ABSTRACT

The aim of marketing is to satisfy customers' needs and wants, but such customer satisfaction is an ethical activity. Superficially one might conclude that the process of exchange between the buyer and seller is scrupulously virtuous. In the UK some building societies and banks, for example, were criticized for not communicating changes in interest rates to their account holders, so they did not transfer their money into higher-rate savings accounts. Persuasion is ethical because it is a voluntary and conscious attempt to influence our purchasing behaviour through the honest communication of relevant information. Theodore Levitt states that 'the organization must learn to think of itself not as producing goods or services but as buying customers, as doing the things that will make people want to do business with it'. Peter Drucker was right to say that the whole business must be seen from the customers' viewpoint. Marketing must be regulated in some way to prevent the exploitation of customers.