User:Saumitrasingh07

Ethical Brand
Ethical Brands are those brands which follow all the rules and regulations which supports ethical consumerism and environmental ethics. It supports the truth and honesty as values in branding. Genuine ethical brands take their social, environmental and commercial responsibilities seriously. They not only say the right things... they are actually doing the right things.

Introduction

There has been a growing research interest in the area of business and marketing ethics. Ethics has been studied in almost all business issues except branding. Not a single academic study has been found on branding ethics after an extensive literature search covering the following sources: three online database (ABI Inform Global, Ebsco and Infotrac), three journals (Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Brand Management and Journal of Product and Brand Management), dozens of books and websites. Brands may have been in existence for well over a thousand years. But never has any society before seen the power of branding as is witnessed today: Brands are prevalent in every aspect of human life: production and consumption, food and clothing, personality and lifestyle; and from pop culture to politics. Branding is no longer just about adding value to a product; branding represents and promotes lifestyles and brands themselves become a kind of culture. In the words of Hazel Kahan (quoted in Hall, 1999), brands are now gunning for a share of consumers’ inner lives, their values, their beliefs, their politics; yes, their souls. The impact of brands and branding is far beyond the field of marketing and advertising. Branding is a social construct as well as an economic construct. As an economic construct, brands have been studied from both marketing and financial perspectives. As a social construct, brands have not yet been fully understood owing to the dearth of academic research in this area. Advertising is probably the most visible element of marketing but branding is at the centre of any marketing communications. Most problems with advertising have their roots in branding strategy. A notorious example is Benetton’s shocking tactic advertising in the 1990s. However, little is known about the impact of branding (not advertising) on the stakeholders other than brand owners and users, and about the link between branding and corporate reputation. This paper aims to raise the awareness of ethical issues in corporate branding.

What Is Ethical Branding?

Brand is a simple but very confused word with multiple meanings. The American Marketing Association defines a brand as: a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and differentiate them from those of competitors (Kotler, 2003). A brand may have many other meanings depending on the role it plays, the value it has and more importantly, to whom it is related. To brand owners, a brand is mainly a differentiation device: the living memory and the future of its products (Kapferer, 1997). To brand users, a brand may create an emotional bond with them which turns the brand into an icon. In the most developed role, brands represent not only the products or services a company provides but the firm itself, the brand is the company and brands become a synonym of the company’s policy (Goodyear 1996; de Chernatony and McDonald, 2003). A brand is no longer just the interface between the company and its customers; to whom and to the general public, it is the face of the company. Branding is a key function in marketing that means much more than just giving a product a name. Branding at corporate level is essentially about developing and managing the relationship between the organisation and its various stakeholders as well as the general public. Should branding be ethical? It might seem that the answer is obvious: most companies would answer yes. However, it would be more difficult to find a universal agreement on what ethical branding is. Ethics refers to moral rules or principles of behaviour for deciding what is right and wrong. These principles are not always easy to define as a) it is often difficult to distinguish between ethics and legality; b) ethical values vary between individuals and organisations, and between different cultures; and they are changing over time. Ethics is a very complex subject. Marketing ethics is but a subset of business ethics which itself is a subset of ethics (Martin, 1985). Research on marketing ethics has so far been confined to general marketing issues, such as product safety, pricing, advertising and marketing research (Laczniak, 1993; Simith, 1995 and Murphy, 1999); little attention has been paid to branding. No business ethics books have been found to have reference to branding while leading branding texts have made no reference to ethics (Aaker, 1991; Kapferer, 1997; Keller, 1998 and de Chernatony and McDonald, 2003). A brand may be amoral, but there are ethical issues in branding. Ethical branding, as a subset of ethical marketing, relates to certain moral principles that define right and wrong behaviour in branding decisions. A brand needs to be evaluated not just by the economic or financial criteria but also by the moral ones. An ethical brand should not harm public good; instead it should contribute to or help promote public good.

Five Strategies for Building Your Ethical Brand


 * Brand: Who you are, not what you say


 * Five strategies for aligning brand with values

1. Align with Brand Differentiator

2. Create an Ingredient Brand

3. Create a Product Brand

4. Create a New Sub-Brand

5. Reposition the Brand

Ethical Branding and Corporate Reputation

Corporate reputation can be defined in terms of a number of attributes that form a buyer’s perception as to whether a company is well known, good or bad, reliable, trustworthy, reputable and believable (Levitt, 1965). Corporate reputation is 10 concerned with how people feel about a company based on whatever information (or misinformation) they have on, company activities, workplace, past performance and future prospects (Fombrun, 2000). According to Keller (1998), a socially responsible corporate image association involves the creation of consumer perceptions of a company as contributing to community programs, supporting artistic and social activities and generally attempting to improve the welfare of society as a whole. A corporate brand is the core component of corporate reputation. Being the face of the organisation that owns it, a corporate brand has to communicate to a wider range of audiences than consumers and investors. There is an interesting relationship between corporate reputation and corporate performance. Corporate reputation is believed to have positive impact on a firm’s market share and ultimately on the stock market value. According to one study of long-term stock price movements and company reputation changes, some 8-15% of a company’s stock price can be accounted for by corporate reputation (Greyser, 1996). On the other hand, a company’s corporate reputation is also affected by its past performance, both financial performance and social performance. Clearly there is a close link between ethical branding and corporate reputation. These attributes may include: honesty, integrity, diversity, quality, respect, responsibility and accountability (cocacola.com), and define what an ethical brand stands for. An ethical brand enhances the firm’s reputation; such a reputation reinforces the brand in turn. Ethical branding can be studied at both corporate and product levels. At the corporate level, a corporate brand is a vital part of the corporate reputation management. Any unethical behaviour will severely damage or even destroy the total intangible asset as evidenced by the some recent high profile scandals such as Enron and Anderson Consulting. Branding at the product level involves labelling, packaging and communicating. Although these do not have a direct impact upon the corporate brand, they can still affect the reputation of the organisation. Some corporate PR activities such as sponsorship and donations will not automatically change the public opinion if the company is generally perceived as unethical and not genuine; for example, the sponsorship of a research centre for corporate responsibility by a tobacco firm. Corporate donations and CSR should not be used as varnish to cover corporate misbehaviour. The organisation needs to make systematic efforts to create and maintain an ethical corporate brand image that not only enhances its corporate reputation but also gives the business competitive advantages.