Selling ethics

Another moral responsibility of the business is not to put an additional tax on the customers by way of inferior and poor services. A sale involves not selling only, it is explicit in marketing but the implicit is that the business is to serve the needs of the customers, in gross and subtle ways together. Unarguably, there are both physical and psychological costs attached to every buying. In addition to the money one spends and the physical effort he/she exerts, added along with these there involves a meaningful investment in their expectations of the products and services and how the business is going to fulfil them also. Breach of them is very criminal in nature as it stands equal to looting and exploiting their money and conscience. 

Corporate governance in modern parlance means setting out everything in favour of the customers and the rest of the participants by fine-tuning and being flexible to the situations and eventualities the business faces and thereby becoming a socially responsible corporate entity. A view and perspective that are contained only within the four corners of its business cannot help the management to score over the testing times. The style of a business is pathetically archaic, poor and worn-out when it speaks a language that is always inimical and detrimental for the customers and poles apart from their expectations, though it sells off a product that is remarkable in the present market conditions. When the whole or any sub-system behaves contrary to the wants and needs of the customers, an altogether inevitable “rupture” occurs between what the business has promised and delivered. 

Marketing never happens without committing some promises to the prospective customers. Conscious of this imminent rift and rupture, the customers easily feel the need to come out of this “pin-down” situation by opting out of this product or service. The kind of plague that haunts the customers is when the market is depleting with competitive elements where the roost is ruled by this solo player. The customers are deprived of choices in the market and exploitation which is a natural outcome of that condition is further reinforced by the present player in the market. This lone survivor (read monopolist) is critically enjoying the plight of the customers by merely branding them as “time-wasters”. As a rule rather than the exception, a tendency is being thrown into the ring which facilitates more and more bureaucratic lifestyles within the organization which altogether speaks a different and harmful language to the customers and gradually but steadily amassing every prowess to pull every progress back. 

Even the best of the human-asset becomes a run–of–the–mill character in the not-so-long-run. Inside environment becomes a fertile land for average affairs and a rampant tendency to make them an undeletable agenda becomes a commonplace subject instead of paving the way for skipping out of the routine to find solutions to the escalating problems encountered by the two classes of customers.   Running a small restaurant is not dissimilar to managing a mighty MNC, there all humans are involved as customers, employees and other stakeholders. “If you want to tax the customers, run the business bad”, because every bad business decision or it is “business as usual” affects the two classes equally well either directly or otherwise. 

Figures speak but they never speak specifically about the value of services or the loyalty with which the buyer is attached to the product/service until and unless the customer becomes a frontline runner in propagating the real worth of its utility and sustainability of that loyalty. The business that leaves the customers in the lurch after everything is being milked out from them stands a sure case to be really questionable in ethics and integrity and must surely be a subject matter of legal scrutiny in all aspects irrespective of the economic system it represents.