SOCIAL CAUSE MARKETING The Human Side of Business and Marketing: Visible Efforts and Invisible Benefits

EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE SEPT.2009

SOCIAL CAUSE MARKETING

The Human Side of Business and Marketing: Visible Efforts and Invisible Benefits

-- Guillermo J D'Andrea

With a more human approach, marketing practices will focus on consumer growth and the development of society, going beyond product specificities and consumption conditions. This vision turns marketing operations into a human endeavor that zeroes in on people, contributing not only to their wellbeing but also to their individual and social advancement. Thus, an aesthetic and social concern complements the ethical dimension that rules behavior, providing a more complete, well-rounded notion of human beings.

The essence of business is to cre- ate value for its market, focus- ing on people, influencing both individuals and the society at large. Clearly, mass media plays a significant role in the cultural development, with marketing actions accounting for a large share of media messages. As a result, marketing practices involve a dimension that goes well beyond their strictly technical scope—they help forge the local culture.

Marketing tools can also be used to influence society, driving positive social changes in what is typically referred to as social marketing, while ethical considerations shift the marketing focus from caveat emptor to caveat venditor. These matters are superseded by a human consideration of business and marketing actions that project their central role as cultural drivers.

Social responsibilities in business and marketing

Marketing practices can influence society, supporting and promoting welfare improvements. However, they are also responsible for undesired results derived from the use of marketing tools. The social responsibilities embedded in marketing operations become all the more evident in deregulated, open and competitive modern markets, where the former metaphor of `an invisible hand' is replaced by the many – and seemingly irrelevant – decisions made by marketing practitioners, who impersonate `the visible hand' in markets.

The responsibility for delivering and growing sustained consumer value has also a direct effect on job creation – a key issue in prevailing economic systems. Conversely, the lack of creativity to expand markets leads to cost cuts – also dubbed as reengineering – that eventually reaches managers themselves, driving them towards outplacement. In addition to greater responsibilities, professional executives gain relevance in the age of financial capitalism that has followed its predecessor, entrepreneurial capitalism, dominated by family businesses.

With lower capital investments and higher returns, entrepreneurs and their families led the creation of new business ventures. Growth and increasing competitive challenges required greater investments, leading to opening the equity ownership when self-generated funds proved insufficient. More sophisticated tools were needed to make investment, pricing, output, salary and human resources decisions, giving room to the growing influence of professionally trained managers. Management teams were encouraged to drive businesses as independent units, with their performance measured in terms of business income. And as profits grew, family owners found less incentive to engage in executive tasks. As a result, competition no longer confronted thousands of small companies regulated by the market's invisible hand. Rather, large companies, ruled by their professional managers, competed against each other. As described by Alfred Chandler, these executives became the visible hand that contributes to build markets, where consumers rule – albeit inevitably influenced by the actions deployed by executives to secure benefits for shareholders.

Marketing managers influence the factors that shape markets. Their practices contribute to change purchasing and consumer habits – as well as, eventually, customs. While they do not actually create needs, they do emphasize the social values embedded in the society. Bearing in mind that, exceeding a minimum level, wealth and poverty are relative notions, it may argued that marketing influences people's status as well as their satisfaction or frustration. As Gary Becker points out, "Men and women wish to be respected, recognized, accepted by their families, friends, peers and others. Consumption includes a prevailing social component as, at least partly, it is conducted in public. As a result, people tend to choose restaurants, neighborhoods, schools, books to read, political opinions, foods, leisure activities with an eye in pleasing their peers and others in their social network." Thus, as long as business marketing proposes reachable models, it enables people to reach some material standard that are a component of happiness. Instead, if it creates unattainable expectations, it can drive frustration in a large sector of the population.

