You will find the following 3 mini-cases covering ethical dilemmas:
• Speedy Sale
• Pizza Puzzle
• Lottery Mania
Your job is to read the cases and answer the questions attached to each case. Please answer all the questions as completely as you can but I am looking for brief responses.I will grade the project based on the amount of thought and effort you put into answering all the questions.
I am not looking for a "right answer" so understand that there can be a number of correct answers to the questions. Just make sure your answers each question completely and you provide a thoughtful response. Resubmit this Word Document with your answers.
The Speedy Sale
Topic: Unethical Sales Presentation Techniques
Characters:
• Sam, Consumer electronics salesperson for an outlet of a major discount store
• Bernie, Sam's customer for a color television set
• Michelle, Sales manager for the consumer electronics department at the discount outlet
Bernie is very interested in buying a color television. He tells Sam, the salesperson in the discount store where he feels he can get the best buy, that his old color TV recently died and he really misses seeing his favorite shows.
The sooner he can buy and get a new TV delivered, the better, he explains. Sam knows that the particular model which Bernie seems to prefer by far to the others will go on sale for 15 percent off in three and a half weeks.
However, he assumes that Bernie is not willing to wait that long and might look elsewhere. Also, Sam will not make as much commission on the reduced price. Therefore, he reasons that it would make little sense to inform Bernie of the pending sale.
When Sam tells Bernie that the TV set he is interested in is currently out of stock and will not be in for another week, Beanie is dearly disgruntled. Fearing losing the sale, Sam goes out to the back room to ask his sales manager, Michelle, if anything can be done to speed up delivery. Michelle says that this would be impossible, and she suggests that Sam could tell Bernie that the store can get the set within 24 hours and simply sell him the demonstration model. Michelle explains that the demo is in as-new condition and Bernie will never know the difference.
Sam feels that selling the demonstration model to Bernie wouldn't be on the level. Knowing that it will take five working days to have a new set delivered to the store, Sam thinks of a different sales strategy--tell Bernie he can get a set to him in two days, then call Bernie tomorrow to say it will be sometime next week due to a flood of orders at the factory. Sam wonders how he can lock in the sale today.
Author: Geoffrey P. Lantos, Associate Professor of Marketing, Stonehill College.
Speedy Sale Case - Answer these questions.
Identify all the potential ethical issues in the case. Explain each one.
Decide if the proposed actions by the employees are ethical or unethical.Explain your reason why for each ethical issue.
Identify the stakeholders who may be harmed by unethical behavior in this situation and how it could harm them.
What kind of systems can the company create in order to prevent the type of unethical behavior you have identified and further to promote ethical behavior?
The Pizza Puzzle
Topic: Deceptive Advertising
Characters:
• George Hansen, General Manager, Augusta Marigold Inn, Subsidiary of Hospitality Enterprises
• Sharon Coombs, Food Services Manager, Augusta Marigold Inn
• George Hansen is General Manager for the Marigold Inn in Augusta, Georgia
Sharon Coombs is Restaurant and Food Services Manager for the Inn. She reports to George. Two years ago, Sharon noticed a decline in room service business, the highest margin portion of her operation. This decline coincided with an increase in the national sales of pizza delivery and carryout firms as well as an increase in the number of empty pizza boxes from these firms being left in guest rooms in the Inn.
Her immediate response was to install a pizza oven in the kitchen and offer room service pizza to guests. The effort met with modest success, though it was well below her expectations. Questionnaires completed by departing guests revealed a problem of product quality.
Focusing on this problem, Sharon improved the Inn's pizza until blind taste tests judged it at least equal in quality to the products of the two major pizza delivery competitors in Augusta.
Sales did not improve, convincing Sharon that the problem was a perceived mismatch between the hotel's image and guests' expectations of pizza makers. Guests simply did not seem to believe that the traditional steak and seafood restaurant at the Inn could make a high-quality, authentic pizza.
Based on this conclusion, Sharon presented the following proposal to George:
"Sales of room service pizza are stagnant due to guests' misperception that our product is lower in quality than that of competitors. This misperception is based on the belief that until we disassociate our pizza from the Marigold Inn name. Therefore, to capture more room service pizza business, we should create a ‘Napoli Pizza' image for our guest room delivery service by:
• Preparing ‘Napoli Pizza' brochures for each guest room, complete with a phone number with a prefix different from that of Marigold Inn. The number will reach a special phone in room service, which will be answered, Napoli Pizza, authentic Italian pizza from old, family recipes.'
• Using special ‘Napoli Pizza' boxes for delivering room service pizza to guests.
• Issuing ‘Napoli Pizza' hats and jackets to room service personnel for use in pizza delivery. Room service waiters and waitresses will wear these garments to deliver pizza. They will change to their regular uniforms for other deliveries."
Author: Fred L. Miller, Associate Professor of Marketing, Murray State University
Pizza Puzzle - Answer these questions.
Identify all the potential ethical issues in the case. Explain each one.
Decide if the proposed actions by the employees are ethical or unethical. Explain your answer to each one.
What could the company do in order to provide the proposed service and still maintain ethical behavior?Explain your answer.
Would the company's core values make a difference in the action that George decides? Explain.
Lottery Mania
Topic: Marketing Management (Event Marketing)
Characters:
• Jane, Recently appointed Director of Event Marketing for the Anystate Lottery
• Jim, Marketing Director for the Anystate Lottery Sal, Commissioner of the Anystate Lottery
Jane was recently hired out of college as the Director of Event Marketing for the Anystate Lottery. Although Jane's father was a compulsive gambler and she received several betterpaying job offers, she decided to take the lottery job because she is a strong supporter of education and 50 percent of lottery sales go to supporting public education. Her family was against her accepting the job.
The Anystate Lottery started five years ago after it was approved by 80 percent of the electorate. Two years ago, sales began to decline. This has led Jim, Marketing Director for the Anystate Lottery, to consider segmenting the population of Anystate into frequent, occasional, and nonparticipating players. Jim decided to target frequent players for the new lottery game, "Lottery Mania." The probability of winning Lottery Mania was estimated to be one in 24 million.
Frequent players of the lottery spend, on the average, $20 per week. Members of various minority groups constitute a large proportion of frequent players. Research conducted by the Anystate Lottery found that many minority frequent players use part of their limited grocery money to play lottery games. In some cases, people have gone hungry in order to play the lottery in hopes of winning the big prize.
As Commissioner of the lottery, Sal is concerned about any negative publicity that may surround the operation of the lottery. However, he has directed Jim to increase sales of lottery tickets by 10 percent during the new game of Lottery Mania. Jim called Jane and ordered her to develop several promotional events to be targeted toward minority lottery players. These events will be used to launch Lottery Mania scheduled to start four weeks from now. Event marketing has been used very successfully for targeting minority consumers for a variety of products.
Jane is upset about the task of specifically targeting minority segments over all other segments in the population of Anystate. Jane is a member of a minority group. Jane knows that additional money for education will help all students in Anystate, especially minority students. Yet she can't help but think about all the families that will play the lottery even though they can't afford it.
Author: Craig A. Kelley, Professor of Marketing, California State University, Sacramento.
Lottery Mania - Answer these questions.
Identify all the potential ethical issues in the case. Explain each one.
Decide if the proposed actions by the employees are ethical or unethical. Explain your answer to each one.
What should Jane do? Explain and justify your answer.