Describe the Marketing’s Impact on Society as a Whole and the principles of socially responsible marketing.

Responsible marketers discover what consumers want and respond with the right products, priced to give good value to buyers, and profit to the producer. The marketing concept is a philosophy of customer satisfaction and mutual gain. Its practice leads the economy by an invisible hand to satisfy the many and changing needs of millions of consumers. Marketing receives much criticism. Some of this is justified and some is not. Social critics claim that certain marketing practices hurt individual consumers, society as a whole, and other business firms.. Marketing’s Impact on Society as a Whole Some criticisms have also been leveled at marketing because of its perceived negative impact on society as a whole. Criticisms include marketing creating: i. False wants and too much materialism. People are judged by what they own rather than who they are. This criticism perhaps overstates the power of business to create needs. Our needs are influenced by other forces than just marketing needs. Some even see materialism as a positive force. ii. Producing too few social goods. There needs to be more of a balance between social (public) and private goods. Options are the government could require more safety be built into products (autos for example), or make consumers pay social costs. iii. Cultural pollution. Constant assaults on privacy by advertising and noise clutter. Marketing answers by saying: Marketers hope that their ads reach primarily the target audience, ads make much of television and radio free to users and keep down the costs of magazines and newspapers. iv. Too much political power. companies do promote and protect their own interests. They have a right to. Counter forces are in place to offset business promotional and political power. Key Principles for Public policy towards Marketing: Certain public policy principles can be used to make the marketing more effective these principles include full consumer and producer freedom, potential harms should be eliminated, producers should meet the basic needs of the consumers, there should be economic efficiency consumers and producers both should be on beneficent in practicing the exchange process, producer should ensure the innovation , consumer should be provided full knowledge about the products and should be protected against any sort of unethical and illegal practices by the producers,