Marketing Research Ethics
Slide 1
Although many people believe that marketing ethics is an oxymoron, my goal for this lecture is
to convince you otherwise and to provide you a basic framework and perspective for making
more ethical decisions regarding marketing research.
Slide 2
This slide shows a basic model for ethics and marketing research that I find especially useful. I
am a Kantian at heart, so I tend to believe in rights and duties. Here we can see that the rights
and obligations involved in understanding marketing research concern subjects, researchers,
and research clients.
Slide 3
Researchers have clear obligations to respondents; in particular, researchers should avoid
deceiving respondents needlessly. That said, it may be necessary to temporarily disguise the
true purpose of a research study to avoid biasing respondents. If respondents are somewhat
aware of the hypothesis we are testing, then they may alter their otherwise normal behaviors, so
it may be necessary to temporarily deceive respondents but unnecessary to deceive them
needlessly.
Researchers should avoid invading respondents’ privacy. That doesn’t mean we don’t
occasionally ask respondents for some personal background information. It may be necessary,
as part of our study, to understand something about respondents’ profiles, so we may ask them
about their education, their occupation, or their income. Nonetheless, marketing researchers
should avoid needlessly prying into the private lives of respondents.
Generally, researchers should be concerned about each respondent’s well being. Researchers
should guarantee that each respondent who decides to participate in a study is properly
informed about that study, can make an informed decision about participation, and has granted
a proper, informed, consent to participate. This is of particular concern if we’re conducting
research on children. In that case, it is necessary to secure parents’ informed consent.
Slide 4
Unfortunately, there are many ways to needlessly deceive respondents. Here are just a few of
them. A researcher can promise respondents anonymity but fail to do so. For example,
researchers can use ultraviolet ink or ID numbers that uniquely identify respondents, yet claim in
a cover letter that each respondent’s identity will be anonymous. Note that there is a difference
between anonymity and confidentiality. I can promise that I won’t reveal that you answered a set
of questions in a certain way or responded to an experiment in a certain way. If I promise not to
reveal or to link you with your responses, then that’s a guarantee of confidentiality, which is the
thing attorneys and physicians grant their clients or patients. They know who you are; they just
won’t reveal anything that occurred as a result of your professional directions, with them or with
anyone else. It is inappropriate to promise anonymity but not grant it.
Another deceptive practice is falsifying sponsor identification; that is, misrepresenting the
sponsor of the research. Often, researchers do this to boost response rates. People are more
willing to respond, for example, to surveys conducted by universities then by commercial
organizations, so by asking your field workers to pretend to be students working on their
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professor’s research might encourage respondents who otherwise would have opted out of your
study. Nonetheless, that’s inappropriate because you should never lie about true sponsor of the
research.
These next two sets of practices are related and although they sound obscene, they are not.
Selling under the guise of research and fundraising under the guise of research are referred to
as sugging and frugging. Unfortunately, these practices, especially for telephone interviewing,
have negatively affected researchers’ ability to collect survey data. The widespread usage of
sugging and frugging have primed potential respondents to assume that any phone solicitation
asking them to participate in a study will ultimately entail a request either to buy something or to
contribute to some charitable organization. To avoid those sorts of telephone interactions,
people just automatically reject the caller; as a result, response rates for telephone interviews
have dropped precipitously.
Slide 5
The telephone is not the only way in which marketers use sugging and frugging. In the next two
slides you will see examples of sugging via email. In neither case is there truly a legitimate effort
to collect marketing research data.
Slide 6 (No Audio)
Slide 7
Misrepresenting the research procedures is another way in which researchers deceive potential
study participants. Suppose it will take respondents an hour to complete your questionnaire.
Rather than telling them up front that it will take an hour of their time—and greatly reducing the
likelihood they will agree to participate, you suggest that the questionnaire only takes a half hour
to complete. Misrepresenting the procedure in this way to boost your response rate is unethical.
Misrepresenting the need for possible phone re-contacts also is problematic. When I agree to
participate in a study, I assume that I am fully aware of what participation entails before I begin.
If there are likely or mandatory follow ups that entail additional time and effort, then I should be
alerted to that fact before I agree to begin the interview process.
Another way to misrepresent a research study is to misrepresent its purpose. As I mentioned
earlier, it may be necessary temporarily to disguise the true purpose of a study in order to
collect unbiased responses. Any academic study I would conduct would be screened by a
human subjects committee. To ensure that no harm befalls study participants, such a committee
would require that they be debriefed, especially if I fib about the purpose of my study.
