Ethical Standards in Beauty Retail Marketing
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Goods in Retail Marketing
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My chosen profession is Retail Marketing, specifically within the beauty industry at Sephora. Retail marketing involves understanding consumer needs, designing product communication, and shaping buying experiences across online and offline touchpoints. It is not only about selling but also about influencing how people choose, evaluate, and relate to products.
Defining Intrinsic Moral Goods
The intrinsic goods of my profession are the aspects valuable in themselves:
- Honest and transparent communication: Allows the customer to understand what they are buying without manipulation.
- Empowering consumers through information: Helps them make decisions according to what they truly need.
- Building trust and long-term relationships: Establishing an essential moral bond between brand and consumer.
- Promoting responsible consumption: Avoiding misleading claims to contribute to overall well-being.
- Stimulating positive social and environmental impact: Improving society through responsible marketing decisions.
Extrinsic Instrumental Goods
Extrinsic goods are external rewards that the profession offers. These include salary and financial stability, career growth and leadership opportunities, professional recognition, and access to innovative technologies and data analytics tools. At Sephora, external goods also include working with international teams and gaining exposure to large-scale campaigns.
Impact on Personal and Social Levels
Personally, intrinsic goods help me grow into a professional guided by honesty, responsibility, and empathy. Extrinsic goods allow me to develop skills and maintain motivation. On an organizational level, responsible marketing strengthens brand reputation and customer loyalty while reducing risks associated with misleading practices. Socially, ethical communication contributes to fairer markets, protects consumer rights, and supports sustainability in the beauty industry.
Core Ethical Values and Rules
The values that should guide my professional practice are: honesty, transparency, responsibility, respect for human dignity, fairness, sustainability awareness, accountability, and data privacy ethics. These values translate into moral rules such as:
- Do not mislead or exaggerate sustainability claims.
- Use consumer data responsibly.
- Never manipulate vulnerabilities for profit.
These principles must guide my decisions so I become not only a technically capable marketer but an ethical one.
Ethical Dilemmas in Retail Marketing
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As a marketing manager at Sephora, I am preparing to launch a new capsule collection positioned as “sustainable.” However, only some items in the capsule are actually made with recycled or responsibly sourced materials, while others follow conventional production. Top management wants a campaign that presents the entire collection as sustainable to maximize sales and reinforce the brand’s sustainable image.
This situation creates a real ethical dilemma with two mutually exclusive options:
Option A: Broad Sustainability Claims
This option focuses on commercial success. It could generate strong sales, improve brand positioning in sustainability trends, and satisfy commercial KPIs and investors. However, this communication may be misleading to consumers, potentially constituting greenwashing. If customers discover the truth, trust could be damaged, resulting in reputational and long-term harm.
Option B: Transparent Communication
This option defends ethical values by clearly communicating which items are sustainable and what percentage of the capsule actually meets sustainability standards. It protects trust and respects consumer dignity, but could reduce marketing appeal and create tension with the management team’s expectations.
Both options protect a moral good: profitability and competitiveness (A) versus honesty and respect for consumers (B). Therefore, the dilemma has no perfect solution; choosing one moral value compromises the other.
Ethical Deliberation and Final Decision
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Stakeholder Impact Analysis
The main stakeholders involved are consumers, the company (Sephora), marketing employees, suppliers, regulators, and society/environment.
Impacts of Option A (Approve broad sustainability claim):
- Positive: Increases sales, strengthens short-term brand perception, and meets commercial goals.
- Negative: Risk of misleading consumers, potential loss of credibility, regulatory issues, moral harm from deception, and long-term customer distrust.
Impacts of Option B (Transparent communication):
- Positive: Respects the dignity and autonomy of customers, maintains trust, builds a long-term reputation, and aligns with sustainability values.
- Negative: Lower initial conversion rate, internal pushback, and slower short-term results.
Mapping these consequences allows me to understand the ethical weight of each option beyond financial KPIs.
Moral Rules and Ethical Evaluation
The moral rules applicable are: avoid deceit, communicate truthfully, respect the consumer’s right to informed choice, avoid manipulation, and support sustainability claims with evidence. A red line appears if a campaign intentionally creates a false impression; this would cross ethical boundaries and become morally unacceptable.
From a deontological perspective, truthfulness is a duty; therefore, Option B aligns better with moral rules. From a consequentialist perspective, Option B may produce better long-term outcomes even if sales dip initially. From a virtue ethics perspective, choosing transparency shapes me into a courageous and responsible professional. Option A may appear attractive technically but is morally weak.
The Prudent Golden Mean Decision
The most ethical and professionally wise decision is to follow Option B, but strategically—not rejecting marketing appeal, but reframing it honestly. Instead of saying “sustainable collection,” the campaign could highlight: “Discover our sustainable pieces—first steps towards a more responsible beauty future.”
Concrete Implementation Plan
- Transparent product labels: Specify which items are sustainable and at what percentage.
- Positive narrative: Celebrate progress instead of exaggerating achievements.
- Roadmap: Commit publicly to increasing sustainable sourcing over upcoming seasons.
- Team alignment: Train store staff with clear information to avoid miscommunication.
- Supplier engagement: Prioritize partnerships with sustainable producers.
- Monitoring: Track consumer response and adjust communication honestly.
This strategy balances ethics with commercial logic—transparency without losing the value proposition—representing the golden mean.
Final Professional Reflection
Choosing transparency reflects the professional I want to become: someone who values integrity over short-term gains. Ethical marketing does not mean selling less, but selling honestly. My goal is to influence consumers responsibly, build lasting trust, and contribute to a more sustainable beauty industry. In retail marketing, success should be measured not only in sales but also in the positive impact we create.