Ethical Dimensions of Social Marketing Does Trying to do Good Equate to Doing No Harm?

Social marketing aims to improve the health and wellbeing of society; however the development and implementation of interventions may have ethical repercussions for both intended and incidental targets, and in general ethical terms. To date there is little systematic analysis in the literature of these issues or possible solutions. There is a lack of unambiguous ethical frameworks to guide social marketers, with different outcomes possible under intention-focused (deontological) reasoning versus consequence-focused (teleological) reasoning. While ethical checklists and codes of ethics have been proposed for the sector, significant questions relating to administration and enforcement remain unresolved. This article reviews these issues and suggests routes for developing such guidelines and codes, and future research.