An international perspective on the moral maturity of marketers

The value chain networks created by international marketers criss-cross cultures and jurisdictions across the globe. Some of these jurisdictions are plagued by inadequate institutions or behavioural traffic rules, which do not promote flourishing lives for affected parties. As marketers facilitate these exchanges, there is a temptation to take a limited view of one’s responsibilities for possible adverse consequences of these exchanges. A primitive approach to responsibility would be an individual cost/benefit analysis of the sticks and carrots involved in the transaction and a move as close to the minimum requirement as possible. A more mature marketer may consider her own culture’s conventions as well as the conventions of the local culture when considering the nature of the exchange. Finally, one can seek to apply basic ethical principles to the exchange, which would require an analysis that would be relatively free of cultural conventions and a short term sticks and carrot analysis. It is the purpose of this paper to present a framework for analysis that would be useful for international marketers as they seek to facilitate exchanges between jurisdictions with inadequate institutions.