Marketing is an eminently social activity and as such it needs to be understood under a value system that shows, precisely, the value that business relationships bring to society.
People use the expression 'Marketing' on a daily basis as a negative qualifier that denotes dubious, unethical and even illegal commercial practices, commonly in reference to actions that have little or nothing to do with the true Concept of Marketing.
They have, yes, a lot to do with highly visible and sometimes annoying activities, such as advertising communication, the aggressive work of some sellers, or the great variety of offers and promotions that are offered daily and in which you do not always believe why not. they are always fulfilled.
There is a form or semantic problem, the fault of businessmen in general and marketers in particular. However, people cannot be accused of using the term to denote negative practices, or of not knowing the correct meaning of Marketing.
The culprits are those who carry out dubious business practices, as well as those who practice Marketing correctly and those who teach it, but who have not been able to properly position the term and its meaning.
The conceptual components of Marketing establish that an orientation towards the market is the best way in which a company can achieve successful results in the long term. Along with this concept, or way of thinking, we have the procedural components of Marketing, which include two operational activities: understanding and serving the customer. Neither of them leads to misleading the customer.
There may be little or no honest entrepreneurs and traders and what they do is try to make a short-term transaction, possibly the only one, instead of building a long-term relationship. And that is not Marketing.
There is a problem of substance or meaning, more serious than the semantic.
The public values the goodness of choosing between products and brands, but fears the possibility of being affected by bad business practice. This ambiguity results from the fact that some people have conflicts to decide what is the degree of freedom that employers in general should enjoy to carry out their work.
Understanding and serving the customer requires and encourages, at the same time, that companies develop two attitudinal components: the sensitivity that is required for and results from understanding the market and the flexibility that results from and is required to serve it.
For a company to be successful, a legal system is required that guarantees the freedom to carry out its activity, not a set of rules that restrict or hinder it. Of course, taking into account the possibility that some companies do not behave responsibly, it is necessary to have a set of exceptions that should be punished.
Commonly, these exceptions are so in that they threaten the common good, harm society or affect other companies or individuals in particular. The problem lies in establishing what is and what is not good for society. A discussion that can only be resolved in the light of a Value System.
Why is it necessary to resolve this question? There are three powerful reasons to do so.
- The first has to do with the problems of form and substance previously exposed, in that we must strive to be better entrepreneurs and make the true sense of Marketing better known. The second also has a business sense and refers to the need that companies have to know their audience. The buying behavior of customers is definitely affected by the values they have. Therefore, in order to serve them, it is an essential requirement to understand what those values are and how they promote certain purchasing patterns. The third is an individual reason. All of us, as members of society and as customers, must understand our own buying behavior.
A simple Value System, based on a main value, for example freedom, leaves the door open to possible abuses. On the other hand, complex Value Systems move away from the practical plane in which business work must be understood.
Halfway through, Robert M. Pirsig raises a proposal that allows us to visualize the social fabric in a simple and practical way. The author proposes different value patterns for each of four exhaustive 'systems' of the universe: inorganic, biological, social and intellectual.
Although these four systems coexist simultaneously, their value patterns are independent. In fact, each system works at a higher level of evolution than the previous one, does not represent an extension of that one and sometimes works even against that other pattern of values.
For example, the law of gravity is inviolable in the inorganic system; that is, it is unethical for an inanimate object to move. But in the following levels, every living being defies, that is, violates the law of gravity, with great advantages not only for its survival but for its better development.
Another example: in the biological system it is valid to kill, but not so in the social system. Humans consider it ethical to kill other biological species for food, to prevent and cure disease, and even for exercise and entertainment.
It is not considered ethical to kill other human beings, although from a social point of view it would seem to help to live in a better world. Hence certain exceptions, such as euthanasia, the death penalty, and even war, are relatively tolerated.
Within each of the four systems, the pattern of values is 'static' or inviolable, but evolution allows changing to a different pattern of values for the next level.
Persig also suggests that it is necessary to divide the world according to static and dynamic qualities. The static qualities are the values within each system. Static patterns include a set of rules about what is good and bad for humanity at any given point in time.
In addition, there are dynamic qualities that allow and promote human development. The static good results from being subject to a fixed pattern of values that cannot change by themselves, but require to be modified by a dynamic quality. The human drive to advance, evolve, and improve is a dynamic quality. Freedom is the supreme value that enables humanity to move forward.
Human life is a constant evolution from static patterns in the short term to dynamic qualities in the long term.
