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For responsibility, MTRC failed to accept the consequences of their marketing decisions and strategies. MTRC rushed to build more “inflated flats” before new measures, which limit the inflation to 10%, come into effect. The floor area of these “inflated flats” inflated as high as 50%. Although it is a common practice that developers introduce “inflated flats” to make more profit, the common inflation is not as high as 50%.
After the new measures were announced, MTRC even rushed to build more “inflated flats” before the new measures take effect. It forced the public to accept the “inflated flats” because the government is unable to change the terms of the tendered projects (Too late to halt MTRC plans for `inflated flats,’ says Lam 2010). Instead of serving the needs of customers, MTRC forced the public to accept the flats. According to AMA, this practice is unethical as MTRC is not responsible for the customers’ needs.
In terms of transparency, MTRC failed to create a spirit of openness in marketing operations. Although the MTR has already disclosed the number of rail cracks, it did not report all the incidents to the public. MTRC only chose to report those cracks which cause service disruptions. For those cracks that did not cause any service disruptions, MTRC just reported them to the government (Ho 2011b). Even when the rail operator announced the train delay, the reason for delay was just “track problems”.
It did not tell the public about the extent of damage (Wong, M. and Wan, A. 2011). According to AMA, this is not transparent enough. In order to be more transparent, MTRC should report all the incidents to the public instead of just report them to the government. Not only should MTRC report every incident to the public, it should also provide details about the inspection process for each incident. It should communicate clearly with the public.