Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property

Introduction1

Discussion2

Ethical issues2

Controversial marketing practices/Invasion of privacy2

Stereotyping3

Deceptive communication practices3

Use of ethics as a marketing tactic3

Commercialization4

Argument against or in favor of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing by drug companies4

List organizations regulating pharmacies under the current regulatory scheme all over the world5

FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) and its scope of action6

Decide whether PharmaCARE's use of Colberian intellectual property would be ethical in accordance with6

Utilitarianism7

Deontology8

Virtue ethics8

Ethics of care8

Your own moral / ethical compass8

Compare PharmaCARE's actions with those of at least one (1) real-world company whose creativity in skirting legal technicalities led to ethical lapses and financial loss.9

Conclusion9

Recommendations9

References11

Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property

Introduction

Marketing is a very broad, ever-evolving field. It offers its practitioners opportunity to try new and different ideas, and freedom to be creative. Due to its dynamic nature scope of mistakes is broad too which raises the concern for legal and ethical issues. Previously marketing practitioners were more interested in making the most from business avenues for personal gain but as business practices are being more civilized and stakeholder-friendly; businesses and academics all over the world are forced to think about moral grounds of their practices.

Basically it is the competitive nature of business today that marketers are not left with enough options. For them countering competitors while sticking up for their corporate values has become the utmost priority. One of the qualities that are seen or looked for in today's marketers is their ability to sort out ways and strategies to achieve business goals without compromising on their moral values. Because their actions have effects not just on the marketing side of the organization; rather it affects all stakeholders, the product, brand, employees, investors, customers etc. Compliance programs, as a result of which, are becoming increasingly important for this particular reason only that is to strengthen such strategic relationships.

One of the frequently discussed topics in this category is the communication part of marketing. Advertising is basically the delivery of certain content to respective audience in order to communicate to them the product or the service. It's a billion dollar industry and since it is so consumer-centric, the core factor to every marketing company and every organization on the planet, stakes are high too. And it is because of these high stakes that the companies might end up getting involved in deceptive practices.

But this is just one aspect of marketing. Practices that are questioned on legal and ethical ground also prevail in other fields and are closely related to marketing like product safety, intellectual property, innovative and creative stuff. In this paper we are going to discuss such related issues with respect to pharmaceutical industry, laws that regulate it, role of FDA, Colberian Intellectual Property used by the PharmaCARE US and its ethical concerns etc (Gupta and Thomas, 2013).

Discussion

Ethical issues

Controversial marketing practices/Invasion of privacy

With changing trends marketers all over the world are coming up with new and most innovative marketing tactics. To combat fierce competition organizations and marketers are ...