Marketing Ethics

To begin this I would first give a definition of what Marketing Ethics is . From what I have gathered Marketing ethics is the area of applied ethics which deals with the moral principles behind the operation and regulation of marketing (www .wikipedia .org . It is common knowledge that the area of ethics is rather wide . People sometimes confuse ethics with that of morality . Thus , a distinction may be called upon in to understand things better . Ethics is vaster than that of morality . Ethics is the study of values and customs of a

group of people . Ethics is divided into three parts , meta-ethics normative ethics and applied ethics . Of the three , marketing ethics is under applied ethics . Now , when one talks about morality a clear distinction must be made between ethics and morality . By morality , one means simply a concept under ethics which dwells with matters of right and wrong . Having made the distinction let us now go on to what is meant by applied ethics from whence marketing ethics is a part . Applied ethics is something which aims to apply theoretical ethics such as utilitarianism , Kantianism among many others to real world dilemmas (www .wikipedia .org . Such is one of the purposes of this . Upon closely examining the way Subway operates we will then go on to look and to evaluate from two different ethical perspectives whether Subway is doing something unethical or not

In this I choose two contrasting ethical frameworks that of Utilitarianism and Kantianism , to examine the way Subway operate according to these two ethical standards . I will now move on to introducing the side of the two ethical issues

The philosopher Immanuel Kant developed Kantianism . His ethics is called deontological because it revolves primarily around duty . All actions should be done according to duty because it is what we ought to ' do . For Kant , all humans are rational being and thus humans ought to know what is good and what is bad which can be seen on his idea of categorical imperative . This is what I meant earlier by doing something because you ought to ' do it . It is categorical imperative because you have no other choice but to do it , thus the term ought . Kant pays little respect for things done out of emotion or feelings , thus for him saving a drowning child out of pity is not a moral thing to do . The only moral thing for him are things done out of duty . According to Kant the consequence of an action holds no bearing in making it a moral act . For him humans are different from other animals because of our faculty of reason . Thus , we must treat each and everyone with respect simply on the grounds that s /he is human and thus one does not deserve and should not be treated simply as a means towards an end

The second ethical framework I chose is utilitarianism . In utilitarianism the moral worth of an action is determined by...