Regardless of the social desirability of my research goals, I should avoid misrepresenting the
purpose of my study if possible. For example, if I tell people the purpose of my study is to figure
out ways to reduce auto emissions, when in fact the real goal of my study is to boost mass
transit revenues, then that’s a problem despite my socially desirable goal. After all, it’s
impossible for respondents to provide informed consent to participate in a study if they are
unaware of its true purpose.
Another way in which a study process could be misrepresented is to hide how the results will be
used. If the results will be used for a commercial purpose, but I encourage respondents to
believe they’re participating in an academic study, then that’s a problem.
Finally, failing to deliver promised compensation—for example, promising people that if they
participate in my study and provide their name and address, then I will mail them a summary of
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the research results, but I fail to do so—is a problem, not only because I lied but because my
failure will discourage my respondents from participating in subsequent studies. Obviously, they
will doubt that the promise of compensation will ultimately result in receiving it.
Slide 8
Researchers must be sensitive to respondent privacy issues. There are many ethical issues that
deal with observation without informed consent. If I use hidden microphones or hidden video
cameras, then study participants will be unaware that their behaviors are being recorded. As a
result, it’s impossible for them to give fully informed consent because they’re unaware of the full
procedures and the implications of having agreed to participate in the study. Voice pitch
analysis is another method of permanently recording behaviors; in this case, verbal behaviors
that may be analyzed subsequently without consent. Garbology studies, in which a researcher
combs through other people’s trash to assess the things they have consumed, is another
example of observation without informed consent.
I don’t mean to imply that researchers should never conduct studies using hidden cameras and
microphones, or never conduct voice pitch analyses or garbology studies; rather, that they must
be careful when doing so and one way for academic researchers to ensure greater care is by
having their studies reviewed by human subjects committees that will, in addition to the
researcher, carefully consider privacy issues.
Another privacy issue relates to qualitative research techniques. You may recall from the lecture
on qualitative techniques that a researcher may ask people to project their opinions onto various
ambiguous stimuli. In essence, the research is getting people to reveal their true feelings
through some guise. The researcher knows they are revealing their true feelings, but they may
be unaware that they are doing so. This entails a privacy issue, so researchers should be
careful when using qualitative research techniques.
Researchers certainly should avoid asking overly personal questions. Although demographic
and socioeconomic questions are often a requirement of any study, overly personal questions
that don’t truly pertain to the research needs are problematic.
Finally, and this is a far greater concern in Europe than in the U.S.—in fact, there are laws
precluding this in Europe—is the issue of merging data from several sources. I might be
unconcerned if my health care provider has certain information about me and my mortgage
lender has different information about me and the government has still different information
about me; none of the information in the separate databases maintained by those separate
organizations concern me. However, if someone were to merge all that data into one aggregate
and more powerful profile of me, then I’d be concerned. Hence, there is a privacy issue
associated with merging data from multiple sources into a single aggregated profile.
Slide 9
Inadequate concern for respondents can take many forms, such as contacting respondents at
an inconvenient time; for example, calling people at dinner time to conduct a forty-five minute
telephone interview is inappropriate. Incomplete or insensitive interviewers are another way in
which I, as a researcher, may show inadequate concern. I must be careful to properly train my
interviewers in terms of their demeanor, the quality of their probing questions, and their general
approach to interacting with respondents. If I’ve trained my interviewers inadequately, then I’ve
shown inadequate concern for respondents. Certainly, as I’ve mentioned previously, failure to
debrief after any session or use of any guise shows inadequate concern.
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I shouldn’t ask questions that might needlessly depress respondents subsequently. That’s not to
say that I shouldn’t ask questions about people’s own funeral arrangements if I’m conducting
marketing research for a funeral home. Clearly, asking questions about one’s demise is
depressing, but that’s not needlessly depressing respondents.
Researchers should avoid going to the well too frequently; in this case, the well of research and
polling. If researchers abuse the public, if they contact people repeatedly, to the point where
they’re no longer gracious about lending us their time and energies, then that will just reduce
response rates, reduce the quality of responses, and make the expense of marketing research
prohibitive. Researchers shouldn’t query respondents too frequently and reduce their
willingness to answer our questions.
