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Abstract
This paper addresses ethical and cross-cultural issues in brand positioning. Five basic elements of brand positioning - Brand Identity, Brand Image, Brand Personality, Brand Awareness, and Brand Communication are identified. These elements of brand positioning and their associated variables are defined and blended with ethical and cross-cultural issues. After generating a statistically significant framework, a predictive model is developed. This paper is based on the core idea that ethics can be used as a product differentiator and can create a strategic advantage. The framework emerges after studying top ten Indian brands in India in different sectors. The Anchor case study is important from the managerial point of view as it serves a step by step guide to position the brand in an integrated and ethical manner.
Keywords: Brand Positioning, Ethics, Brand Identity, Anchor
Introduction
Marketing has been a more frequent target of criticism for unethical business activities than any other functional area of business. One source speculates that higher the frequency of public interaction, higher the tendency to focus on marketing as a target of criticism (Ferrell and Gresham 1985). As marketing involves more direct contact with high public visibility than the other functional areas, it remains in focus for unethical practices (Swan and Nolan 1985; Swan, Trawick and Silva 1985). In the past few decades, an increasing amount of attention has been devoted to ethics in business in general and marketing in particular (Malhotra 1998). Marketing managers have become ethically more sensitive, and they are largely convinced that customers and the public expect them to act in a morally acceptable way. Most marketers express their moral commitment as well as the conviction that ethical conduct is mandatory to establish trust. This is consistent with general marketing theory, which holds that all exchanges are based on trust (Kotler 2003), and that conflicts are likely to result if buyers and sellers are not in agreement with respect to their ethical mindsets (Lee 1981). Where conflicts exist, trust will not grow. Without trust, in turn, the exchange process ceases and marketing relationships cannot develop (Morgan and Hunt, 1994).
Compatibility of ethical values held by the exchange partners is thus a central prerequisite for trust and persistent relationships (Ferrell, Gresham, and Fraedrich 1989) the behavior...