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Marketing Ethics of McDonald’s Introduction Marketing ethical activities refers to values and fundamental principles which can provide guidelines to practices of business criteria that involving in products and services promotion to customers (Business Dictionary, 2012). In recent decades, corporate ethics and social responsibility have become more important of a company. Companies that are engaging in unethically would be disclosed to the society and this may directly damage the image and reputation of a company.
Background McDonald’s Corporation is the largest and first hamburger fast food chain in the world, its services are around 68 million consumers in a day in 119 countries between 35000 outlets (McDonald’s Momentum Delivers Another Year of Strong Results for 2011″. Yahoo Finance. 2012. Retrieved January 25, 2012). And McDonald’s pioneered an innovative business model, which Is franchise in the fast food industry that affecting the following industry development. It aims at providing quality food that McDonald’s customers can trust us their first important priority.
In Hong Kong, they stand by their motto, “I’m Loving’ It”, which means to do business base on customers come first. Although McDonald’s said that they are aiming in producing what the customers want and love, they were also founded that they participated in some unethical and non-social responsibility business activities, and that would be shown as follow. Cruelty to animals A fast-food giant’s secret has been exposed from McDonald’s egg supplier and Spare Egg Farms, McDonald’s are shocking cruelty to animals. The Rotten Truth About Egg Musician, Mercantilism’s) By a hidden-camera set by the animal protection union, they found that chickens are crammed into some crowded cages with not enough space for each hen, so they cannot fully expand its wings or participate in some natural behaviors. Also, without any painkillers, the workers in the farm directly burn off the beaks of chicken babies. Last, for killing the chickens, workers do not use an ethical way, but throw the live chick into a plastic bag to be suffocated.
In our common senses, I think animals should be protected with a minimum of freedom to move, to stretch limbs, to turn around and natural behaviors engaging. From the above facts, McDonald’s has indirectly encouraged the workers of the farms to be harmful to the animals. For McDonald’s these big multinational corporate, they might have a power of enormous to improve the standard of care for raw materials supplies. This is what a company should do for showing their social responsibility, especially these big companies. Food safety problem For a restaurant, the basic requirement is the food provided should be safe.
Not to mention, McDonald’s is a multinational corporate and the leader in the world fast food business, the food safety checking should be most complicated and professional. In recent months before, there is a news came out in Shanghai that is related to McDonald’s. Shanghai Hush Food Co. ,Ltd, which is one of the suppliers of the McDonald’s in Hong Kong, providing some expired meat to the restaurant and supplied to customers. Instead of the food safety problem, this lead to another problem is McDonald’s do not disclose the information to citizens after the accident.
Firstly, they said there is no food is imported from Hush, try to attempt to hide the incident. After media capture the sources of they are getting materials from Shanghai Hush, McDonald’s eventually recognize this incident. In this incident, it shows McDonald’s is not only violating their original purpose, “providing what customers needs”, but also hide the fact of the incident in order to protect self- reputation ad image. This incident leads to many Hong Kong Citizens boycott McDonald’s because they are not showing their social responsibility. Workers’ wage level