International Marketing Ethics: Challenges in Developing Global Code of Ethics

The dramatic advances in technology, decreased restrictions on transportation and financial flows has facilitated the rapid growth of international business in the last decade. While global marketing poses several challenges in designing and developing marketing strategies, it has also created new challenges in dealing with ethical/unethical issues. Several studies examined the pervasiveness of unethical marketing practices in different cultures (Armstrong 1992; Dubinsky et al. 1991) and concluded that the pervasiveness of unethical behavior in international marketing arena creates an urgent need for a common global code of conduct. The ethical/unethical issues have brought the role of multinational corporations to the forefront. Multinational corporations are faced with a choice between designing a code of conduct uniform across all the subsidiaries in different nations or develop individual code suited for each country. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the two choices - global code of ethics and individualized code of ethics. We will examine the pertinent literature in discussing the challenges in developing code of ethics in an international marketing arena.