Ethical Issues In Consumer Research: Consumer and Researcher Perspectives
Jill G. Klein, Northwestern University
N. Craig Smith, Georgetown University
Consumer research is an essential marketing tool that allows
marketing decision-makers to identify opportunities, respond to
consumer desires and needs, and to forecast sales success. !t
provides a vital communication link between the consumer and the
marketing manager. Yet this link is open to abuse involving a
variety of questionable practices (such as deception, breaches of
privacy, and coercion) that ethical researchers would wish to avoid.
Some practices also may bias research findings; for example,
respondents providing short and incomplete answers to an over-
long interview. Moreover, consumer goodwill is critical for most
marketing research and unethical practices lessen the likelihood of
consumer cooperation in an activity that rarely yields any direct
benefit to the individual respondent. Increasing public distrust in
market research practices is evidenced in reports in the business
press of consumer reluctance to participate in market research (e.g.,
Honomichl 1991, Schlossberg 1989). Studies of the marketing
research industry by Walker Research consistently report high
levels of agreement with statements associating the industry with
questionable practices, such as the use of overly-personal questions
(47% agreement in 1990) and nondisclosure of the survey purpose
(68% in 1986) (Laczniak and Murphy 1993: 58).
Despite the development of some reasonably comprehensive
codes of conduct (reviewed in Smith and Quelch 1993: 145-88),
ethical issues involving consumer respondentshave received insuf-
ficient attention and are inadequately understood. There are note-
worthy exceptions, such as the seminal paper by Tybout and
Zaltman (1974), that identified consumer rights in research and
how violations of these ri^ts might be avoided. While recent
contributions have raised the issue of ethical research practices
from a conceptual viewpoint (Holbrook, 1994; Jacoby 1994; Sojka
and Spangenberg 1994; Toy, Olson and Wright 1993), only a few
studies of researcher perceptions of ethically questionable market-
ingresearch practices(e.g.,Akaah and Riordan 1989; Hunt, Chonko
and Wilcox 1984) and only one study of consumer perceptions of
these practices (Schneider 1977) can be found in the literature. The
purpose of the session, therefore, was to bring together empirical
papers that examined ethical issues pertaining to the treatment of
consumer respondents from the perspective of the respondents
themselves and from the perspective ofthe practitioner.
Smith and Klein presented an overview of the ethical issues
pertinent to marketing research based on a reveiw of codes of
research ethics and the consumer behavior and psychology litera-
ture. This overview was followed by a discussion of an investiga-
tion of consumers' reactions to ethically questionable practices.
The purpose of this study was to identify those practices that
consumers find most bothersome, and to explore the effectiveness
of attempts to avoid these practices or to minimize their negative
impact if unavoidable. In a mall-intercept study, 352 adult consum-
ers were asked to imagine that they were a participant in a given
marketing research scenario and to indicate their response to the
described event. The 35 scenarios (each respondent rated three
unrelated scenarios) examined 7 major ethical issues involving
consumer respondents: deception (study purpose and study spon-
sor), confidentiality (disclosure of respondent identity and data
within the research organization and extemally), privacy (research
data merged with other data, covert observation, intrusive inter-
viewer calling at dinner time and pushy interviewer), inconve-
nience/hindrance (over-long interview and follow-up interview),
embarrassment (asking personal questions), coercion (monetary
I Advances in Consumer Research
incentives), sugging (selling under the guise of research) and
frugging (fundraising under the guise of research).
Results of the study indicated that the practices of most
concem were: deception conceming the study sponsor, breach of
confidentiality, fmgging, videotaping without consent, and the
concealment of a follow-up interview. Efforts to lessen the unfa-
vorable impact ofthe practices examined were sometimes effec-
tive. For example, waming people of a follow-up interview led to
positive ratings. Future investigations will examine more closely
the efficacy of efforts to avoid or minimize the negative effects of
research practices.
Zinkhan and Milberg examine managerial perceptions of
deceptive survey research practices in three different countries:
Spain, Switzeriand, and the United States. These countries differ
systematically on "uncertainty avoidance"—the extent to which
individuals within the society feel threatened by uncertain and
ambiguous situations. Based on Hofstede's (1980) theory of
cultural values, the authors predicted that cultures high in uncer-
tainty avoidance should place a high value on the findings of
marketing research and may be tempted to engage in unethical
practices to gain necessary information. MBA students in the three
countries rated their approval of the ethically questionable actions
taken by managers, including those taken by marketing research
directors. Findings provide some support for the hypotheses as
reported in more detail in the following paper.
Concluding comments and discussion focused on the impor-
tance of considering the perspective of both sides ofthe researcher
- respondent relationship. The speakers argued for the integration
ofthe empirical findings presented in the session into the discourse
on how to address the serious ethical dilemmas of consumer
research.
REFERENCES
Akaah, Ishmael P. and Edward A. Riordan (1989), "Judgments
of Marketing Professionals About Ethical Issues in Market-
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Hofstede, Geert H. (1980), Culture's Consequences: Interna-
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