Pepsico: Ethics and Product Consumption Paper

Ethics and Product Consumption Paper

BUS 431

August 23, 2015

Glenna Twing

INTRODUCTION

PepsiCo, when you hear that name you conjure up thoughts of soda pop, pop, cola, and on some occasions you think of Coca Cola due to the raging rivalry between the two cola companies.  Not many think of the ethics behind PepsiCo when you think of the company, so I’ve chosen to write this paper inspired by recent Pepsi commercial versus Coca Cola’s campaign using names in their campaign.

PepsiCo, also known as Pepsi, has a code of global ethics that is downloadable online from the PepsiCo Website.  

It is a colorful report focused on the ethics of the company, from topics such as, lead by example, health and safety, substance abuse, fraud, and ethics in compliance just to name a few topics.  I’ve read some of the topics that I felt would be great to report on, and I’ve read some of the ethics compliance issues that have arose in the media.  

The Six Pillars of Marketing

There are six pillars of marketing code of ethics that are there for companies to abide by, they are honest, responsibility, caring, respect, fairness and citizenship so based on internet searches, PepsiCo makes the list as being one of the most ethical businesses on the planet.  PepsiCo has many brands under its name, Fritolay, Tropicana, Mt. Dew, Gatorade to name a few, these products under PepsiCo are found in over two hundred countries world wide, with a large appearance in the advertising game.  

The first of the six pillars, honesty is considered to be one the foremost ethics that is most important when it comes to the company being at its best for the company and for the employee.  The company should be honest with its managers, managers should be honest with the employees, and employees should be honest with their managers, all to achieve honesty as a company for their consumers and for the company to succeed.

The second, responsibility is best described as responsibilities of the company, the employee and the managers to each other so they can be responsible to the consumer.  By teaching the employees to be responsible, PepsiCo has outlined the responsibilities of the employee, the managers, upper management and the company, the approach of teaching by example they are able to show responsibility from the top, down.  PepsiCo’s reasonability is to the customer, their statement says it all,  “Each employee creates value for our shareholders by putting our company’s interests first, maintaining accurate business records, and protecting and properly using company resources, information and property.” (PepsiCo, 2014) PepsiCo is being responsible to its code of ethics, its employees from the board room to the trade selling employee on the floor level, they are governed by the code of ethics which they abide by globally.