Question

From a marketing concept point of view, is it wrong to sell cigarettes? Defend your position.

Answer 1

Ethical marketing is not so much a marketing strategy as a philosophy which informs all marketing efforts. In all advertising it seeks to promote honesty , fairness and accountability. Ethics is a notoriously difficult subject, because everyone has subjective judgments about what's "right" and what's "wrong." That's why ethical marketing is not a hard and fast list of rules, but a general set of guidelines to help companies evaluate new marketing strategies.

It's not wrong unless you're lying about it (keep in mind that "lying" is defined as "knowingly hiding the truth" not "saying something that later turns out to be wrong in the light of other evidence"). Many of the foods that we eat each day are harmful in many different ways. Sugary foods can give you diabetes, fatty foods can give you or make you obese, heart disease, etc.

When someone suggests that MacDonald's is morally bankrupt for selling people as much unhealthy food as they're willing to pay for it, we (or at least most of us) rightly scoff and call that a ridiculous notion. No one is holding a gun up your head and making you eat a terrible diet. And we're rightly scoffing even louder when somebody in government suggests the law would restrict these "unhealthy" products. But if you make the same argument, only replacing "unhealthy food" with "cigarettes," we suddenly see it as miraculous and unreasonable credibility

In the past, tobacco companies were guilty of lying over the possible smoking harm. They even breached the law at times in the process. This time, however, is long over. Tobacco companies are not really attempting to ignore the adverse effects of smoking, even even if they did realize the negative implications of smoking, mainstream culture has become so pervaded that it would be ridiculous to say that the general public is unaware of them.