Business Ethics: The Role Of Customers In International Business

In the context of discussion about the corporate social responsibility on the marketplace, the issue is risen about the role of customers in business performance and creation of corporate ethical strategy. It can not be denied that there is a number of other important players on the market, such as sponsors, producers, legislation powers and competitive enterprises. Still consumers are considered to be the most influential and the most important group on the marketplace, at least, due to the basic economic theories. It is stated by professionals in the field of economy that demand creates supply. Such a statement can be paraphrased in the way that it is, actually, the customer, who gives the start point for enterprises, production

Customers have the wide choice of goods and services. Due to such facts, people, widen there lists of demands for producers and entrepreneurships. One of the new demands to the business is ethical behavior. Such an ethical behavior involves many factors. According to Charles Hill: “The most common ethical issues in international business involve employment practices, human rights, environmental regulations, corruption, and the moral obligation of multinational corporations” (Hill, 2009). The contemporary customer is concerned about the policy of company in terms of attitude to the ecology and to employees. One of the reasons for such a position of customers can be named the globalization impact. In the world of cosmopolitism, growing number of population and mass production, people become more concerned about individualism and morality, as far as many issues contradicting those philosophical principles arise, especially, in corporate performance. Ethics of the modern corporations widely imply ethical system of Kantian philosophical study, which is based in the universal ideas of moral law. The aim of the contemporary customer is to put the human being on the top of corporate performance. In realities of the modern business world companies can supply customers’ ethical demands by implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility

The right corporate responsibility strategy can lead to the increase of customers and support relations between the company and the client group on the basis of trust and honesty. The latest and the most widely spread tendency in corporate social responsibility strategy is the orientation on customers of the Bottom of the Pyramid Group. According to Kirk Davidson: “Throughout this decade excitement has continued to build about finding a “fortune at the bottom of the pyramid,” a concept and phrase first introduced by Prahalad and Hart in 2002 and then expanded by Prahalad in 2005” (Davidson, 2009). First of all, such a tendency was adopted by the number of businesses due to increasing concerns about the world poverty. The starting point for massive interest of businesses in the BOP group was the winning of Nobel Peace Prize by Muhammad Yunus. Yunus was the first to open the bank specialized exceptionally on the poorest group of the world population (Yunus, 1999). The pattern of Yunus successful business performance made the number of other entrepreneurships to work out strategies for coming on the BOP group market. It is often claimed that international companies used to be more interested in buying products from the developing countries or to locate their manufactures in those countries, but not to sell their own goods to