A professional code of ethics in marketing
The American Marketing Association (AMA) has the mandate of promoting the highest professional, ethical values and norms standards for its members, constituting students, academics, and practitioners. The values committed to by the AMA represent collective conceptions considered morally proper, necessary, and desirable by the communities and serve as evaluation criteria for people’s actions and those of others (AMA, 2019). The norms are the established conduct standards expected and maintained by society. As marketers, the association acknowledges that it not only serves organizations but similarly acts as society’s stewards in the creation, facilitation, and execution of transactions as part of the more excellent economy.
Summary of Main Points
The ethical values promoted by the AMA constitute honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency, and citizenship. With honesty, the association ensures marketers strive to be truthful in every situation and at all times. With responsibility, marketers accept marketing decision outcomes and strategies and desire to serve consumer needs. From fairness, the association establishes balance in the just requirements of the consumers with seller interests and rejects sales tactics and manipulations that harm consumer trust (AMA, 2019). With respect, marketers acknowledge the fundamental human dignity of every stakeholder where individual differences are valued and stereotyping consumers or negative depiction that dehumanizes demographic groups are avoided. Through transparency, the association creates an open spirit in marketing operations where it strives to communicate with every constituency transparently (AMA, 2019). Through citizenship, marketers have to fulfill the societal, philanthropic, legal, and economic responsibilities that serve every stakeholder and safeguard the economic environment in a marketing campaign’s execution.
Based on ethical norms, marketers’ mandate is to ensure no harm is committed, marketing systems should foster trust, and moral values should be embraced. Furthermore, the AMA strictly prohibits any form of personal and sexual harassment. Through its sexual or emotional harassment policy, marketers may be suspended or terminated as AMA directors, members, or officers (AMA, 2019). The conflict of interest policy contains eight articles. In article 1, the conflict of interest aims to safeguard AMA’s interests when it contemplates entering into arrangements or transactions that might benefit it. Article 2 article defines who the interested people are and their financial interests. Article 3 gives the processes associated with disclosure duty, determining whether the conflict of interest exists, and addresses conflict of interest and violations of conflict of interest policy (AMA, 2019). Article 4, the conflict of interest policy records proceedings, and articles 5, 6, 7, and 8 talk about compensation, annual statements, periodic reviews, and the use of outside experts, respectively.
How the Code of Ethics Provides Guidance
The code of ethics guides marketers by proactively leading its members and encouraging them to be courageous in fulfilling implicit and explicit promises made to their stakeholders. Like in every other industry, the association acknowledges that ethical issues have policies and commentaries and, with this, ensures the same for American marketers. Furthermore, the AMA has the mandate of encouraging each group to develop and refining the industry using discipline-specific ethics codes that allow for the supplementation of how marketers should implement ethical norms and values.
AMA members can apply the code of ethics to sexual harassment by protecting marketers from sexual exploitation. For example, the principle of ethics ensures that making sexual remarks should complain against every time the comments make any member of the AMA feel uncomfortable (Rahim, 2019). The awkward nature of the statements is what constitutes sexual harassment and should be reported. Lastly, the benefits that a code of ethics offers to an organization or an association are plenty. Just to name a few, it helps the association or organization set the right business culture (Rahim, 2019). Assists in creating a good reputation, maintaining compliance with the law, and attracting outstanding employees. Lastly, the code of ethics plays a significant role in how organizations promote social change.
References
American Marketing Association. (2019). AMA codes of conduct. Web.
Rahim, M. M. (2019). Code of conduct on transnational corporations: Challenges and opportunities. Switzerland Springer.