Social responsibility is an ethical theory, in which individuals are accountable for fulfilling their civic duty; the actions of an individual must benefit the whole of society. Because sales has been based on getting products sold and using product data as the main vehicle (Tell me who among you has never assumed that because your product is terrific that buyers will know how to buy it…. once you explain it, present it, advertise it, and pitch it brilliantly??), ethics have often been ignored.
Some distinction is to be made between the customer of a business (the individual who tenders payment in exchange for a good) and the consumer of the product (the individual who consumes or uses the product purchased) – especially since the contract exists between the business and the customer, but not between the business and the consumer.
Milton Friedman’s 1970’s article in The New York Times Magazine …