Ethical and sustainable marketing

Ethics, sustainability and the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have gained enormous attention in today's (business) world. However, ethics and sustainability present many challenges for marketing practioners. To address these topics, the course is organized in two main parts :

• (1) ethics and social responsibility in marketing ;
• (2) the marketing of sustainability and social responsibility, with a focus on CSR communication and consumer responses to CSR.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:

• Understand what ethics and social responsibility mean in marketing and communication
• Identify the main challenges that marketing practioners face with respect to the development, communication, and evaluation of ethical and responsible practices
• Take a critical stance toward companies’ ethical and unethical marketing practices
• Understand consumers’ responses to CSR and how it influences the perceived credibility of CSR communication
• Take a critical stance toward various CSR communication campaigns and, in particular, recognize the risks of greenwashing as well as the opportunities linked to a well-designed CSR communication strategy
• Put theory into practice by formulating relevant recommendations and ideas to improve existing marketing practices and CSR communication campaigns

• Theory
• Case discussions and exercises

Références, bibliographie et lectures recommandées

There are no mandatory textbook for this course. However, the content of the course will in part be based on :

• Belz F.-M. and Peattie K. (2012), "Sustainability Marketing", 2nd edition, Wiley. 
• Bhattacharya CB, Sen S., and Korschun D. (2011), "Leveraging corporate responsibility", Cambridge University Press. 
• Eagle L. and Dahl S. (2015), Marketing ethics & society", Sage. 

Additional readings may be provided on UV course website. 
 

Support(s) de cours

• Université virtuelle

Contacts

Catherine Janssen (catherine.janssen@ulb.be)
Teaching assistants: Jérémy Tourrette (Jeremy.Tourrette@ulb.be) and Natacha Kahan (natacha.kahan@ulb.be)

Campus

Solbosch

Méthode(s) d'évaluation

• Examen écrit
• Travail de groupe
• Autre

Examen écrit

Travail de groupe

Autre

Continuous assessment : exercises and case studies

Construction de la note (en ce compris, la pondération des notes partielles)

1st session: 10% continuous assessment, 60% group assignments, 30% exam
There will be 2 group assignments during the semester. The objectives of the group assignments are to assess students' ability to analyze concrete cases and make relevant recommendations. 
The objective of the final exam is to assess students' knowledge of the course content. 

2nd session: 100% individual assignment(s)

Langue(s) d'évaluation

• anglais