Ethics and Marketing

Ethics are described as a collection of principles of right conduct that shape peoples' or organizations' decisions. In order to practice ethics, the business or the company should apply moral rights and fairness to marketing decision-making. Business Ethics is the behavior of the business that includes how the business interacts with a world and how it deals with costumers. Business Ethics can really be applied to everything. Nowadays, businesses use and practice many wrong, unfair, and deceptive practices that make their businesses behaviors very unethical. An example of deception is when customers believe that they will get more value from the product  than they actually receive. The reason why ethics are so important to marketing is not just a matter of being "nice", but  they also keep the economy running. Without business ethics or a "lubricant" the economy would be much less efficient (lower quality, higher prices). One benefit of business ethics is that they provide a "good image" of a business, which automatically drives customers' attention. Lance Armstrong is a famous, rich biker who has won many cycling competitions as Tour De France and who is a founder of the Livestrong Foundation which is a major cancer-fighting charity. His name has been mentioned in lots of advertisements for Nike and other popular brands. The issue is that Lance Armstrong was accused from cheating. His good reputation of a cancer survivor and the cycling legend changes to an accused doper. In order to save a good name, Nike and Livestrong resigned their contracts with the cyclist. They believe this is the only way they can save the popularity of their businesses. They think that if they continued in supporting Lace Armstrong, it would rapidly decrease the profits of their companies. Nike and Livestrong hope that the departure of Lance Armstrong can be seen as a good thing because it gives them an image of loyal companies. They also assume donors will be still involved with organizations, because donors' values are same as the values of Nike and Livestrong. In this case Nike and Livestrong are still able to raise money. I understand why Nike and Livestrong did what they did, but the way they gave up on Lance Armstrong seems to me quit unfair.