Mid-term Exam

Mid-term Exam

Option 1

The conventional way of operating a business is no longer regarded as the best choice. As a result, companies are becoming more and more incentivized in caring more about the social, political and economic issues of the world. On one end, Greenberg (2012) discusses that it is a good intention. The writer, Greenberg (2012), offers illustrative instances of how multi-national and high grossing businesses such as General Electric and Ford are using their resources to address the on-going issues in society. For example, companies are taking up social causes on helping children of child abuse and violence background. Greenberg (2012) commemorates such activities as good, intentional and forward-thinking with the world today. Nonetheless, the writer criticizes the intent of such companies bringing forth the need to address the underlying reason as to why such companies are doing such acts. Therefore, he brings forward this crucial thinking mentality questioning the relativity of addressing social issues by such businesses.

Concerning the ideological acts of the businesses, Greenberg (2012) addresses the main marketing route that companies are taking. The author, Greenberg (2012), illustrates how companies are making such discourse generating issues as a marketing platform to campaign for increased sales and profit margins. In an example, Greenberg (2012) addresses the Subaru 2008 campaign dubbed “Spread the Love.” In this campaign, Subaru incentivized that for every car purchase or car hire, a percentage of the sales would be directed to a charity of choice. In other words, Greenberg (2012) describes this as cause-oriented marketing. There is a need to address the primary beneficiaries of such social campaign which Greenberg (2012) highlights as the companies and not necessarily the society. Therefore, Greenberg (2012) cautions that we need to understand how we perceive the world and how we act upon it.

A broad scope of studies relating to cause-oriented marketing agrees with Greenberg’s (2012) stand on curtain-based marketing plan by companies. Patel et al. (2017) carried out investigative research on customer attitude and perception of cause-oriented marketing. The study determined that corporate social responsibility is intertwined with the marketing plans of companies. In most cases, companies utilize social responsibility as a means to shift the attitude of consumers to think that associating with the brand is a good and intentional gesture towards bettering the world. As a result, customers often have a definite transactional need towards the company in the long run. Guirreiro et al. (2016) concur with indicating that cause-related marketing is a popular trend in companies opting to indulge the consumers and stakeholders in engaging in more charitable acts. However, the hidden concept is that companies use such gestures to improve on sales (Guirreiro et al., 2016). On the outline, it seems that companies are using such strategies to become philanthropic (e Silva et al., 2019). Nevertheless, it is agreeable that businesses have revolutionized how they improve performance through such acts.

As a result, the morality of such intentions is questioned not only from a social perspective but, an academic standpoint. According to a study conducted by He et al. (2016), it was revealed that brand social responsibility image, as well as emotional brand attachment positively, moderated the relationship with the consumer moral identity. The striking revelation in this study is congruent with Greenberg’s (2012) moral reasoning. He et al. (2016) concluded that increasing pressure for social responsibility uptake by companies provides a platform for them to popularize their brand through corporate social responsibility- which is regarded as a marketing tool. Sanclemente-Téllez (2017) elucidates that in the recent past concern on whether companies are conducting corporate social responsibility for the welfare of the society has been questioned. Within the study, Sanclemente-Téllez (2017) defines that varied interests have been noted. Among them is the profitability that businesses gain with such intents; however, it is not illegal to do so. The most affected are millennials, according to Eastman et al. (2019) as the well-driven marketing tool has profited a countless number of companies. Concurrently, Hensley et al. (2019) reiterate that companies are getting good at manipulating consumers and the worse hit, are the millennials taking up charitable acts such as LGBTQ homeless youth, for instance, as a marketing tool for increased sales.  In conclusion, it is evident that studies conducted on this issue, cause-related marketing are in agreement with Greenberg (2012) emphasizing that there are underlying or hidden benefits that businesses are accruing at the expense of moral fabric of the consumers.

I argue that companies are becoming more sophisticated in how they market and I do not discard such acts due to the competitiveness in the market and the shifting loyalty by consumers, especially millennials. I argue that after researching more about the term cause-related marketing,’ I am in awe of the dynamics behind the curtain of how well companies are eagerly profiting from this venture. From a layman’s point of view, a customer always perceives that a company is doing good at the expense of what the government should be doing. However, it has become clear that companies are shifting to a more erudite outlook on marketing which is both brilliant but, immoral.

Option 2

The argument is for a public broadcaster to enhance democracy for the public. The main case presented by Dornan is that with the diversification of journalism, more so the private sector, the relativity of content has eroded over the years. According to the author, privatized companies are mostly airing non-Canadian content and prefer airing American based news. As a result, the issue raised by Dornan is that it only corrupts the public if not reducing access to information. I argue that this is true given that most of the media companies in the country are no longer pursuing the standards of journalism. The consequence of this is that the public is not aware of what is going on, which should be of interest in the current times. Therefore, there is a need for an advocate primarily that of the public domain to provide such news outlets with information for the public; therefore, enhancing democracy.

Hanitzsch and Vos, (2018) define journalism as the concept of surveillance, transmission, correlation and entertainment. In other words, it serves as the backbone for normative discussions. Without these elements, journalism seeks to be a one-sided take from my perspective. The reason I argue like this is based on the fact that journalism has converted to a more entertaining news outlet rather than an inquiry-based outlet (Schudson, 2017). For instance, Dornan points out that more and more Canadian news outlets and media houses are airing American content rather than Canadian content. I can argue that the reason for such premise is because, the highest viewers are millennials who are more entertained with gossip-based and reality shows compared to the political, economic and social issues. Therefore, I do agree that there needs to be a platform, preferably, a public news outlet that offers news on such matters.

