Ethics and Social Responsibility

The fast food industry America is often pointed to as the primary contributor to America's ever growing obesity problem. This charge hasn't stopped them from introducing some rather unhealthy sandwiches, some of which have grown popular while others were tremendous flops. One of the most infamous of these flops is the Arch Deluxe

Marketed to the adult crowd as a hamburger with "sophisticated tastes," the Arch Deluxe was packed with over 560 calories and 32 grams of fat. While this alone could be considered a questionable practice, McDonald's proceeded to spend over 100 million dollars in marketing this product to the masses with television commercials, taste testings, and other advertisements.



This disregard for consumer health and the extravagant marketing campaign for an unhealthy product are obvious examples of a lack of ethical and social responsibility. Ultimately McDonald's targeted marketing failed as people rejected the higher priced unhealthy sandwich and the Arch Deluxe was soon retired. McDonald's has since changed their marketing mix to try and position themselves as a healthy place to eat, which has worked out much better for them.

More recently another product has gained wide spread success with a hugely popular product
Do I even need to tell you what this is?

Apple has taken over large amounts of market share in the MP3, personal computer, and phone markets and is now looking at taking over the tablet market with the iPad. Employing a marketing mix that targets 'cool' users with high priced products that can only be purchased in exclusive locations, Apple has created a new product, the iPad, with very few benefits over their similar products, but their marketing campaign would have you believe otherwise.






As seen outside the bookstore on the ASU campus. The iPad is both 'Magical' and 'Revolutionary'










The marketing of the iPad starts to become an ethical question when you consider at its debut the iPad was stricken with multiple problems, such as internet connection issues, that limited its performance. The marketing videos suggested that you would be getting the best tablet PC on the market that was the greatest at everything. This product was supposed to be magical and revolutionary. Users instead found themselves with an enlarged iPad Touch that immediately needed upgrades. Not only is the need for this product questionable, but it appears that Apple rushed this product out to maintain its position as the leading technological innovator of consumer electronics.

The success of Apples marketing campaign could be seen on the opening day of sales for the iPad as people waited in line for countless hours to spend $500 on the newest Apple product, quickly becoming the fastest product to reach one billion dollars in sales. These same people are now jamming the internet with complaints about their iPad and have been relegated to using their old Apple products to perform the same functions while Apple works out the kinks in their newest offering. The iPad presents an example in a somewhat unneeded product that might have been marketed in an unethical way, using past consumer relationships and flashy advertising to sell a product that does not quite live up to its billing.


The engineering of products to have a limited useful life has been around since the early 1900's as manufacturers became more cognizant of production costs and future revenue. Building a long lasting quality product is not only more expensive, but also reduces sales in future periods. The planned obsolescence of products is an obvious ethical dilemma arising from the fact that manufacturers are producing a sub standard product to increase profit. It is unfortunate for consumers that this practice is not only accepted but some companies openly advertise it. Take for instance the Gillette Fusion Razor.


Marketed to men as the smoothest, longest lasting razor, it includes a helpful indicator strip to notify the user when the blades are no longer at their sharpest. While this will probably help ensure that the user is always getting the best shave possible, it might not be completely necessary to change the blade.

This form of planned obsolescence is ethically irresponsible not only because this is a wasteful practice, but is also extremely expensive to the consumer. Gillette can do research in blade design to increase life or maybe advertise to their market on how to preserve the life of razor blades by performing some type of maintenance. Gillette can even tell the consumer to continue using the blade if the shaves are satisfactory. It is ethically irresponsible to advertise a product with planned obsolescence and not inform the customer of possible ways to mitigate this problem and endangers the customer relationship with the company.

The last three examples of possible ethical irresponsibility have been supply side related. These companies intentionally marketed to people and created a demand for their products. But what about demand side market failures? What has the market demanded from suppliers that created unethical advertising and products. The most recent and relevant example of this is housing.



As this graph indicates, increased demand for housing in the early 2000's by consumers caused house prices to soar. This demand market for housing resulted in mortgage products and financial services by banks and other companies that were highly unethical. Advertisements for easy credit could be seen everywhere and consumers happily signed up, sometimes taking loans against the equity in their home just a few months after moving in. This was a failure on the part of the consumers to fully appreciate what their financial capabilities were and a failure of companies to oblige to these demands. Eventually this behavior, among other things, led to the collapse of many financial institutions and possibly our current recession. Not only was it the fault of the consumer to demand irresponsible financial products, it was highly ethically and socially irresponsible for the supply side to advertise to and fulfill these demands.