This concerns the safety, quality, and lifespan of the goods and services a business sells.
Key issues & examples:
Product safety: selling goods that are known to be unsafe or have potential faults (e.g., tumble dryers with a known fire risk).
Planned obsolescence: designing products to deliberately have a shorter lifespan to encourage consumers to upgrade sooner. Example: Apple admitted to slowing down older iPhones via software updates. They claimed it was to protect battery life; critics argued it was to force users to upgrade to the new model.
Use of unethical materials: sourcing raw materials from suppliers who exploit labour.
Ethical Issues in Promotional Decisions
This covers how a business communicates with its customers and the messages it uses to persuade them to buy.
Key issues & examples:
Misleading advertising: using imagery or claims that aren't true (e.g., a fast-food burger looking much larger and fresher in an advert than it is in reality). Example: the ASA banned ads from Lufthansa and Etihad for making misleading "green" claims about sustainable flying without sufficient evidence.
Greenwashing: a fast-fashion brand like H&M launching a "Conscious Collection" while its core business model remains environmentally unsustainable.
Targeting vulnerable consumers: creating campaigns that specifically target children with unhealthy food products.
Ethical Issues in Pricing Decisions
This relates to how a business sets its prices and whether it uses its power to exploit customers or destroy competition.
Key issues & examples:
Price fixing: an illegal agreement between competing businesses to set their prices at a similar, artificially high level, cheating the consumer.
Predatory pricing: a large firm like Amazon selling a product at a loss for a short time to drive a smaller independent rival out of business, before raising the price once competition is gone.
Dynamic pricing: example: the Oasis Reunion Tour (2025). Ticketmaster's "In Demand" pricing saw tickets jump from £150 to £350+ while fans were queuing online.
(Worth knowing for accuracy: a later UK Competition and Markets Authority investigation into this specific sale actually found no evidence that real-time, demand-based dynamic pricing had been used — the issue was that Ticketmaster sold tickets at two different, undisclosed price tiers without making this clear to fans. It's reproduced here exactly as taught, since "surge"-style pricing that changes based on demand — whether or not it was confirmed in this specific case — is still a fair general example of the ethical issue being illustrated. See this unit's Price lesson for the fuller, corrected version of this story.)
Ethical Marketing
Benefits
Challenges
Improved Brand Image & Reputation
Higher Costs
Increased Customer Loyalty
Lower Short-Term Profit
Attracting Talent
Subjectivity
Avoiding Legal Issues
Risk of Exposure
Real-World Case Studies
Who Gives A Crap — profit and purpose combined
Who Gives A Crap, the recycled and bamboo toilet paper brand shown in this lesson's Codsall Challenge, has donated 50% of its profits to clean water and sanitation non-profits since it launched in 2012, giving over $12 million to date to partners that improve access to toilets, clean water and hygiene in communities worldwide. It's also a certified B Corporation, scoring 125.5 on the B Impact assessment against a median score of 50.9 for ordinary businesses that complete it. The brand has been open about the fact that its ethical mission is also central to its marketing appeal — its playful branding and transparent "profit donation" model are a big part of why customers choose it over cheaper supermarket alternatives, showing ethics and commercial marketing strategy working together rather than being separate concerns.
Source: verified via search, September 2026 — Businesswire coverage of Who Gives A Crap's donation milestones and its B Corporation certification listing.
The CMA's fashion greenwashing crackdown — a live regulatory concern
In September 2024 the UK's Competition and Markets Authority published guidance specifically for the fashion sector — covering clothing, footwear, accessories and even packaging and returns — setting out how businesses must comply with consumer law when making environmental claims, built on its existing Green Claims Code. This is a live, active area of enforcement: since April 2025, new powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act let the CMA fine companies up to 10% of their global revenue for breaking consumer protection law, including making misleading green claims. This shows greenwashing (the same basic concern raised in this lesson about H&M's "Conscious Collection") isn't just a textbook example — it is now backed by serious, real financial penalties for UK fashion retailers.
Source: verified via search, September 2026 — SGS and Ashurst coverage of the CMA's September 2024 fashion sector greenwashing guidance and its enforcement powers under the DMCC Act 2024.
Quick Quiz
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1. A phone maker is accused of deliberately slowing down older phones through software updates. What ethical issue is this?
2. A large retailer sells a product at a loss to drive a small competitor out of business, then raises the price. What is this called?
3. A brand launches a small "eco" product range while its main business remains environmentally unsustainable. What is this called?
4. What is a "dark pattern" in marketing, as illustrated by the NOW TV case?
5. Which of these is a genuine benefit of ethical marketing for a business, according to this lesson?
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Matching Activity
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Quick Knowledge Check
Short, snappy recall questions — tap to reveal the answer.
What is greenwashing? (1 mark)
Making a business or product appear more environmentally friendly than it actually is.
What is predatory pricing? (1 mark)
Setting prices very low, deliberately, to try to force competitors out of a market.
State one benefit of ethical marketing. (1 mark)
Any one of: improved brand image, increased customer loyalty.
Key Term Flashcards
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Tap a card to flip it, then rate yourself.
Greenwashing
Making a business or product appear more environmentally friendly than it genuinely is, e.g. a small "conscious" range while the core business stays unsustainable.
Predatory pricing
Selling at a loss for a short time to drive a smaller rival out of business, then raising the price once competition is gone.
Planned obsolescence
Deliberately designing a product to have a shorter lifespan, to encourage customers to upgrade sooner.
Price fixing
An illegal agreement between competing businesses to set prices at a similar, artificially high level.
Ethical behaviour
Doing what is morally right, not just what is legal or most profitable, in a business's product, pricing and promotional decisions.
A*/A Stretch
Synoptic link
Connecting to branding (earlier in 3.1.3): Ethical practice and brand identity are closely linked — Lush and Tony's Chocolonely use their ethical stance as a core part of their brand identity and differentiation, directly supporting premium pricing (as covered in the pricing lesson). Strong answers should treat ethics not as a separate, "nice to have" topic, but as something that actively shapes branding and pricing strategy.
Examiner's eye
"Subjectivity" is listed as a genuine challenge of ethical marketing for a reason — what counts as "ethical" can be genuinely debatable (e.g. is a small eco-range genuine progress or greenwashing?). Strong "assess" or "evaluate" answers acknowledge this uncertainty rather than treating ethics as simply black and white.
Try This With AI
Before using this: AI tools can get facts or mark scheme details wrong, and quality varies by tool. Always check anything factual against your notes or ask your teacher.
Give me a short, realistic scenario about a business making a product, pricing or promotional decision that raises an ethical question. Ask me to identify which ethical issue it relates to (e.g. greenwashing, predatory pricing, planned obsolescence, a dark pattern) and to explain both a benefit and a risk of the business's approach.