| CODE | MRK1403 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Social Responsibility in Marketing | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 01 - Year 1 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Marketing | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | Marketing is essential to many organisations. However, it also attracts criticism for aspects such as normalising unsustainable consumption, materialism, instances of deceptive behavior, unwarranted interruptions, and data operations within gray areas, among many others. This study-unit presents a historical overview of the diverse perspectives to ethics in marketing and a series of marketing theories, case studies, discussions on topics such as the effect of marketing on young consumers, promotion of harmful products, click-bait advertising, and marketing in emerging markets that lack regulation. In this study unit the students will understand competing ethical theoretical foundations such as Deontology, Consequentialism, and Relativism to appreciate diverse perspectives and be able to respond to existing and upcoming ethical challenges. Study-Unit Aims: The aim of this study-unit is to empower students to take sound ethical decisions in Marketing. Marketing attracted significant criticism throughout its history for its influence on materialism, cases of unsustainable consumption patterns, advertising deception,and exposing adverts to young consumers among many others. By adopting an international dimension, this study-unit provides the students with strategies they can use to respond to current and upcoming ethical challenges in marketing. The students are to familiarise themselves with related theories and frameworks that shed light on contrasting perspectives. These provide the grounding to discuss real-life case studies with embedded ethical challenges. By the end of the study-unit, students should be able to identify instances of ethical concerns to then strategise solutions. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: Characterise criticisms of Marketing; - Explain ethical issues in consumer relationships; - Review ethical concerns in consumption; - Describe concerns in marketing to young and vulnerable groups; - Describe concerns in marketing services or products around lifestyle, health, culture, harmful products and/or social causes. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Distinguish between ethics overall, business ethics and marketing ethics; - Appraise theories and frameworks that are relevant to make ethical decisions; - Differentiate between ethics, religious beliefs and values; - Critique criticisms of Marketing; - Synthesise ethics in new media, marketing to vulnerable groups, and products/services with increased risks (e.g. promotion of harmful products, pharmaceutical and social causes); - Locate and review related regulations and policy interventions. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: - Eagle, L., & Dahl, S. (2015). Marketing ethics & society. SAGE Publications Ltd, https://www-doi-org.ejournals.um.edu.mt/10.4135/9781473920415. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Ivan De Battista Gavril Flores |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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