Ethical Business

Ethical Business

Environmentally produced products can provide higher profit margins if the companies environmental practices are marketed in a way that makes customers aware of them (and aware of their competitors lack of ethics).  Do you believe this is true, and why?

It all depends; in some cases the cost for following environmental practices could be enormous.   Much of the cost/benefit analysis is going to depend on the industry and marginal cost that will be incurred as its production becomes more environmentally friendly

As ethical business becomes more and more widespread, do you think this advantage will disappear?

No, I believe there will always be the ethical business and the unethical business, which will always produce a gap in the price premium ethical companies can charge.

What was particularly interesting to me was the question "were customers will to pay more for a good that was 100% ethically produced vs. 50% or 25% ethically produced?"  Is this really all about marketing and less about ethical management?  What is the impact of data like this?  Could a company choose to only use 25% ethical production, because investing to get to 50% does not provide enough payback?

This relates back to my comment on the first question, it is hard to analysis this concept without knowing exactly how much the additional cost is going to be for each increase in ethical behavior. 

Also, of another thought that comes to mind when reading this article is how the consumers behavior fluctuates and its relationship to how the overall economy is doing.  As a consumer a few years ago, the economy had a gloomy outlook, high unemployment, etc. at this point I would assume consumers will fall more towards the median regardless of how ethical the company was then if the economy was in a upswing.