Unethical issues when businesses uses social media the wrong way =( ?

So yes the holidays are coming! I believe that many of us would be taking the chance to take a holiday break to travel. If you are the one doing the travelling bookings, let me ask you this question. Do you check out a hotel that you intend to stay on its hotel website or Trip Advisor?

I’m not sure about you. As for me, I would visit Trip Advisor to check out other’s guests reviews because I would believe their words more than the organization. This is definitely obvious because I believe that organizations might have marketing intent and therefore not reliable in helping me to make a right choice! This is further supported by a survey done by BrightLocal where nearly 80% of consumers trust online review sites and that 75% of them said they would trust a business more with those positive reviews (Epperson, 2014).

1) Cheated

Obviously, organizations would want to then look best at these review sites. Uh huh, this is when there would be issues coming up. There are companies who might pay writers to write good reviews so that other consumers are manipulated to believe and cheated into buying the product (Bates, 2011) . I thought that as a consumer, this would be very unfair and unethical because we are cheated into buying the product – though not so directly.

2) Unhealthy Competition and Online Bullying

Apart from that, businesses might be inclining to have writers to write negative reviews of their competitor’s products and services too. This would result in a series of serious online bullying for both consumers/organizations which could be seen in these 2 examples:

Example 1: Why Trip Advisor is getting bad reviews?

Example 2: Do watch this reality show if you have the time (Shows how misuse of social media brought about serious bullying to Amy’s Baking Company)

Photo Source : Chris Moran, Owners of Amy’s Baking Company Say Yelpers Are Endangering their Lives

You can check out the video here:

3) Slacking away

Also having one of the ethical issues that has to be taken into consideration would be the fact that, employees should use it appropriately. One of the issue raised by Mastercard was that some employees might make use of this opportunity to do personal stuffs while at work due to the nature of their work – “social media” (Meister, Forbes, 2014).

I would like to shamelessly admit that I am one of those culprits in the past. When I was a marketing intern at a particular company, there were times whereby I would do my personal stuffs since I am allowed to be on “social media” to do certain marketing activities for the company :X

THAT’S IT FOR NOW!

References:

Bates, D. (2011, August 22). News. Retrieved from Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2028561/TripAdvisor-How-tell-review-fake.html

Epperson, S. (2014, June 21). News. Retrieved from CNBC: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101773290#.

Meister, J. (2014, March 26). Retrieved from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2014/03/26/social-media-moving-from-danger-to-brand-building-opportunity/

Morran, C. (2013, May 20). Retrieved from Consumerist: http://consumerist.com/2013/05/20/owners-of-amys-baking-company-say-yelpers-are-endangering-their-lives/