Ethics in Marketing Research

The most important characteristics required to maintain a strong and growing relationship between an organization and a marketing research organizations are:

1.       Client confidentiality

2.       Honesty

These two are a representation of the all encompassing factor of ethics in the filed of marketing research. Ethics and ethical behavior is not just a one way phenomenon, with all the participants i.e. clients, suppliers, and well as field services equally responsible.

Ethics can range from:

1.       Narrowly defined practical issues, like being honest to the customers

2.       Broader philosophical and social questions

Ethical Theories

While reading through some of the materials on marketing research and the trends associated with his field, I encountered some of the theories related to the ethics in marketing research. In this post I will try to summarize these theories for you.

I.            Deontology

According to the theory of Deontology people need to adhere to their responsibilities / duties whenever they are analyzing any ethical dilemma.

They compulsorily need to follow their responsibilities towards a society or person because it is considered to be ethically correct. This will result in consistent decisions and solutions for a given problem or situation.

The only issue with the theory of Deontology is the complications arising from conflicts. In case of conflicting obligations, it would result in the good for the targeted person or society but might be detrimental to the good of other people or sections of the society.

II.            Utilitarianism

The basis of this theory is that there is an ability to predict the future based on the actions taken by you. According to this theory, the choice or selection which leads to the greatest amount of benefits to a majority of the population under consideration is the ethically correct action.

In this method or approach all the possible solutions are compared and weighed against each other to determine which is the best one – which will be both logical as well as rational for a given situation/problem.

The types of Utilitarianism are:

1.       Act utilitarianism

2.       Rule utilitarianism

Act utilitarianism: In this type Utilitarianism a person does the things which are most beneficial to the majority of the people and society. There may also be cases where it might be completely against the law of the land and the established moral values.

Rule utilitarianism: In this type Utilitarianism a person does the things which are most beneficial to the majority of the people and society but keeping in mind the principles of law and morality in a fair and a just way. This is better than Rule Utilitarianism.

The flaw with both the methods is that it is all dependent on the predictions of the future which is usually uncertain. Another flaw is that different consequences of a situation (which are usually of varied types) need to compare against each other on a similar scale, which is not the best way to do it.

III.            Casuist

The basis of this theory is the comparison of the present ethical dilemma with similar ethical dilemmas in the past and analyzing the old results to come up with a successful solution for the current ethical dilemma. Herein you take the learning from the experiences of others to take a successful decision for your problem.