With respect to democracy, I do argue in favour of Dornan, citing that we need to a neutral platform that offers inclusive and non-biased news. The reason for this argument is based on the fact that most private based media companies offer selective news and information that is not subject to reasoning. Democracy is intertwined with the tenets of dissemination and mobilization. It allows audiences to understand, articulate and decipher the news. But, without such outlets, there are limitations to such reasoning (Mason et al., 2018). Nonetheless, the issue with Canadian news and media outlets is that there is a lack of impartial generation of information for the viewers. There are illustrations that Canadian news outlets are not using derivative journalism to present information. For instance, a study carried out by Stoddart et al. (2016) determined that Canadian news and American news are quite different. Using climate change as a comparison tenet, Stoddart et al. (2016) indicated that American news on climate change is more event-driven and addresses it from a global platform. On the other hand, Canadian news outlets use celebrity-based campaigns to provide more insight into climate change. The radical perception in this study further concurs with my argument that despite acknowledging that we need public broadcasting, democracy is yet to be achieved.

There is need to indulge further whether Canadian journalism is at par with global schematics or is isolated, therefore, highlighting the bureaucracy in journalism in presenting impartial and integrity based news (Benson et al., 2017). There is a need to question on what democracy is for Canadians without comparing the definition from a universal point of view. The reason for my argument, which is in support of Dornan’s take on Canadian news, is that there is something lacking in the journalism arena. This not only touches on public broadcasters, but, it also touches on private broadcasters. The core of journalism is questionable given the fact that, authors such as Dornan, Stoddard et al. (2016) and Calder et al. (2011) questioning the framing of news by the Canadian news outlets. The framing of the news in Canada is quite moot with regard to being democratic (IRA and Mt., 2001). However, this argument is not a complete disregard for the journalism in Canada, but, a question of whether there are enough journalistic professionalism, impartialness and imperative communication to warrant comparison with other nations such as the United Kingdom and America.

Chris Dornan may partially agree with my argument. The reason is that the illustrations the author has to provide are based on questioning the democratic independence of Canadian news and media outlets to produce democratic news. Dornan comparison of Canadian news with American news presents a conundrum that most may not observe. Dornan argues that public broadcasting has the critical role of presenting and reflecting the democratic discourse of a nation. But, Canada lacks in this area. Therefore, the author proposes that looking outward as to how American news, for instance, despite its private ownership majority, has the most democratic take on the news than Canada. As a result, Dornan questions whether Canada should revise its stand on news and revitalize how it also presents its news from both the public and private sectors.

References

Benson, R., Powers, M., & Neff, T. (2017). Public media autonomy and accountability: Best and worst policy practices in 12 leading democracies. International Journal of Communication, 11, 22.

Calder, M. J., Hansard, A., Richter, S., Burns, K. K., & Mao, Y. (2011). Framing homelessness for the Canadian public: The news media and homelessness. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 20(2), 1-19.

Eastman, J. K., Smalley, K. B., & Warren, J. C. (2019). The impact of cause-related marketing on Millennials’ product attitudes and purchase intentions. Journal of Promotion Management, 25(6), 799-826.

e Silva, S. C., Duarte, P., Machado, J. C., & Martins, C. (2019). Cause-related marketing in an online environment: the role of a brand-cause fit, perceived value, and trust. International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 1-23.

Greenberg, J. (2012). Buckets of Cure: Do the Benefits of Cause-Related Marketing Outweigh the Costs? Issue 3.

Guerreiro, J., Rita, P., & Trigueiros, D. (2016). A text mining-based review of cause-related marketing literature. Journal of Business Ethics, 139(1), 111-128.

Hanitzsch, T., & Vos, T. P. (2018). Journalism beyond democracy: A new look into journalistic roles in political and everyday life. Journalism, 19(2), 146-164.

He, H., Zhu, W., Gouran, D., & Kolo, O. (2016). Moral identity centrality and cause-related marketing. European Journal of Marketing.

Hensley, C., Diddi, S., & Hyllegard, K. (2019). Millennial Consumers’ Responses to Cause-Related Marketing in Support of LGBTQ Homeless Youth. Social Sciences, 8(8), 240.

IRA, A., & Mt, R. (2001). Representing minorities: Canadian media and minority identities. Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes Ethniques au Canada, 33(3).

Mason, L. E., Krutka, D., & Stoddard, J. (2018). Media literacy, democracy, and the challenge of fake news. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 10(2), 1-10.

Sanclemente-Téllez, J. C. (2017). Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Moving between broadening the concept of marketing and social factors as a marketing strategy. The Spanish journal of marketing-ESIC, 21, 4-25.

Schudson, M. (2017). How to think normatively about news and democracy. The Oxford Handbooks of Political Communication, 95.

Patel, J. D., Gadhavi, D. D., & Shukla, Y. S. (2017). Consumers’ responses to cause-related marketing: moderating influence of cause involvement and scepticism on attitude and purchase intention. International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 14(1), 1-18.