Expanding store business hours makes after-work or weekend shopping more accessible, influencing leisure time utilization – though not necessarily improving people's lives. The remarkable growth driven by beer marketers with an emphasis on camaraderie, friendship and group fun has led to increased alcohol consumption – especially among younger segments. The tobacco industry provides another example of the use of multiple message and communication tools to induce or increase smoking habits through advertising, opinion leaders, movie stars, merchandising, carefully-crafted brand imagery and multiple segmentation. Moreover, as it was evicted from mass media, this industry started to rely on sports-associated messages, hiding or ignoring all evidence of tobacco's harmful effects.

On the other hand, increased dosages in medicine packagings for non-regular treatments raises sales, but not necessarily consumption – for consumers, this translates into larger inventories until the medicines expire. Advertising campaigns extolling virtually impossible female body shapes add to the persistence of eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. Communications featuring overexposed young women gather a lot of attention, especially in markets with a predominant male population, while strengthening chauvinistic behaviors and discriminating attitudes against other women who do not have the same attributes. Of course, marketing managers are not responsible for society's problems, such as eating disorders, male-chauvinism or addictions, but their communication power certainly reinforces habits – as soda or cigarette manufacturers know only too well: infrequent messages lead to significant sales drops.

In view of their ability to influence society from their offices, marketing professionals need to have a vast training that does not focus solely on technical aspects. Ignorance is no excuse for these practitioners who cannot turn a blind eye to the aftermath of their decisions, including regulations that restrain business hours or the construction of new shopping malls to preserve urban areas. Less articulated – though just as powerful – reactions can also ensue, such as alcohol abstention to prevent abuse. In early 2000, Spain registered a 41% abstinence level, as its population reacted to a decade-long `party spirit'.

Guillermo J D'Andrea is Professor of Business Administration at IAE Business School, Austral University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He obtained his Ph.D. from IESE, in Barcelona, Spain. He teaches marketing and retail management, services marketing, and international marketing. At IAE, he has chaired marketing since 1985. His fields of research deal with retail strategy and management, and the process of shaping business for the Base of the (Socioeconomic) Pyramid. He has written over sixty cases and academic papers. Some of his cases like Zara and his series on e-commerce have been published by the Harvard Business School to be used in its programs, and have also been included in other colleagues' books. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Booz Allen's Strategy & Business, and the McKinsey Quarterly. His article on Value Creation for Emerging Consumers was selected in 2007 as one of the five with most impact in the past five years by the editors of Harvard Business Review – Latin America. He has created the Store Smart retail simulation, and is a co-author of books: Cases in Strategic Marketing in Latin America, 2001 (Spanish version in 2002), Administración de Servicios (Services Management), and Retail Management, both published during 2004. D'Andrea is the Research Director of the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Center – Latin America. He teaches Strategic Planning and Management in Retailing Program at Babson College and at Monterrey Tec Retail Center in Mexico, and is a visiting professor of the MBA program at Instituto Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He has also worked as visiting professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration of the University of Virginia, IEDC, Lubljana, Slovenia, and been invited to teach at the Harvard Business School, IESE-Barcelona, IPADE-Mexico, and several other schools. D'Andrea combines his academic activity with active consulting, having collaborated with companies in many fields including retailing, market research, textiles, pharmaceuticals, medical services, food manufacturing and distribution. He has worked with companies such as Exxon (On the Run C-Stores), Exito-Casino in Colombia, Mr. Price Group in S Africa, IPSOS France, Easy Home-Center, Siemens, Unilever, Best Foods, Bayer, Osram, and 3M.

Social marketing

Additionally, companies often organize social reactions, using their marketing skills to change behaviors, beliefs and values. This is not a new phenomenon: a press campaign was launched in Argentina during the Presidency of DF Sarmiento between 1868 and 1874, which successfully helped change local customs and promoted the country's education at that time. Examples of social marketing campaigns today help prevent and overcome addictions (alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse), change harmful urban behaviors (speeding, disregard for pedestrians, indisciplined parking, littering), improve health conditions (heart disease and AIDS prevention, early cancer detection, cholesterol testing), raise environmental awareness, advocate specific groups' rights (children, the elderly, consumers, women), and promote social aid.

