In Response to M-Blog

"Should John smith sell the names?  Also, Does the AMA Statement of Ethics address this issue?  What in the Statement relates to John Smith's dilemma?"

John should not sell the names of the people interested in buying a new car in the next 12 months.  The American Marketing Association does address this. Selling the names would be in clear violation of fostering trust in the marketing system.  Participants of the study did not know that their information would be sold to unknown people, this would cause people to not trust any marketing surveys.  It would also violate the ethical value of honesty and fairness, by not striving to be trustful in all situations and by not  seeking to protect the private information of customers, employees and partners. On American Marketing Association website they state that marketers need to:


"Embrace ethical values: This means building relationships and enhancing consumer confidence in the integrity of marketing by affirming these core values: honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency and citizenship."

John Smith is in clear violation of AMA's statement of ethics!  His business might be failing but that does not mean that it is ethically correct to sell confidential information to earn a profit for his business.  
What would you do in this situation?  

Comcast's New Streampix

Comcast has begun to market a new streaming services that is going to rival Netflix's, and using a very simple marketing strategy to gain new customers.   Anyone who already pays for Comcast Xfinity can use the video streaming service for free.  For everyone else it is only 4.99 a month which is huge competition against Netflix which starts at 7.99 a month.   Most of the video's available will be older T.V shows, which is very popular among video streaming websites.

 Do you think Comcast will be able to compete against Netflix who already has a solid base of customers? 
Is their simple marketing strategy of making their product cost less than Netflix enough to make them successful?