proposed for the sector, significant questions relating to administration and enforcement remain unresolved. This article reviews these issues and suggests routes for developing such guidelines and codes, and future research.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
American Marketing Association (AMA). 2007. American Marketing Association Code of Ethics: Ethical Norms and Values for Marketers. Retrieved from http://www.marketingpower.com/content21013.php#
Andreasen, Alan R. (Ed.). 2001. Ethics in Social Marketing. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press
Andreasen, Alan R. 2002. “Marketing Social Marketing in the Social Change Marketplace.” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 21(1): 3-13
Brenkert, George G. 2002. “Ethical Challenges of Social Marketing.” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 21(1): 14-36
Cho, Hyunyi and Charles T. Salmon. 2007. “Unintended Effects of Health Communication Campaigns.” Journal of Communication 57(2): 293–317
Cruess, Sylvia and Richard L. Cruess. 1997. “Professionalism Must Be Taught”. British Medical Journal 7123(315): 1674-1677
Donovan, Robert and Nadine Henley. 2003. Social Marketing Principles and Practice. Melbourne, Australia: IP Communications
Duke, Charles R., Gregory M. Pickett, Les Carlson and Stephen J. Grove. 1993. “A Method for Evaluating the Ethics of Fear Appeals.” Journal of Public Policy and Marketing 12(1): 120-129
Dunfee, Thomas W., N. Craig Smith and William T. Ross Jr. 1999. “Social Contracts and Marketing Ethics.” Journal of Marketing 63(3): 14-32
Easley, Cheryl E., Stephen P. Marks, Docteur D’Etat and Russell B. Morgan Jr. 2001. “The Challenge and Place of International Human Rights in Public Health”. American Journal of Public Health 91(12): 1922-1925
European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA). 2007. Code of Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.eaca.be/documentation/results.asp?type=1andopen=4and#4
Ferrell, O. C., and John B. Fraedrich. 1994. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases (2nd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Gillon, Raanan. 1994. “Medical Ethics: Four Principles Plus Attention to Scope.” British Medical Journal 309 (6948): 184
Guttman, Nurit and Charles T. Salmon. 2004. “Guilt, Fear, Stigma and Knowledge Gaps: Ethical Issues in Public Health Communication Interventions”. Bioethics 18(6): 53 -552
Hastings, Gerard, Martine Stead and John Webb. 2004. “Fear Appeals in Social Marketing Strategic and Ethical Reasons for Concern.” Psychology and Marketing 21(11): 961-986
Hunt, Shelby D., and Scott J. Vitell. 2006. “The General Theory of Marketing Ethics: A Revision and Three Questions.” Journal of Macromarketing 26(2): 143-153
Kotler, Philip, Ned Roberto and Nancy Lee. 2002. Social Marketing: Improving the Quality of Life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
Kotler, Philip, and Gerald Zaltman. 1971. “Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change.” Journal of Marketing 35(3): 3-12
Lere, John C., and Bruce R. Gaumnitz. 2007. “Changing Behavior by Improving Codes of Ethics.” American Journal of Business 22(2): 7-17
Moolchan, Eric T., and Robin Mermelstein. 2002. “Research on Tobacco Use Among Teenagers: Ethical Challenges.” Journal of Adolescent Health 30(6): 409 - 417
Murphy, Patrick E., and Paul N. Bloom. 1992. “Ethical Issues in Social Marketing”. In Marketing the Public Sector Promoting the Causes of Public and Nonprofit Agencies: 68-78: Transaction Publishers
Pires, Guilherme D. and John Stanton. 2002. “Ethnic Marketing Ethics.” Journal of Business Ethics 36(1/2): 111-118
Rothschild, Michael L. 2001. “Ethical Considerations in the Use of Marketing for the Management of Public Health and Social Issues.” In Alan R. Andreasen (Ed.). Ethics in Social Marketing (pp. 17-38). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press
Rust, Roland T., and Tuck S. Chung. 2006. “Marketing Models of Service and Relationships.” Marketing Science 25(6): 560-580
Saeed, Mohammed, Zafar U. Ahmed, and Syeda-Masooda Mukhtar. 2001. “International Marketing Ethics from an Islamic Perspective: A Value-Maximization Approach” Journal of Business Ethics 32(2): 127-142
Snipes, Robin L., Michael S. LaTour and Sara J. Bliss. 1999. “A Model of the Effects of Self-efficacy on the Perceived Ethicality and Performance of Fear Appeals in Advertising.” Journal of Business Ethics 19(3): 273-285
Witte, Kim and Mike Allen. 2000. “A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeals: Implications for Effective Public Health Campaigns”. Health Education and Behavior 27(5): 591-615
Wright, Donald K. 1993. “Enforcement Dilemma: Voluntary Nature of Public Relations Codes.” Public Relations Review 19(1): 13-20
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Academy of Marketing Science
About this paper
Cite this paper
Eagle, L., Bird, S., Spotswood, F., Tapp, A. (2015). Ethical Dimensions of Social Marketing Does Trying to do Good Equate to Doing No Harm?. In: Campbell, C. (eds) Marketing in Transition: Scarcity, Globalism, & Sustainability. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18687-0_157
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18687-0_157
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18686-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18687-0
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)