Social campaigns involve organized efforts led by a change agent or group that seeks to engage others to incorporate, modify or eradicate certain ideas, attitudes, practices or behaviors. Outcomes can be driven over several stages that hinge on changes in population information, knowledge and attitudes. Social marketing campaigns differ from commercial campaigns in that a soap manufacturer does not need to convince the population about the need to use soap daily. These campaigns may be broad in scope and widely accepted, like solidarity, drug abuse or road accident prevention initiatives. Others can fuel less support, like city cleanliness efforts, or even opposition, such as those promoting family planning or legalized abortion.

The purpose of social marketing campaigns implies the same difficulties that characterize any transformation process in society. Their central issues are not shared by the entire population, and large groups may not only be uninformed but also uninterested, becoming even harder to reach. As a result, some of these campaigns register low response rates. In addition, if the information conveyed goes against ingrained attitudes, indifferent groups will find it harder to accept such facts and will tend to avoid them. For instance, reckless drivers are not the most enthusiastic supporters or users of seatbelts.

However, many social marketing campaigns are successful, renewing their promoters' interest and determination. Experience shows that social campaigns call for a scheme that largely resembles the one carried out for commercial campaigns—careful planning, hinging on prevailing attitudes in target segments and their origins, as well as a wide support base engaging as many stakeholders as possible to provide creativity, media coverage, links to current commercial efforts, and funding. These steps should be followed by detailed execution, effectively reaching target segments and avoiding contradictory messages, measuring effectiveness to adjust message impact, and providing for sufficient duration to ensure awareness. In any case, if the population is not ready to receive a message or is not aware of the relevance of an issue with some shared belief and precipitating factor, it will be hard for a campaign to accomplish social mobilization.

Social marketing efforts can reap amazing results, like getting an entire nation to switch from left to right-hand driving. In 1967, the Swedish government orchestrated an effectively planned and executed campaign to change traffic rules with a limited increase in the number of road accidents. Thus, social marketing may be construed as a human intervention that facilitates change, based on ideas and initiatives that improve society.

Marketing Ethics

Market opening and deregulation pose problems for consumers that should not be neglected or sidestepped by marketing practices. Applying ethics to marketing reminds practitioners that their practices should focus on customers, and remind them to avoid an intense application of tools intended to secure immediate results while disregarding potential negative effects. The complexities of management engulf marketing as well, calling for an ethical framework that prevents managers' isolation from the society.

Consumer issues: Caveat emptor

Companies seem to ignore questions on quality service, neglecting consumer issues unless they represent immediate business opportunities. As a result, businesses are viewed as impersonal and carefree – there is no one to complain to. They follow the caveat emptor (buyer beware) principle, expecting the consumers to be aware of any risks when they buy a product or service. After all, consumers are adults who can collect all the information they need, and marketers cannot supervise the way they spend their money or use a product – their job is to manufacture and distribute products, and everything is allowed as long as no laws are infringed.

Marketing ethics intend to apply ethical criteria to marketing decisions and to solve ethical dilemmas for marketing practitioners. In general, illegal activities are also unethical, and laws are meant to prevent any kind of behavior that harms consumers. However, laws can sometimes be anachronistic and outdated, like the rigid schedules that used to rule store business hours. Yet, the opposite is not necessarily true: some rather unethical marketing behaviors are not strictly against the law. This gray area, with its subtly deceitful or barely misleading practices that are not always ill-intended or overly damaging, should fall under the purview of marketing ethics.

Some questionable marketing practices are often upheld on the assumption that they are widely used, mostly accepted by customers, and commonly employed by competitors – they are part of the way business is done. However, they are hard to justify and eventually upset professionals, who end up accepting them rather unwillingly.

