An Application and Extension of a Multidimensional Ethics Scale to Selected Marketing Practices and Marketing Groups

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to test and extend a multidimensional ethics scale developed by Reidenbach and Robin to selected marketing groups. Different marketing practices and groups were used in order to give these measures a wide variety of exposures. These measures performed well in all settings and for all practices. Factor structures in fifteen different trials identified the same three dimensions with one exception. In that exception, two dimensions merged together in five of those fifteen trials. While these dimensions captured much of the variance in the global concept of "ethical~unethical," they did a better job of predicting the respondents' intention to behave than the global measure. These measures also provide the researcher with a partial explanation of why the respondents answered in the manner that they did. The shifting relative importance of the three dimensions in accounting for the variance in the behavioral intention measure provides this explanation. This article reports on four independent studies of various types of marketing activities using the ethics scales developed by Reidenbach and Robin (1988; 1990). The purpose

Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived Importance of Ethics in Marketing Situations: A Study of Thai Businesspeople

“…Two of the variables measured in this study, perception of ethical problem and ethical intention were both measured by means of four marketing ethics scenarios developed by Dornoff and Tankersley (1975) and Reidenbach et al (1991) (see Appendix A). According to Alexander and Becker (1978), the use of scenarios (''vignettes'') is a good approach for improving data quality from questionnaires.…”

“…a Source:Reidenbach et al (1991). b Source:Dornoff and Tankersley (1975).Perceived Importance of Ethics of Thai Businesspeople…”

Half a Century of Marketing Ethics: Shifting Perspectives and Emerging Trends

“…Goolsby and Hunt, 1992;Mayo and Marks, 1990;Singhapakdi et al, 1996;Sparks and Hunt, 1998) and norms and codes [N&C] (e.g. Nantel and Weeks, 1996;Reidenbach et al, 1991;Singhapakdi and Vitell Jr., 1991;Vitell et al, 1993). However, new topics also burgeoned: ethical issues relating to price [PR] (e.g.…”

“…The journal scored especially highly in the 1990s with distinguished Chonko (1995) Ethical Decision Making in Marketing 51 Laczniak and Murphy (1993) Ethical Marketing Decisions: The Higher Road 150 Murphy et al (2005) Ethical Marketing 29 Schlegelmilch (1998) Marketing Ethics -An International Perspective 41 Smith and Quelch (1993) Ethics in Marketing 101 Foundational ethics texts Donaldson and Dunfee (1999) Ties that Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics 291 Garrett (1966) Business Ethics 74 Habermas (1992) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action 1,504 Habermas (1991) Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik 448 Kohlberg (1981) The Philosophy of Moral Development 1,519 Kohlberg (1984) The contributions to the marketing ethics field (e.g. Mayo and Marks, 1990;Reidenbach et al, 1991;Vitell et al, 1993). Similarly to the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science contributed to the two main research interests of marketing ethics scholars, namely ethical decision making and norms and codes.…”

The Influence of Perceived Importance of an Ethical Issue on Moral Judgment, Moral Obligation, and Moral Intent

“…We selected our scenarios from among the scenarios used by the research team involved in the Robin et al study. The scenarios were taken from Robin et al (1996) (Scenario 1) and Reidenbach et al (1991) (Scenarios 2-5). The only changes to the scenarios were to remove all gender references.…”