Marketing communication: principles and practice

THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE
MARKETER
We have seen that marketing managers are responsible for ensuring that the
basic right of consumers and buyers to be able to use accurate and full
information, to receive safe products, to have adequate product choices, and
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to use products that do not harm the physical and psychological environment
is upheld in marketing decision-making and actions. They must also be sure
to be aware of the impact of what they decide and do. Marketing communi-
cation management has a responsibility to ensure that communication
systems are not distorted and are potentially participative, and that decisions
and actions are morally founded.
Since the satisfaction of consumers’ wants is the economic and social
justification of a company’s existence, then measures of marketing success
have emphasized demand stimulation and provider profits. But is want
satisfaction through the generation and nurture of material consumption 
a social welfare gain or just an economic gain by the provider? Effectiveness
measures have too often gauged performance according to the degree of
goal attainment and have thus not included the costs of securing the goals,
which must be related to the costs incurred by others.
The notion of a ‘social cost–benefit’ requires corporations to consider the
consequences of their marketing actions. While micro-marketing focuses
attention on the performance of the corporation, macro-marketing requires
a wider view of market transactions which may have foreseen and unforeseen
effects. These effects may be direct to the parties to the exchanges, or indirect
to all other parties (who are then unwitting stakeholders). These externalities
can have positive or negative effects.
Consumption-based culture is in many respects dysfunctional, and
marketing has encouraged and conditioned us with the desire for new 
and convenience goods (see Alvesson and Willmott, 1993, for a helpful
critique). Some people are defining themselves more by what they consume
than what they produce (by what they take rather than what they give). This
is socially unsustainable. Further, some practices have detrimental social
effects on individuals and society (negative externalities). An increasing
recognition of the costs of technological advances will throw into question
the balance between the social value and benefits of marketing technology
and systems, and the resulting social costs, such as financial losses, dissatis-
faction, health and safety problems, resource depletion, and discrimination. 
The marketing literature has focused largely on environmental effects 
on the marketing exchange rather than the effects of the exchange on the
environment. Future economic and political decisions will be controlled