The analysis of marketing decisions based on a functional perspective – 4P style – shows an array of questionable behaviors, which may be applicable to other business-related activities. One of those behaviors revolves around the selection of underprivileged segments like children or the elders, offering them unnecessary or harmful products, inducing them to acquire products or services they do not need and whose merits they are unable to judge. Equally unethical are practices that exclude specific customer groups on unjustifiable grounds, like race, ethnics, religious beliefs or looks. As regards products, in addition to product and brand copies as well as items that do not benefit consumers, hazardous products threatening consumers' health and physical integrity are marketed by deceitfully overrating their actual attributes. The environmental impact of products and packagings is another source of increasing concern. These behaviors reflect a lack of fair-play, with practitioners compromising their personal values against business goals.

Pricing also involves some complex issues, including the application of different schemes for customers with similar conditions or higher prices on the grounds of unreal superiority. Deceptive pricing practices also include product bundling or overpricing to offer generous discounts. The use of predatory pricing practices is also questionable – so much so that it is forbidden in many markets.

As regards communications, advertising raises other questions. With the use of powerful media, consumers can be misled, and campaigns that jeopardize society's fabric by showcasing stereotypes or harmful behaviors can be effectively launched. Visual pollution as a result of indiscriminately cluttering streets and outdoor areas with massive billboards and ads everywhere brings additional community concerns. It is not only the surrounding architecture and aesthetic appreciation that are threatened: drivers are unduly and dangerously distracted while driving on highways. Furthermore, research has shown that people not only devise mechanisms to ignore invasive advertising but are also irritated by it and compelled to reject it – yet another questionable practice ultimately backfiring. Flyers handed out to pedestrians end up littering sidewalks and trampled by their intended recipients – an outcome that casts some doubts on the use of this tool.

Other selling techniques involving pressure, threats or deceit also bring ethical dilemmas, as well as doubtful commissions, gifts and covert outlays. Dishonesty, lying and misrepresentations about product features and service scope are hard to justify. Some direct marketing practices are harshly criticized as well, including collect calls to mobile phones that are both costly and intruding, or the pressure exerted by timeshare sellers.

Distribution management practices also come into question when channels are discriminated against or excluded, or when promotions change competitive conditions. Franchising can become abusive if support services are not provided or terms are perceived to be unfair.

Market research may also lead to controversial practices, disguising researchers as shoppers, masking sales with surveys, or breaching confidentiality agreements. Indeed, the unauthorized use of customer information, the collection of confidential data on competitors and the utilization of deceitful means to acquire them, all account for unscrupulous practices. Information management has become a complex issue as a result of data and statistical tampering and counterfeiting, both inside companies and in their communications to consumers and markets.

Consumer rights

Faced with this scenario, consumers have rights that they cannot give up. But the question remains: How can consumers fully exercise their rights, choosing freely their purchases and ensuring that the products they buy are not hazardous for either themselves or the environment? To do so, they require truthful, honest information to make responsible decisions. If anything goes wrong in the process, they should be able to complain to someone just as responsible, capable of delivering a satisfactory response to their demands. In modern societies, with deregulated economies and transactions, all market participants should be able to exercise their rights equitably, but it should also be noted that not all concurring parties enjoy similar conditions, and so their individual responsibilities are different. Economic activity is meant to provide for individuals' physical and psychological wellbeing, serving society at large. When this happens, consumers reward companies with their purchases; conversely, when businesses fail to deliver on their obligations, a few may benefit to the detriment of a much larger customer group. To prevent that, it is necessary to actively safeguard society from some of the undesired effects of consumerism.

Caveat venditor (vendor beware)

This principle assumes that sellers – and not buyers – are the experts on the products sold. Marketers build their entire operations around their products, while buyers view products as part of their multiple needs and purchases. Therefore, experts should be the ones to ensure that purchase decisions are properly made, minimizing error risks. If mistakes did occur, sellers should own up to them – even if they were not at fault. The rationale underlying this notion argues that sellers should watch over their customers first and sales next, as satisfied customers will drive business' profits and growth with their repeated purchases.

