Case study of marketing ethics
It is not uncommon that Samsung 's smart phones are used everywhere in all walks of lives, including students, workers and officers. Its advertisements of the newest model of smart phones are also shown in TV, magazines most of the days, if not all. Samsung is one of the largest information technology company, sharing almost all market shares with Apple, it’s major competitor. With making US$30 billion dollars net income per year, however, it may be hard to imagine that Samsung is submerged into some unethical marketing practices.
There is a shocking news reported in the October of 2013, which grab the attention all over the world, including Samsung 's customers and its competitors as well. Although Samsung has such a large market share in the smart phone industry, with almost half of it, the markets still does not satisfy with it and wanted to further enlarge its share. The marketers would like to use a large number of hired writers and designated employees to post fake comments saying the HTC (one of the competitors of Samsung) onto different forums in Taiwan in the purpose of distracting the potential consumers from buying HTC 's smart phone products. After that the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) discovered that and investigate in to the issue, and found that it is done through a third-party marketing company. Finally, $340,000 was fined for Samsung for this unfair marketing strategy. The unethical marketing practice performed by Samsung was said to be a deceptive practice. Since Samsung paid many bloggers or writers to blacken the image of its competitor, HTC, indirectly in order to attract the potential customers of HTC to consume the products its own brand. The innocent customer may blindly believed in the massive fake comments as these comments are appeared in many phone-related websites and they cannot find out the writers of the comments through internet. Therefore, the customers may had a worse image on HTC and switch to another brand, which might most
There is a shocking news reported in the October of 2013, which grab the attention all over the world, including Samsung 's customers and its competitors as well. Although Samsung has such a large market share in the smart phone industry, with almost half of it, the markets still does not satisfy with it and wanted to further enlarge its share. The marketers would like to use a large number of hired writers and designated employees to post fake comments saying the HTC (one of the competitors of Samsung) onto different forums in Taiwan in the purpose of distracting the potential consumers from buying HTC 's smart phone products. After that the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) discovered that and investigate in to the issue, and found that it is done through a third-party marketing company. Finally, $340,000 was fined for Samsung for this unfair marketing strategy. The unethical marketing practice performed by Samsung was said to be a deceptive practice. Since Samsung paid many bloggers or writers to blacken the image of its competitor, HTC, indirectly in order to attract the potential customers of HTC to consume the products its own brand. The innocent customer may blindly believed in the massive fake comments as these comments are appeared in many phone-related websites and they cannot find out the writers of the comments through internet. Therefore, the customers may had a worse image on HTC and switch to another brand, which might most
References: Aaron. S. (2013). Samsung fined $340,000 for faking online comments. The Verge. Richard. E. (2013). Samsung unethical marketing highlights possible issues around company culture. Aardvark Communications. Anouch. S. (2012). Built-In Obsolescence - Are We Being Scammed By Electronics Manufacturers?. Worldcrunch.