Sparrow Pharmaceuticals: Ethics Case Study
Sparrow Pharmaceuticals indeed face a complicated situation in terms of making a decision that is both ethical and at the same time fair to their business partners from Soothing Waters Hot Tubs. Just as with any complex problem people and companies face in their lives, there are several options available. Sparrow Pharmaceuticals can allow their partners to use the mailing list for promotion and thus contribute to the cooperation with Soothing Waters. However, this is not an option Sparrow Pharmaceuticals should choose from the ethical point of view.
For Sparrow Pharmaceuticals it would be ethically correct to reject Soothing Waters’ demand about giving their mailing lists for direct-mail promotions. The justification behind such decision is that giving the mailing lists to Soothing Waters to use violates the third Ethical Norm, proclaimed in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. The third Ethical Norm states that marketing professionals must embrace the ethical values of responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency and citizenship ("Statement of Ethics", n.d.). The decision to reveal their mailing list to be used in advertising of side products or services violates the embracement of fairness principle. Statement of Ethics clearly says that marketer must seek to protect the private information and reject the sales tactics that can possibly harm customers’ trust. As Sparrow Pharmaceutics had formed their client base through the long and mutually beneficial relationships, which did not involve any side company, the mail from other company will, probably, not be understood correctly by the customers. Receiving a typical advertisement from the company they considered to have trusting relationship with looks like a cynical attempt to cash in that trust. It is not ethical towards customers to use customer information across multiple divisions of the same company as they may be not aware of divisions belonging to the same company. The difference in names may be misleading and an uninformed customer will get a feeling that his or her contact had been transferred to the third party without asking for customer’s consent. It is legal though for divisions of the same company to make requests on using such personal information as e-mail address and use for the good of the company, so Sparrow Pharmaceutics must fulfill it. In this way, the advised tactics for them is to provide the mailing list containing only the names of customers who agreed to receive the letters from Soothing Waters according to the results of prior conducted survey.
The marketing director of investor group currently owning Sparrow Pharmaceuticals is most likely to be using the concept called the “Marketing Concept” in marketing management philosophy. According to Kotler (2009), the mentioned concept is based on the assumption the reason of customers buying goods and services is that is done mainly for fulfilling their needs. In this way, a company needs to constantly research the customers’ needs. It may also be stated that there are elements of Societal marketing concept usage as Soothing Waters’ efforts may be interpreted as the attempt …
