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Top1. Introduction
With the growing concern of companies, forums dedicated to the promotion of ethical practices and models, studies on the subject, the introduction of disciplines in various courses have emerged around the world, which naturally led to the development of the area of business ethics (da Costa et al. 2020; Robertson, Voegtlin & Maak, 2017). For various reasons, business ethics has decisively influenced companies' behavior and respective communication actions, particularly marketing campaigns (Jones, Parker & Ten Bos, 2005). In a society where advertising and brand notoriety and experience are crucial to the SME’s image (Ferrell, et al., 2019; Pina & Dias, 2020), consumer demand is constant and the community's attention to ethical issues is more visible, companies have been forced to change their behaviors and attitudes to ensure a responsible commitment to the community. However, there are still organisations that in their marketing campaigns focus simply on selling their product and attracting the consumer by not respecting ethical principles (Islam, 2020), making the campaigns too aggressive, biased, negligent and sometimes even fraudulent (Dias et al., 2013). Apart from these improper behaviours, organisational commitment is sometimes very delicate or non-existent, there are no institutional norms to direct behaviour, human and material resources and investment is low and not profitable (Duque et al., 2020).
It is therefore essential to approach business ethics in company marketing campaigns in order to understand how the dimensions of ethics relate to types of marketing campaigns and the extent to which they influence the performance of the organisation and the return they can bring at various levels (de Bakker, Rasche & Ponte, 2019). The main objective of this study is to elaborate a guide of commercial ethics in marketing campaigns for SMEs, to evaluate their actions and instill practices conducive to the understanding of the subject, thus properly guiding marketing campaigns according to commercial ethics.
Thus, this study aims to respond to a set of specific objectives, namely: (i) to evaluate the strategic motivations that justify the integration of commercial ethics in marketing campaigns; (ii) to identify types of campaigns; to evaluate the implicit advantages of adopting commercial ethics in marketing campaigns; (iii) to identify the benefits that their adoption brings to the company, stakeholders and society; (iv) to promote the practice of ethical actions in marketing campaigns by organizations and contribute to a greater understanding of the subject.
Thus, to achieve these objectives it will be necessary to define the concepts of ethics, commercial ethics, codes of ethical conduct, marketing, marketing campaigns and SMEs based on the thought of authors who have devoted attention to the themes, the evolution of concepts and the multiple visions defended in academic and business circles over the last decades, seeking a coherent interpretation of the concepts that will allow them to operate in the study and adopt commercial ethics in marketing campaigns of SMEs; identifying the typology and characterization of marketing campaigns; analyzing the process of implementing commercial ethics in marketing campaigns; creating a model guide that will allow implementing the proposed problem.
The article is structured in four parts, such as the literature review on ethics, business ethics, codes of ethical conduct, marketing, marketing campaigns and SMEs, the research methodology (section 3), the development of the guide (section 4). Finally conclusions,, managerial implications for commercial management, as well the limitations and suggestions for future research.