s is a convenient view for business leaders who think there should be two sets of moral standards: one for public life and one for private life.’(Kotler, Armstrong, Saunders, Wong page 65). Therefore the judgment of a marketer and his/her character will affect his/her actions; making possible the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ marketing. Moreover, if the manager is a ‘utilitarian’, he/she would consider as a moral principle the one that will maximize the greatest benefits for the greatest number of people. On the other hand if the manger is an ethical formalism he/she will decide whether a principle is moral or immoral, according to his/her intentions. The manager can also use other information to decide how to act. However the best test for a manager, proposed by Tsalikis and Fritsche, to make sure that his/her marketing actions are moral, is to ask himself/herself if he/she would feel comfortable in explaining his/her action to a national television audience. However, because of the variety of ethic opinions, firms form a similar set of ethics, called codes of behavior or codes of ethics, which ‘is a written, distinct and formal document which consists of moral standards used to guide employee or corporate behavior’. They require a corporate commitment and must be components of the corporate culture. Codes of ethics can be structured in a free market system operating within a legislative regime or imposed by corporations in the form of self-regulations. (Schwarz, page 2).They exist in the majority of large companies in United States, United Kingdom, in Canada, Germany and France, for the provision of consistent normative standards, for the decrease of unethical behavior, for the avoidance of legal consequences and for the promotion of public image. Fortunately the prevalence of these codes increase as governments, industry and professional associations and special in...
