engleski

Issues of unethical behaviour in marketing research

Businesses will find it difficult and risky to carry out an entire range of business decisions, and above all, marketing decisions, if they have failed to precede these decisions with marketing research. Marketing research helps to considerably reduce market risks, and to improve the probability of success and the validity of marketing decisions made on the basis of information obtained from researching the marketplace. For this to happen, however, the practise of ethical behaviour in marketing research is essential. This is an issue that can be viewed from a number of perspectives. The first relates to ethical issues that could arise in carrying out the work contracted between the client and the agency engaged for marketing research. Namely, the agency might carry out the job in an unprofessional manner, by falsifying results in favour of the client, or by intentionally concealing the methodological approach used in the research. When the job has been completed, ethical issues can also emerge if the agency makes uses of the information obtained from the client or the results obtained from the marketing research for other purposes without the client’ s approval. Another ethical concern pertains to the way the end user of the information obtained from the research may choose to interpret research results by intentionally hiding specific information in order for certain business decisions to be made voluntarily. Finally, ethical issues may also arise with regard to research respondents if the declared anonymity of the research is abused through the subsequent use, in other purposes, of data obtained from the respondents. This paper presents concrete examples of possible unethical behaviour in marketing research, and proposes ways of preventing and resolving poor ethical practices to ensure the objectivity of businesses in decision-making is not jeopardised.

business ethics; ethics; marketing research; marketing

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