ETHICAL ASPECTS IN PERSONAL SELLING

Ethics refers to a set of moral principles dealing with what is right or wrong. These principles govern most of the actions of individuals and organizations. Ethics is very important in businesses. In the context of personal selling where one to one interaction and relationship building is necessary, ethics plays a major role in sustaining such a relationship. Many people enjoy working in sales because of the autonomy to make decisions, make deals, and satisfy customers. However, with freedom comes the responsibility to act in ethical ways. Salespersons are likely to face ethical dilemmas. Most of the times salespersons work in the field unnoticed and unsupervised. There is no one to keep a check on their activities, whether they are doing working ethically or not. Some of the ethical activities could be with regard to the company and some could be with regard to customers. Salespersons might report inaccurate working hours, inflate sales data and number of calls made. Also, they might provide information to the customer in order to close the sale.

Ethical issues from the company’s Perspective

  1. Misusing companies credit card and expense account: a salesperson must use the credit card only for sales purposes and not for personal purposes. Many salesperson use credit card for dinner, see a show or stay a hotel, bringing spouse or friend on a business trip without permission. The company loses money when a salesperson attaches receipts of money spent on personal purpose.
  2. Reporting Inaccurate working hours: salesman gets freedom in their working as there is no close person to supervise them in their fieldwork. So, the salesperson does not provide actual hours worked but inflate their working hours.
  3. Inflate the number of contact calls: since nobody is watching, the salesperson can exaggerate the number of calls he made, so that he looks busier than other salespersons.
  4. Misusing confidential information: salespersons usually have access to important and confidential information about the company’s policies, products and services. he can misuse this information fr personal benefit.
  5. Unauthorized discounts: it has been observed that on many occasions, to meet their targets and increase sales, salespersons provide unauthorized discounts to customers. This kind of practice results in unnecessary price-cutting and the company has to bear the ultimate loss.
  6. Unethically joining competitors or quitting the job without proper notice: A company spends a lot of time, money and efforts in recruiting and training the salespersons. Such trained salespersons are generally in huge demand and competitive firms may attract them by offering a higher amount of salary. a salesperson should not fall prey of such poaching activities. It is unethical If a salesperson quits the job by getting such an offer and joins other firm and shares secret information about the company.
  7. Stealing the leads and clients of another competitor: there is a cut-throat competition prevailing in the market resulting in sales person’s stealing competitor’s customers and converting them into their customers. Such practices are unethical and unprofessional from a business perspective.

Ethical issues from Customers Perspective

  1. Making false exaggerated claims: a salesperson must not make false and exaggerated claims in order to make sales in case they do not have the complete information asked by the customer, they need not lie and request customer to give them some time to look for it.
  2. Not entertaining customer’s complaints properly: handling complaints is not an easy task. Many times salespersons do not respond to customers queries and complaints wholeheartedly. The customer is not satisfied then it may result in the loss of valuable customer by the company. 3.
  3. Special treatment or discrimination between customers: Ideally, all customers should be treated equally and should be offered equal incentives. But, in practice, salesperson tends to favour some customers, give them extra incentives or discounts. This is an unfair practice; salespeople avoid such practices.
  4. Hiding essential information from customers: The salespersons hide essential information about the negative features of the product. None of the product can be picture perfect, if there are some weaknesses, it’s always better to bring it to the notice of customer with meaningful justification.
  5. Forceful selling or pressure tactics: in order to persuade the customer to purchase the product, the salesperson creates an artificial scarcity of the product and use pressure techniques to compel the customer to purchase the product.
  6. Misleading pricing or fake discounts: if the product price is not clearly mentioned on the pack, the salesperson has the tendency to charge different prices from different customer. They might even inflate the price or give fake discounts to customers and play with their innocence.
  7. Ineffective after-sales services: effective after-sales services is necessary to create a good relationship with customers so that customers get satisfied and remain loyal to the company. It has been observed that in various situations, before selling the product, the salesperson promises various benefits and after-sales service, but once the product is sold they do not fulfil their commitment to the customers

Source: Neeru Kapoor, Personal Selling and Salesmanship

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