Marketing
Issue No. 42 - August/September 2008
Marketing ethics: oxymoron or positive element?
by Pamela Brombal
The University of Adelaide’s Executive Dean for the Faculty of the Professions, Professor Pascale Quester will look at marketing ethics and corporate social responsibility at Marketing Week 2008.
A leading expert in consumer behaviour and marketing communications, including sponsorship and relationship marketing, Pascale is the foundation Chair in Marketing at The University of Adelaide.
At her session Marketing Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility: The revolution of enlightened self interest, Pascale will delve into the notion of CSR and how it has become important to business and consumers.
“The topic of CSR has become important in the business area generally, but it has remained, on the whole, replete with wishful thinking and general exhortations to business firms to ‘behave’,” says Pascale.
“I became interested in misleading and at times accused of creating the materialism now seen as destructive of society and the environment.”
Pascale is the lecturer in charge of Marketing, Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Ethics at The University of Adelaide and has developed a stream of successful honours programs to teach students the framework and processes to ensure marketing decisions become more ethical.
“I felt it would be unthinkable to train future marketers and not provide them with the essential capacity to firstly recognise the ethical issues involved in a marketing decision, and secondly undertake a careful consideration of this before determining the best way forward,”
says Pascale.
In the presentation, Pascale intends to set the scene by illustrating why marketing ethics is essential and discuss the ethics of consumers.
“Many headlines dealing with unethical business have actually come about as a result of poor marketing decisions,” says Pascale.
“I want to explain that this is not about black and white and that every decision is bound to have some negative aspects b...
