Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Essay - 1

Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property - Essay Example Correspondingly, recommendations have also been provided in the essay so as to mitigate the identified challenges. Ethical issues relating to marketing and advertising, intellectual property, and regulation of product safety Use of negative advertisement techniques The use of negative techniques refers to the adoption of comparative advertisement strategy by the companies. In this unethical practice, the advertisement focuses on the disadvantages of the competitor’s product. Arguably, in the modern phenomenon, this technique has become a major tool for promoting the utility of the products of a particular company (Majtan & Dubcova, n.d.). Misleading or dishonest advertisement It is one of the most serious ethical problems that have been observed as commonly used by many of the advertisers in the modern day. It involves not only misleading facts about the product but also false impression forecasted. Any advertiser who fails to promote the truth of the product not only goes aga inst morality but also against the law as it violates customer protection rights to information. The advertisement must also not include any kind of false statement regarding the product or claim for the dishonest value of that product (Majtan & Dubcova, n.d.). Copyright infringement It is one of the most serious unethical issues that are observed in the field of intellectual property. Notably, the copyright infringement occurs whenever a person who does not own the copyright violates any of the rights of others without permission. The most common practice found in this aspect is breach of reproduction right and invention of new work base under the existing one (Tehranian, 2007). Use of unsafe raw materials in the production Many of the companies use cheap quality material in the production of its final product for the sake of earning maximum profits. They do not keep consumer health or stakeholders’ interest into consideration being highly concerned about the profitability o f their company. For example, in a free market, if a health drink manufacturing company uses cheap quality ingredients in production, it would ultimately affect the health of the consumers offering the company with profits, but only for a limited period in the short-run, inhibiting the company’s sustainability interests to a substantial extent (Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, 2013). Argue for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing by drug companies The sponsorship of pharmaceutical drugs through Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) has much significance in the current market scenario as it promotes customer confidence and provides better opportunity to the company to align the marketing strategies with customer preferences to a greater extent. In the US, majority of the drug companies have been found spending double than the total amount in DTC marketing technique (Mogull, 2008). On the contrary, there exist many customers who are strictly against this technique of advertising on grounds that because the technique requires substantial financial investments, the drug companies focusing on direct-to-customers selling concept have to spent maximum money on advertising rather than on research and development. However, considering its positive effects, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)