Ethical Marketing Behavior

This activity is important because business culture is one of the four primary factors that influence ethical marketing behavior. Two common forms of unethical competitive behavior$-$economic espionage and corruption$-$cost the world economy billions if not trillions of dollars every year. It is important for marketing managers to understand the types of behaviors that constitute economic espionage and corruption.

The goal of this activity is for you to identify examples of the types of unethical competitive behavior $($i$.$e$.,$ economic espionage and corruption$).$

Read each competitive scenario, then classify it as either economic espionage or corruption.

Hoping to find the design sketches for its competitor's new consumer electronics product, product managers steal and sort through the trash of its competitors in hopes of finding discarded sketch versions.

In a developing economy, a government official is given a cash bribe to gain favor during the proposal review process for a $$500$ million infrastructure development project.

Understanding the value of its competitor's customer names, account information, and email address, a firm hires a computer hacker working outside of the country to break through the competitor's firewall and download its customer database.

A marketing manager at a large electronics firm informs a computer processor manufacturer that if he wants his CPU to be the processor chosen for its new tablet release, the CPU manufacturer needs to secretly pay the marketing manager $$5$ per tablet sold.

Government officials offer free trips to their country to travel agents and their families to encourage agents to push their country