Finally, non-disclosure of research procedures, as mentioned before—the length of the survey,
follow-ups—reflects inadequate concern for respondents.
Slide 10
To this point I’ve focused on researchers obligations to respondents. Now I’ll briefly discuss
researcher’s obligations to research clients. Basically, there are two types of obligations. One is
to avoid abusing research designs or methods or results. For example, as a researcher I might
develop a new procedure for collecting some sort of research data, and in my agreement with
the client, I might agree that any methods I develop are proprietary. In other words, only the
client has subsequent right to use those procedures. Well, if I subsequently conduct another
study for another client using the same procedures, then I’ve clearly violated my obligations to
the client. Even worse, if I’ve conducted a study in which collected information that would be
useful, not only to the client but to competitors, and then approach competitors about a similar
study that reveals the same information, that effort would represent a clear conflict of interest.
There are other ways in which the researchers can abuse clients: acting unprofessionally, not
delivering what was promised, missing deadlines, and low-ball pricing. Such behaviors are clear
abuses of clients and should be avoided by researchers.
Slide 11
This slide shows specific abuses of research design, methods, and results. One abuse is
conducting unnecessary research—which is analogous to a physician performing unnecessary
surgery or a dentist performing unnecessary dental work—merely to recover fees. If a
researcher is to conduct research, the research ought to be necessary in the sense that it
provides information to help marketing managers choose among viable alternative courses of
action. The research should reduce, in a meaningful fashion, the uncertainty of the marketing
manager. If the researcher knows in advance the study cannot succeed in this way, then that’s
what I mean by unnecessary research and that’s a problem.
Researching the wrong or irrelevant problem is analogous to the aforementioned abuse. It’s still
unnecessary research, but in this case it’s both unnecessary and wrong. Such research gives
the erroneous impression that it has provided relevant information. As a result, the client may
delay a decision needlessly, and that delay may be costly. Researching the wrong or irrelevant
problem is an abuse.
Continuing a study after spotting an error in the process is an abuse. For example, suppose I
mail questionnaires to a thousand people—an expensive proposition—but then, once the
questionnaires begin to return, I recognize that there is a major flaw in the questionnaire.
However, I fail to mention this flaw to the client. I just continue to accept the questionnaires,
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enter respondents’ answers into my data analysis software, analyze those answers, prepare a
report and then to present it, all without indicating to anyone that I spotted an error early in the
process. That’s a clear problem. Researchers are not perfect and their procedures are not
perfect, but researchers who spot a problem with their study are obligated to correct that
problem as soon as it’s spotted.
Slide 12
There are several additional abuses related to the use of unwarranted shortcuts to secure a
contract or to save expenses. For example, altering the sample design to obtain enough
respondents, even if that sample design will not create a representative or projectable sample of
the overall population, is an issue. Not meeting accuracy requirements, by reducing the sample
size to the point that random sampling error becomes an unacceptable threat or there are
insufficient numbers of respondents in each category to make meaningful cross-category
comparisons, is an issue. Improper verification of subjects is an issue; it is nonsensical to query
people who are unqualified to participate in a study, so researchers must ensure that all
subjects are qualified. Finally, inadequate pretesting of questionnaires, which is likely to lower
their reliability and validity, is an issue. The pretesting stage takes time, energy, and a bit of
money, but it’s necessary to ensure that the subsequent study is done correctly.
Slide 13
Other researcher abuses of research design, methods, and results, are as follows. Researchers
could misrepresent the limitations of their research efforts; for example, they could hide errors
caused by non-response or sampling. Researchers are obliged to sensitize their clients to the
artificiality of an experimental design if a laboratory experiment is involved. In my lectures about
experimentation, I talked about the riskiness of extrapolating from a laboratory experiment—with
its low external validity—to people’s behaviors in real time. Similarly, overstating the validity or
reliability of any study is an issue. The manager ought to know to what degree the results of any
research study are reliable and valid, and thus know how much to weigh the results of that study
in decision making.
