Integrity in Marketing

Integrity and moral fiber define a person of good character. A company that shows good character combines these traits in every aspect of business and allows them to guide its marketing management decisions. Marketing intimately impacts consumers, and it is essential that these companies make certain consumers are only exposed to the best, safest products. Reputations, and even lives, depend on it. In many instances, companies with poor character and no integrity have been destroyed by dishonest marketing and dishonorable business ethics.

Marketing management promotes the selling of products and services, which means that it is the face of the company and those products show the character of the company. Promoting poor or dangerous products gives a company a bad character, which not only has the possibility of hurting consumers but also hurts itself. For instance, Guidant heart defibrillators had a fatal flaw in which the device could short circuit and fail. The company’s marketing management pitched the defibrillator to hospitals as a working piece of technology that could be implanted in the chests of patients and defibrillate the heart during cardiac arrest (Mehlman, 1999, p. 5). However, marketing neglected to tell doctors about the fatal flaw that could result in death, and it did for some people. According to Proverbs 11:3: “The Integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them” (English Standard Version). Guidant had suit come against them and they had to pay for 37,000 replacement defibrillators. In this case, doctors lost faith in the company’s character and stopped using its products. This case study implies that dishonest business practices, which may be lucrative at the time, have unintended consequences and costly effects.

Marketing must establish honesty in advertising for both legal and moral reasons. The benefits of a drug must be accompanied by all the possible side effects. Neglecting this results in serious health in patients and loss of reputation for the company. In this case, the company was Johnson & Johnson and the drug was Propulsid, used to ease heartburn in infants and children. During advertising Johnson & Johnson neglected to mention that one of the side effects was the development of heart problems in children, which they admitted to knowing about, and as a result, many children died. One of the biggest issues was that the company marketed Propulsid for children. In this demographic, the side effects were heightened and death as a result of cardiac arrest a very real issue. Though the company claimed to be marketing it for geriatrics, it heavily lobbied pediatricians and manufactured it in a cherry flavor, a very obvious nudge toward use in the younger set (Mehlman, 1999, p. 9). This dishonesty darkened the company’s reputation and negatively affected its bottom line. Furthermore, in the spirit of the scripture verse that crookedness destroys, Johnson & Johnson was crippled by liability lawsuits and had to stop the manufacture of a lucrative good. Even more devastating, however, was the death of 300 people from the drug.

Marketing management is obligated to provide consumers with a safe product. The ability to do this reflects on the character of the company, which also, in turn, affects the customer base, sales and success. In both examples, poor marketing practices and a lack of integrity cost people their lives and companies their good reputations.

Reference

Mehlman, M. J., & Petersilge, A. E. (2010). They knew and failed to. American Association of Justice, 1-33.