Social Responsibility in a Commodity Market free essay sample

And this is almost every product in the world. So the rising fuel prices affect almost every product we buy. Also the fact that it is a finite material, makes it more difficult and puts the consumer under pressure. The whole world depends on petroleum and that is why it is hard for consumers to do without it. 2. How does the information in this case relate to the common criticism that marketing causes prices to be higher than they normally would? In this case I can not find a reason why marketing is causing a higher price. Marketing is only a small percentage of the cost of crude. I think that the cause for the higher prices is due to oil price futures, which are traded on the commodities futures exchange. Depending on what investors think the price of oil – what later will become petrol will be in the future. When traders think oil will be high, they bid it up even higher. We will write a custom essay sample on Social Responsibility in a Commodity Market or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 3. Is ExxonMobil acting responsibly with respect to pricing its product? Can it keep its prices stable (or even lower them) when the market price is increasing? Should it even try? In the text it was explained that there was no evidence found that any wrong doing or anything illegal price manipulation took place. So ExxonMobil is acting with a social obligation the obligation of a business to meet its economic and legal responsibilities and nothing more. Obeying the law is fundamental but it is not sufficient enough to protect the public. When a company is able to gain record profits by increasing their prices in times of crisis, it can not be called a company that actually cares about its customers. So in my opinion, it is not acting responsibly and had more control over the rising prices then we (the consumers) were lead to believe. 4. From the perspective of social responsibility, what role does the consumer play in the price of petrol? The consumer is playing the central role, because the consumer is the one who is demanding. The less consumers demand, the more they will lower the price. From the social responsibility point of view, when a consumer thinks that a company is not acting ethically or socially responsible he or she then could boycott that company and and not buy its products anymore. If a great amount of people would do this, therefore, the whole demand for those companies’ products would be lowered and so would the company’s price for this product do. This is easy said, because the whole world is in need of petrol, but in theory the consumer is the one who creates the demand and so he could control it. 5. How would you â€Å"fix† the problem of rising petrol prices? Consider solutions for different groups including governments, corporations, nonprofit groups, and consumers. What are the advantages and disadvantages of your proposed solutions? From the consumers perspective they should find a way to get together and boycott the products of ExxonMobil to have an influence of their prices. But as above said, it is hard to have an influence on such a powerful company. But theoretically it is possible to decrease the price by decreasing the demand. In my opinion the only ones who have the power to fix the problem are the governments. They should make regulations, so that gas stations cannot rise their prices so easily. The easiest way for the consumer would be to try to use public transportation, bike or to switch over to alternative energies (electric car).