Mattel's Marketing Ethics and Manufacturing Accountability
This paper analyzes the ethical responsibilities of Mattel, a major toy manufacturer, in two interconnected areas: marketing to children and overseeing overseas manufacturing. It discusses the heightened ethical standards that apply when targeting child consumers, drawing on the role psychologists play in helping marketers understand children's psychology. The paper evaluates Mattel's response to the lead paint contamination crisis involving Chinese suppliers, assessing the company's proactive steps and residual gaps in its Global Manufacturing Principles. It concludes with recommendations for strengthening supplier contracts and product testing protocols to prevent future safety failures.
- Marketing Ethics and Children as Consumers: Ethical standards required when marketing to children
- Mattel's Ethical Track Record and Supplier Oversight: Mattel's compliance record and response to lead paint
- Gaps in Mattel's Global Manufacturing Principles: Product safety omissions in Mattel's manufacturing guidelines
- Accountability for Chinese Production and the Lead Paint Crisis: Mattel's responsibility for Chinese supplier output
- Recommendations for Preventing Future Safety Failures: Two-level controls to prevent tainted products reaching market
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What makes this paper effective
- It connects two distinct ethical dimensions — marketing practices and supply chain accountability — into a unified argument about corporate responsibility.
- It uses specific evidence, including the Ethisphere survey, Mattel's Global Manufacturing Principles, and the lead paint recall, to ground its claims in real corporate history.
- It moves logically from analysis to concrete, actionable recommendations, giving the paper a practical policy orientation.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied ethical analysis: it does not simply describe what happened but evaluates corporate conduct against an ethical standard (heightened duty of care toward children) and identifies exactly where that standard was not met. The identification of two distinct failure points — inadequate contract specifications and insufficient pre-market product testing — shows precise, layered causal reasoning rather than generic criticism.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by establishing the special ethical context of marketing to children, then assesses Mattel's overall compliance record before narrowing to the specific lead paint incident. It critiques the omission of product-input safety from the company's manufacturing principles and closes with dual recommendations targeting both contractual and procedural controls. This funnel structure — from broad ethical context to specific corrective action — is a characteristic feature of applied business ethics writing.
Marketing Ethics and Children as Consumers
Manufacturers of products aimed at children carry a special ethical obligation with respect to both their products and the marketing of those products. Considerable controversy has erupted over advertising directed at children. Children are impressionable, and while they are not the gatekeepers who control household spending, it is important to ensure that products marketed to them are not detrimental to their wellbeing. As Clay (2000) notes, a key source of controversy arises when psychologists help marketers understand children's minds in order to sell to them more effectively. For most people, a different standard of ethics must be applied when marketing to children, and this is something that marketers at Mattel need to keep in mind.
For Mattel, marketing to children is a business necessity, but the company must recognize that despite divided opinions on the issue, most consumers believe marketing to children should be conducted to the highest ethical standards so that no harm comes to children as a result of those efforts.
Mattel's Ethical Track Record and Supplier Oversight
The Ethisphere survey indicates that Mattel has likely performed well with respect to managing ethics at its suppliers. The lead paint issue is one area, however, that the company could have foreseen. Since that incident, Mattel has not only remedied the situation with its Chinese suppliers but has built a strong subsequent record. The company moved proactively to institute changes to its suppliers' ethics policies and has become more dedicated to enforcing its mandates (Magno, 2008). Overall, Mattel has a strong track record, and when a mistake was made the company appears to have addressed it in a proactive manner.
Gaps in Mattel's Global Manufacturing Principles
Mattel maintains a detailed set of global manufacturing principles covering a range of categories: management systems, wages and working hours, and several other human resource areas (Mattel, 2011). Notably, the lead paint issue is not addressed within these principles, as it pertains directly to manufacturing products that are safe for consumers to use. The use of product inputs that are safe for children is therefore something that should be added to Mattel's global manufacturing principles.
It is surprising that the company's most significant ethical manufacturing failure is not explicitly covered in its own guiding framework. That gap can and should be remedied, and doing so would be the most important recommendation at this point, given that a wide range of potential human resources issues have already been addressed within the existing principles.
Works Cited
Clay, R. (2000). Advertising to children: Is it ethical? American Psychological Association. Retrieved December 19, 2011 from
Magno, F. (2008). Outsourcing production or moving away the locus of ethical accountability? Some findings about product safety. 8th Conference on Business and Economics, Florence, Italy. Retrieved December 19, 2011.
Mattel. (2011). Global manufacturing principles. Mattel.com. Retrieved December 19, 2011 from
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