Another abuse is the application of an inappropriate analytical technique. Unfortunately, learning
about sophisticated marketing research methods may be time consuming, and the software,
computers, and other materials required to use these methods may be expensive. As a result,
researchers may encounter financial pressures to apply inappropriate techniques merely to
amortize their costs, or be encouraged to think if they have this hammer, then every research
problem is a nail. Another way that inappropriate techniques may be applied is by using more
sophisticated, analytical methods than required to answer the research questions. In other
words, impressing the client is an inappropriate reason to use a sophisticated analytical
technique. Similarly, using overly technical language in reports is a problem. Dazzling clients
with B.S. is an abuse of clients. Researchers are obliged to communicate clearly and to provide
clients with honest assessments of the information they collected and how it can be used to
make better decisions.
Related to this issue is insufficient expertise to conduct research. As a researcher, perhaps I
have a longtime client who suddenly has an interest in a type of research study about which I
am not technically versed. Rather than indicate that I don’t have sufficient expertise to conduct
this type of study, and perhaps suggest other researchers with such expertise, I might try to
muck along and attempt to conduct the study regardless. If I lack the expertise to conduct a
study, then I shouldn’t attempt it, anymore than you would want to hire a surgeon to perform
open heart surgery if that surgeon was a podiatrist.
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Slide 14
Finally, here are six more ways in which researchers may abuse clients. I hope by going
through all of these ways I will sensitize you to the things you need to watch for, such as
overbilling or double-billing for projects. The problems with overcharging should be self-evident.
Low-ball pricing, or winning a bid to conduct a research study knowing it cannot be completed at
the bid price and then immediately raising the price after winning the bid, is problematic.
Failure to maintain client confidentiality is a problem. If I collect information for a client, then that
client owns that information; hence, I have no right to provide that information to others.
Failure to avoid a conflict of interest can be an issue when researchers have multiple clients in
the same industry. Things that researchers learn in conducting a study for one client should not
be shared with for other clients. In other words, one client just paid for research results provided
to another client, which clearly is inappropriate.
Reusing data collected for another client is another issue, especially if it’s proprietary. Clients
charged for data collection should be safe in assuming that they’re paying for newly collected
data.
The last issue is conducting multiple interviews simultaneously. I may have two clients and
recognize that there are some economies to scale in conducting interviews for both clients at
one time. In other words, taking a questionnaire; making it longer, and including key questions
for both clients. Clients should be safe in assuming that researchers who bid on a project are
bidding on a single study, and that the effort to collect and analyze data is targeted specifically
to their needs.
Slide 15
At this point, I’ve talked about researchers obligations to respondents and clients. Now having
been on the other side of this dyad, let me speak to clients’ obligations to researchers. One
obligation is that the research proposal process be done properly and by that I mean if a
marketing manager or company requests proposals for research, then there should be a
legitimate chance for anyone submitting a proposal to win the contract to conduct that research.
What happens occasionally is that a manager already has selected a research supplier but
wants to pick the brains of researchers working for other research companies, so he/she
pretends there is an opportunity to win the research contract and solicits proposals. Once those
proposals are submitted, the manager makes them available to the researcher who already has
been selected to conduct the research. This problematic process saves the chosen researcher
much time and money, and perhaps some of those savings are passed on to the client, but it’s a
total misuse of the time and money of other research companies. The assumption is that if I see
a request for research proposals and I submit one, then there’s a chance I might win that
contract.
The second obligation is no pseudo pilot studies. Unfortunately, I was involved in one such
study. Several years ago, the Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau supposedly was
interested in conducting quarterly studies of visitors to Houston. This was supposed to be three
years, or twelve quarters, worth of studies. To conduct these studies of tourists, it seemed
necessary to buy several portable computers, to acquire some specialized interviewing
software, and to develop a rather comprehensive computer-administrated questionnaire for
assessing tourists’ attitudes toward different Houston-area attractions. Unfortunately for me,
rather than twelve initially agreed-upon quarterly studies, which would have allowed for recovery
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of development costs plus a fair profit, the Visitor and Convention Bureau ran exactly one
quarterly study. As a result, no profit was made and the one study barely covered development
costs. Had I known only one study would be involved, the pricing would have been vastly
different. It’s unfair for the client to suggest a more elaborate, longitudinal study will be
performed—to secure a lower-cost bid for Phase 1—when, in fact, the study will be a one-shot
affair.
Certainly, a client is obligated not to disclose or use specialized techniques or models that are
proprietary to the researcher, as the client merely rents the researchers’ abilities and the tools
the researcher has developed for him or herself. Those tools are not the property of the client
unless the client has expressly purchased those tools.
