Topic: Deceptive Advertising
Characters: George Hansen, General Manager, Augusta Marigold Inn, Subsidiary of Hospitality Enterprises Sharon Coombs, Food Services Manager, Augusta Marigold Inn
George Hansen is General Manager for the Marigold Inn in Augusta, Georgia. Sharon Coombs is Restaurant and Food Services Manager for the Inn. She reports to George. T wo years ago, Sharon noticed a decline in room service business, the highest margin portion of her operation. This decline coincided with an increase in the national sales of pizza delivery and carryout firms as well as an increase in the number of empty pizza boxes from these firms being left in guest rooms in the Inn. Her immediate response was to install a pizza oven in the kitchen and offer room service pizza to guests. The effort met with modest success, though it was well below her expectations. Questionnaires completed by departing guests revealed a problem of product quality.
Focusing on this problem, Sharon improved the Inn’s pizza until blind taste tests judged it at least equal in quality to the products of the two major pizza delivery competitors in Augusta. Sales did not improve, convincing Sharon that the problem was a perceived mismatch between the hotel’s image and guests’ expectations of pizza makers. Guests simply did not seem to believe that the traditional steak and seafood restaurant at the Inn could make a high-quality, authentic pizza. Based on this conclusion, Sharon presented the following proposal to George:
“Sales of room service pizza are stagnant due to guests’ misperception that our product is lower in quality than that of competitors. This misperception is based on the belief that until we disassociate our pizza from the Marigold Inn name. Therefore, to capture more room service pizza business, we should create a ‘Napoli Pizza’ image for our guest room delivery service by:
How should George respond to this proposal?
Author: Fred L. Miller, Associate Professor of Marketing, Murray State University
What Are the Relevant Facts?
What Are the Ethical Issues?
Who Are the Primary Stakeholders?
What Are the Possible Alternatives?
What Are the Ethics of the Alternatives?
of the issue relative to their perceptions of the requirement of the Code.
What Are the Practical Constraints?
What Actions Should Be Taken?
Ask students how the discussion of the AMA Code of Ethics and the right of free consent has affected their identification and analysis of alternatives.