Marketing ethics does not escape a dynamic quality, in the same way that free market economic activity has dynamism and change as its main characteristic.
Static patterns of values are divided into four systems: inorganic patterns, biological patterns, social patterns, and intellectual patterns. They are exhaustive, in the sense that they include everything we know, except the dynamic quality, which is the only thing that is outside of them and that for that very reason can change them.
Although they are exhaustive, they are not exclusive but they are practically independent of each other. Rather, they are not continuous, but discrete, in the sense that some patterns do not have much to do with each other.
It is a bit like the relationship between hardware and software that do not need to be known simultaneously. An integrated circuit designer does not need to know programming and vice versa. Circuits and programs coexist in a computer, but on two radically different levels: the first includes a series of voltage charges, which for the second are converted into a series of instructions.
Each value pattern has a higher level than the previous one and is built on it, it is not an extension or continuation of that one. In fact, the higher level is often in conflict with the lower level, controlling to better achieve its own ends.
In the case of computers, the operation of the hardware may be independent of the operation of the programs; however, some programs can change the way the hardware behaves to achieve their own purposes. Even some program instructions are capable not only of turning off the hardware but even of destroying it.
Similarly, man, the human being, is traditionally seen as a composition of body and soul. Your body, or matter, corresponds to a static pattern of inorganic and organic values. Your mind, or soul, corresponds to a static pattern of intellectual values. Both patterns of values coexist. But that division leaves out the patterns of social values.
A first consequence of this point of view is that each pattern of values represents a set of ethical norms, although independent of each other. That is, ethics exists in the inorganic and biological world as well as in the social and intellectual.
The second consequence is that, in a discussion about what is right or wrong, it is important to distinguish for which of the four levels is being argued, since the set of values is not the same for each level, mainly in the case of patterns of social and intellectual values.
For the inorganic world there is an ethic, or morality, commonly called 'natural laws' thanks to which chaos does not reign. The morality of the biological world is contained in the 'law of the jungle' thanks to which living beings overcome hunger and imminent death. A different morality, which in general we can call 'social norms' governs society and allows it to reign over the biological world.
Within the inorganic world, natural laws cannot be broken and thanks to that a 'natural order' is maintained. However, not everything that is good (ethical, moral) for inanimate objects is necessarily good for the biological world. For example, birds break the law of gravity.
In general, when faced with two alternatives of action, the one that generates a good at a higher level of evolution, that is, at a dynamic level, not static, is better, it is more ethical, more moral.
Let's say that it is more ethical for a doctor to kill a virus than to allow the virus to kill his patient. The virus seeks to live, the patient too. But the patient has priority because of his higher level of evolution. In the pattern of biological values, some living beings kill others, to feed themselves, protect themselves and preserve their species. In the pattern of social values, human beings respect their lives.
What is called ethics or moral today really refers to a pattern of static values that combines the biological with the social. However, many social norms are not necessarily good for the intellectual being. There should be an intellectual ethic or morality that allows humanity to transcend the merely social environment.
What does all this have to do with Marketing? What we learn from Persig is that Marketing, as an organizational, business phenomenon, responds essentially to social values.
Marketing is an activity, individual or organizational, aimed at generating, maintaining and developing relationships with the public. That is, an eminently social activity. As such, it must be governed by the static pattern of social values in force today.
Organizations, with or without a Marketing approach, are social entities and act within a social environment. Beyond that, these organizations attend to the needs, desires and tastes of people who live in that social environment.
It is the obligation of organizations to understand and be sensitive to what these people consider their social value system and consequently, attend to them according to their purchasing behavior.
One of the great problems of our companies today occurs precisely because they are 'social entities' in which the survival of the company and its employees matters more than the relationship they establish with their public. Thus, the organizational hierarchy is sometimes imposed on the needs of the market. It is more important to look good with the immediate superior than with the client.
Today's society in general terms and companies, in very particular terms, are heading towards what many call an 'age of knowledge' in which, inevitably, a pattern of intellectual values will establish the 'common good' in perhaps the opposite way. what today is considered common good in social terms.
The buying behavior that obeys the currently accepted social patterns will change, with noticeable effects on the companies that supply the goods and services that are symbols of social position.
Marketing ethics does not escape a dynamic quality, in the same way that free market economic activity has dynamism and change as its main characteristic. Marketing has its own ethics, which arises from the need to establish, develop and strengthen a continuous commercial relationship with its clients.
It seems to me that the most dramatic changes will not come in this direction, but rather will affect the way in which companies that recognize this way of thinking are constituted, operated and managed.
