1. Understanding Expressions: give the best explanation for each of these phrases used in the text.

Marketing strategies; marketing practice; supporting elements; “Marketing Mix”; retailing; end-user's needs and wants; point-of-sale placement or retailing; publicity; personal selling; to govern the communication medium.

2. According to the text, mark these statements t (true) or f (false).

1. Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as a paid form of public presentation and expressive promotion of ideas aimed at masses.

2. Marketing practice tends to be seen only as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling.

3. Marketing Mix contains 4 “P”- elements: product, price, place and promotion.

4. The product aspects of marketing deal with setting a price for a product.

5. A brand is a name or symbol which makes an association with a product in customers' minds.

6. Marketing always seeks to manipulate our values and behaviour in a dishonest way.

7. Ethics of production deals with price discrimination, anti-competitive practices, pyramid scheme.

8. Relations between the employer and the employee are regulated by the ethics of human resource management.

3. Give the best definition for each of these economic terms.

Advertising, marketing, warranties, guarantees, pricing, branding, sales promotion, intellectual property, a trademark, industrial espionage, company's performance, a grey market, price discrimination, anticompetitive practice, patents.

4. Choose the variant that best explains the idea of the sentence below.

Marketing may seek to manipulate our values and behaviour. To some extent the society regards this as acceptable, but where is the ethical line to be drawn?

1. The society does not accept any manipulations with its citizens' values and behaviour.

2. The society accepts manipulations with its citizens' values and behaviour up to certain limits.

3. Any manipulations with human values and behaviour are acceptable.

5. Give profound answers to the following questions.

1. What is marketing? What is its objective? Its role and practice?

2. What is a “Marketing Mix”?

3. Why is the society concerned with business ethics?

4. What is branding?

5. What is trademark infringement?

6. Practise reading §5 and §6. Translate them into Russian. Give a short summary of the passage.

C. How the text is organised

1. What do these words refer to in the text?

1) you (§ 1); 2) others (§ 1); 3) it (§ 2); 4) this (§ 5); 5) that (§ 5).

3. Find the paragraphs of the text dealing with the following concepts.

1) 4 P's; 2) intellectual property; 3) PRM; 4) marketing techniques; 5) PR ethics; 5) Marketing Mix; 6) placement and promotion; 7) marketing practice; 8) business ethics.

V. Additional Reading

Read the following texts to learn more about the problem under discussion.

Should Business Be Socially Responsible?

In the increasingly conscience-focused marketplaces of the 21st century, the demand for more ethical business processes and actions is increasing. Charity activities, investing money into social and spiritual spheres of life have become rather popular among businessmen. Most of them are widely discussed and highly spoken of by the media.

We are not to discuss what true motives these people have. Do they really tend to give a hand to those who are in need, or do they just advertise their business and personalities? The question would remain without an answer. Every case is particular. Charity is a good thing, but social responsibility of business lies not only in charity and other social campaigns. Social responsibility lies in daily routine work performed not only by the business owners but employees of all ranks.

Each of us is responsible for the things we are doing in our lives, no matter how famous or ordinary we are and how important or trivial our actions may be. Only an ignorant and narrow-minded person can think that he is able to live on his own and his life, in its turn, does not affect others. Simple things taught by the major world religions can be explained by social sciences nowadays. Don't do the wrong, otherwise it will return to yourself. Keep off doing harm to anybody even for the sake of the biggest profit – it is the basic principle which makes man be man. We all live in a system, and any individual wrong, no matter being noticed ore ignored by others, leads to distortion. A number of small distortions may lead to the disruption of the entire system in the long run. The consequences of the wrong you have done may be immediate, and they make you recognize your mistake. But they may also be so remote that you can hardly realize the connection between the two wrongs – done by yourself and done to yourself.

Most of educated businessmen seem to be aware of such things. But the way of perception may change as soon as big money comes your way. Appeals to conciseness get helpless. In order to keep social system functioning, people agreed to establish a set of judicial norms known as business ethics. It includes a number of issues. For example, general business ethics overlaps with the concept, that if a company's main purpose is only to maximize the returns to its shareholders. The noted economist Milton Friedman was a leading proponent of this view. He suggests that the principal purpose of a business is to maximize returns to its owners, or in the case of a publicly-traded concern, its shareholders. Thus, under this view, only those activities that increase profitability and shareholder value should be encouraged, because any others function as a tax on profits. His supporters also believe that the only companies that are likely to survive in a competitive marketplace are those that place profit maximization above everything else. However, most of them point out that self-interest would still require a business to obey the law and adhere to basic moral rules, because the consequences of failing to do so could be very costly in fines, loss of licensure, or company reputation.

Can a business be socially responsible? If it can be then what criteria does it need to ensure that it is perceived in this manner? For each business it must be a different measure. After all, each business is trying to reach different goals. Fortunately, nowadays most theorists and businessmen contend that a business has moral duties that extend well beyond serving the interests of its owners or stockholders, and that these duties consist of more than simply obeying the law. They believe a business has moral responsibilities to so-called stakeholders, people who have an interest in the conduct of the business, which might include employees, customers, vendors, the local community, or even society as a whole. They would say that stakeholders have certain rights with regard to how the business operates, and some would suggest that this includes even rights of governance.