Article Review

Select an article from Business Source Premier (Nielson Library) that deals with some marketing issues. The article should be very current (from either this month or last month). Refer to the text chapter titles and heading if you need topic suggestions. Make sure to include the article as an attachment or include the URL so I am able to refer to the article. Read the article several times to grasp the major points. 

Article Review: Bhattacharya, C. (2016). Responsible Marketing: Doing Well by Doing Good. Responsible Marketing, 8(1), 9-17.

Summary

The title of the article is “Responsible Marketing: Doing Well by Doing Good” and as the name suggests, it primarily targets the marketing practices ongoing and how they can be made better in different terms. The author argues that primarily the main objective of the marketing has been about profit maximization, in the traditional terms. This objective is primarily the company centric and it does not have anything to do with the various social factors which are influenced by the marketing practices of these companies.

Article suggests that this dilemma is connected with sustainable development and used to demonstrate issues around economic slowdown in emerging economies, environmental protection and global warming. The research study uses results in different sections (tables) where different important findings are discussed. In table 1, the findings are presented in terms of “More value by sharing value: Using a triple bottom line” where it shows that business value and social or environmental values can go hand in hand. This research also suggests that value can come from two basic routes: direct and indirect. A company can, for example, streamline its operations and renovate its physical facilities to be more “green” and energy efficient. Figure three quotes the findings in terms of corporate social responsibility that how the three levers that drive CSR return and they include the unity, usefulness and understanding. In the end, the researcher also opens new questions for future researches that one may ask at this point that despite all this research on sustainability and corporate responsibility, why aren’t more companies able to bring the triple bottom line to life and drive business value via socio-environmental initiatives?

In the end, the article discusses the 4 Cs for making CSR activities successful followed by the case study example of Unilever which is a success based on sustainability.

Analysis / Opinion

As the title of the article suggests, it can be said as a very important study for the marketers which discusses the primary norms and values of marketing and advertisement. The findings from this study have primarily focused on the thing that the sole aim of marketing should not be about profit and revenue generation but companies should also take care of various social actors and factors which are impacted and influenced by the companies’ actions.

The findings of the article are presented in a very unique and appealing manner where they are divide into different sections discussing different things and important points. In my opinion, the general analysis of these results makes it clear that marketing is not only about revenue generation or grabbing market shares but it is also practice which should be based on the principle of “good marketing” that might not influence the social actors in a negative way.

As a general evaluation of the article and its findings, it can also be said that marketers can use this research as a sample and can conduct more researches on the same topic to address broader and wide domains. In addition to that, the author of the study has also opened a number of new research questions for future researches and other marketers to attract them to find the answers to these questions.

This article is a valuable piece of research work which proposes many important and valuable findings that cannot be neglected or ignored.