Read the case study below, and put yourself in Maria\'s position to answer these
ID: 362014 • Letter: R
Question
Read the case study below, and put yourself in Maria's position to answer these questions:
What is the ethical issue that Maria faces?
Who benefits/loses if she decides to do as Hans says?
What would you do if you were in her shoes? What does this decision reveal about you?
Cosmetic Applications
Topic: Package Labeling and Advertising
Characters:
Hans, Cosmetics Group Product Marketing Manager
Maria, Assistant Marketing Communications Manager
Maria is an Assistant Marketing Communications Manager with TruBlush Cosmetics, a
manufacturer of facial cream and other skin moisturizing products. She is relatively new to
the cosmetics industry, being a recent college graduate with limited "real world" experience.
As part of her orientation, however, she recently had the opportunity to spend one week with
the TruBlush marketing research group, sitting in on several focus group discussions with
regular cosmetics users.
Today Hans stopped Maria in the hallway and told her to coordinate the artwork on both
the new package label design and the storyboards for an upcoming advertising campaign, to
reflect an increase in the recommended application of a facial cream product from one to
three applications daily. While delighted with the opportunity to finally be assigned
something substantive where she can demonstrate what she is capable of doing, she is
troubled by the directive.
Maria recalls that in each of the four focus group sessions the week before, the majority of
consumers interviewed revealed that just one application of this product "did the job." While
changing the recommended usage would dearly contribute to additional sales volume, what
she knows about the product indicates that such an increase would not significantly benefit
consumers. On the other hand, Hans is the Group Product Marketing Manager, and he makes
the decisions on promoting recent hires for this product.
Explanation / Answer
1. The basic ethical issue that Maria faces is that even after knowing from the Focused group discussions that only one application of the cosmetic product was enough for its performance as product, how can she proceed with the activities of the upcoming advertising campaign that would make an attempt to influence the customers to increase the application from once a day to thrice a day. On the part of sales, this advertisement would be created to boost the volumes of the same, which is the primary objective of the Business house but ethically, there shall be an exploitation of the customers’ mindsets by influencing them to use it more although there shall be no significant change in the desired results.
2. If she decides to do as Hans says, TruBlush Cosmetics is certainly going to gain relatively better sales volumes because the application would increase from just once a day to thrice a day, thereby at least aiming for double the volumes of sales, even if not triple. On the other hand, with no significant positive effect in spite of increasing the frequency from one to three applications a day, the customers are going to lose because they might get influenced by the advertisement and resort to more applications thereby exhausting the product soon and placing another order to buy the same. Therefore, in terms of money also, this shall rather become a relatively expensive affair for the customers and hence they stand to lose.
3. If I were in her shoes, I would at least try to make an attempt to speak to Hans about my opinion about this campaign by first emphasizing as to how her orientation at TruBlush formed the basis of her work ethics and future activities. I would try to highlight my experiences with the focused group discussions and would ask him whether the Company really gave those discussions a real thought and if they genuinely meant to deal with those groups well and as per the expectations of their customers, then it shall be only ethically right to go ahead with the campaign to create a recall value of the product but without unnecessarily emphasizing upon the increase in the application frequency to falsely promote the sales. All I can do is then, only to be hopeful about my convincing skills to Hans. If the decision is taken favorably about the campaign that does not influence the applications, then it reveals that my convincing skills have backed my ethical values in a big way however, if the campaign decides to go ahead with the original plan, then that shall only reveal that although I may have my own set of ethical beliefs, I may not be the person who can positively influence others to follow the same.
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