Tourism Marketing Communications

1
Tourism Marketing Communications

• Ethics and Social Responsibility

2
Evolution of Marketing

• Kotler identified a fourth phase
• Product orientation
• Sales orientation
• Marketing orientation
• Societal orientation

3
Current Climate

• Evidence to suggest that people and by extension
  governments are more aware of moral dimension
  either from pragmatism or self-interest.

4
Who is responsible

• The individual
• The company
• The government

5
Ethics defined

• Ethics relate to moral evaluations of decisions
  and actions as right or wrong on the basis of
  commonly accepted principles of behaviour.

6
Is Marketing Fundamentally Unethical?

• Constant pressure to increase value (and price)
  to the consumer through non-essential attributes,
  for instance branding.
• Surplus is essential however to provide the
  fuel for a free market economy.

7
Ethics are controversial

• The law regulates a broad area of corporate and
  private behaviour.
• Ethics are individually defined and may vary from
  one person to another
• The media is a powerful but erratic arbiter of
  ethical behaviour
• The aggregate of society will determine whether
  behaviour is ethical or not

8
Factors influencing ethical decision making
ETHICAL DECISIONS
Organisational Relationships
Individual Factors
Opportunities
9
Ethical Decisions

• Individual Factors -principles and rules from
  religion, family, social groups, education.
• Organisational Factors- the corporate culture,
  top management, stakeholders
• Opportunity - the extent to which unethical
  behaviour is tolerated or rewarded

10
Ethics in Marketing

• Tourism products present a diverse and complex
  range of ethical issues.
• It is necessary to create distinctiveness but to
  what extent should benefits and service
  components be over stated?
• If a resort is described as the most romantic on
  earth to what extent is it up to the consumer to
  find the romance?

11
Communicating Tourism

• The product is complex because of the number of
  components involved (transport, accommodation,
  attractions)
• The consumer often does not understand their own
  motivation to buy other than on a basic level.

12
Social Responsibility

• The organisations obligation to maximise its
  positive impact and minimise its negative impact
  on society.
• Ethics may relate to personal decisions, social
  responsibility refers to the impact of an
  organizations decisions on society.

13
Social Responsibility Issues

• Consumer Issues
• Community Relations
• Environmental Issues
• Social Issues

14
Question

• Is the need to create profitable tourism
  businesses compatible with the aim of developing
  ethical and socially responsible tourism
  organizations.