If a client intends to cancel a project or refuses to pay without good cause—and that’s not to say
there aren’t occasions when there is good cause—the project should not be cancelled. Because
a researcher may have budgeted time and allocated overhead to a project that suddenly
disappears, unjustified cancelling of a project unfairly jeopardizes the researcher’s effort to
remain a viable business entity.
No research should be conducted solely to support any prior conclusions. As I have mentioned
in several lectures, the point of marketing research is to help reduce uncertainty and to help
managers select the most viable alternative course of action. If the course of action is already
decided, then research is irrelevant. Research as merely a political tool is a waste of everyone’s
time. The assumption is always that if a client solicits research, then the conclusion and the
actions of the client are undecided. In this vein, clients should encourage researchers to be
objective even when conducting advocacy research.
Slide 16
Advocacy research is research conducted to support a specific legal claim. Think here in terms
of tobacco companies. They may have an interest in demonstrating through an empirical study
that the ads they ran didn’t induce people to begin smoking, but that it only induced them to
switch brands. Clearly, these companies have a vested interest in research results coming out a
certain way. If certain research results are strongly encouraged, we would call that “advocacy
research.” Even if it’s research to support a specific legal claim, researchers are honor bound
not to fudge their results. For a researcher to compromise his/her integrity by pretending the
results were other than what occurred would be extraordinarily unethical.
Slide 17
Clients have two obligations to respondents. First, clients should not use responses to identify
or create a list of prospective customers. If I ask a researcher to conduct a marketing study that
requires identifying the names and addresses of people who are potential first-time buyers of
my product, it’s inappropriate for that researcher to supply that information to my sales
manager, who not doubt would give those names to a salesperson. Survey research should
never help to create prospect lists of potential customers.
Second, clients are obligated to act on dangerous or damaging results. For example, if a client
asked for a study on how people use one of his company’s products, and it’s discovered that
product owners use it improperly and, as a result, occasionally are injured, then the company is
obligated to address that issue. So clients’ obligations to respondents are (1) not to convert
respondents into prospects, and (2) to guarantee that any dangerous or damaging results
uncovered by research will be acted upon appropriately.
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Slide 18
Respondents have one obvious obligation to researchers and indirectly to clients: to be truthful.
Unfortunately, I’ve identified a group of students, and I suspect others are guilty as well, of being
what I call “mischievous respondents.” Such respondents, for whatever reason, decide to
sabotage the research results by giving bogus answers to questions or responding in an
atypical way to experimental stimuli. Anyone trying to foul up experiments or surveys is just
costing everyone more time and energy than necessary. Mischievous respondents reduce the
efficiency of the entire research process. I believe that respondents have one obligation: if you
opt to participate, assuming that you have been fully informed about the study and can give
proper consent, then you are obligated to be truthful.
Slide 19
Before we move on to the checklist and several examples of ethical dilemmas in marketing
research, let me briefly discuss the ethics of field services. Such services should avoid three
things. First, over reporting the hours worked. Such services are compensated on an hourly
basis and over reporting hours is stealing. Second, falsifying data—the kinds of data that
researchers and managers ultimately count on being collected properly—is another example of
stealing. Third, and this may seem more carelessness than outright theft, is the use of
professional respondents. Clearly, there are some people who enjoy participating in studies; for
example, people who are retired and looking for some sort of activity and people who just enjoy
participating in research studies and would participate more regularly if given the option.
Unfortunately, such people tend to differ from the general population. Although cost
considerations encourage the use of such respondents despite their atypicality, field services
should resist the use of professional respondents.
Slide 20
For those of you who prefer a simple framework to assist you in making more ethical marketing
research decisions, this slide shows a simple checklist that I helped to develop and publish in
the 1990s. “Yes” answers to this set of questions will not guarantee an ethical decision, but they
should generally assist you in making more ethical decisions, all else being equal. Furthermore,
“no” answers to any of these questions is strongly suggestive of a somewhat unethical decision.
Slide 21
Some Ethical Dilemmas
As a personal exercise, first consider why the nine situations described on the next two slides
are ethically problematic. Then read each of the eight vignettes and consider your answers to
the related questions.
Slide 22
You might start this exercise by considering what makes each of these nine situations ethically
problematic.
Slide 23 (No Audio)
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Slide 24
Now you might consider the situations described on each of the next eight slides and answer
the questions related to each of those situations.
Slide 25 to Slide 31 (No Audio)
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