Roads to Solutions

Markets provide solutions on three levels for disgruntled customers—damage prevention, restitution and straightforward punishments. Prevention steps include business or industry standards and codes, which intend to shape companies' behavior by instating a number of higher values. Business practice codes are used to align practices across the different sectors. Another means to prevent customer dissatisfaction is to provide consumer information on product quality and quantity, safe consumption conditions, and applications – in short, any data required to acquire and use products safely. Business communications should not merely focus on persuading prospects but also on offering useful information to potential consumers, describing products' functionalities rather than extolling their abstract attributes. A more informed, more sophisticated market effectively promotes better product and service choices, naturally casting deceitful competitors aside.

Restitution measures imply money reimbursements to offset product flaws or to remedy other causes for buyer dissatisfaction. Guarantees are included in this realm and may compel sellers to accept the return of used products, refunding customers with no further argument, product replacement attempts, or credit for future purchases – customers get their money back in full. As a result, consumers do not feel that their ignorance or neglect has been unfairly exploited. These mechanisms afford a twofold benefit: buyers can fix their purchasing mistakes, and sellers gain lifelong customers – as well as free advertising through word-of-mouth recommendations.

Finally, market punishments include fines and class-action lawsuits initiated by consumer groups. These collective claims enable individual plaintiffs to join forces in order to make their suits more valuable and interesting. Fines do not need to be hefty, but they should be swift and reported to plaintiffs in order to show appreciation for taking the trouble to file charges. Complaint books should be available to customers at all times and be often examined, informing customers about corrective actions.

These solutions provide guidelines for business policies, in an attempt to prevent, remedy or curtail harmful behaviors. However, they seem to substitute for a more comprehensive marketer commitment to consumers, supported by a basic view of customers as the center of business activities. Consumers are people, with feelings, families, jobs, histories, wishes, issues and changing needs. Business practices built around these notions are, by definition, more appealing to them, leading to stronger and long-lasting ties – not to mention more value for shareholders. On the contrary, isolating customers will only lead to incomplete, inefficient and unsatisfactory actions for both parties, effectively and unnecessarily restraining business operations to the use of unsavory, irresponsible practices. As a result, the economy is devoid of its human dimension, undermining the value of markets and its constituents: consumers feel unappreciated, while marketing professionals cannot find pride in their jobs.

Marketing – A human endeavor

This article started out with a vision of business and marketing as a human activity, in its role as cultural driver – an approach that engulfs and supersedes all others. Based on a strictly technical framework that focuses on the effective application of marketing tools, consumers should be responsible for their own knowledge, and marketers should not be expected to educate them, being the work of social agents. From a more professional perspective, practitioners who believe in what they do are determined not to trespass ethical boundaries, abiding by current laws and stepping up to safeguard consumer rights as well. Their goal is to formulate products that genuinely benefit customers, contributing to their material and spiritual wellbeing, while addressing as many predictable issues as possible to ensure overall benefits.

With a more human approach, marketing practices will focus on consumer growth and the development of society, going beyond product specificities and consumption conditions. This vision turns marketing operations into a human endeavor that zeroes in on people, contributing not only to their wellbeing but also to their individual and social advancement. Thus, an aesthetic and social concern complements the ethical dimension that rules behavior, providing a more complete, well-rounded notion of human beings. As a result, marketing becomes a means to pursue specific goals and expectations that drive people's efforts, potentially enhancing their lives and including aesthetic values, an appreciation for beauty in individuals and things; social values, such as friendship, family and society, as well as the use of free time to promote greater harmony. This approach to marketing can offer more insightful knowledge and help to expand consumer horizons. Indeed, marketing practices aiming for higher human values tend to be more successful and effective, as they command greater appreciation and remembrance.