Research on Marketing Ethics: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

The growing field of marketing ethics research is investigating the many aspects of marketing that have an ethical dimension. This article provides a systematic review of this research by (1) developing a categorization scheme for marketing ethics research, and (2) by analyzing—via content analysis—all journal articles, which have been revealed by a major search engine for the time span 1981 to 2005, in terms of quantity, nature and scope, topical areas, and publication outlets. While the results indicate an increase in the number of publications, marketing ethics became less represented in the mainstream literature. Much progress has been made in areas such as improving our understanding of marketers' values, marketers' ethical decision-making processes, and cross-cultural related issues. Societal issues and basic normative questions attracted substantially less interest from researchers.

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

“…In terms of the normative ethics tradition, marketing ethics covers 'the societal and professional standards of right and fair practices that are expected of marketing managers in their oversight of strategy formulations, implementation and control' (Laczniak and Murphy, 2006, p. 159). In order to arrive at a better understanding of the nomenclature used by experts in the field, we consulted both marketing ethics textbooks (Brenkert, 2008;Laczniak and Murphy, 1993;Murphy et al, 2005;Schlegelmilch, 1998;Smith and Quelch, 1993) and several literature reviews devoted to marketing ethics (Gaski, 1999;Laczniak and Murphy, 1993;Nill and Schibrowsky, 2007;Schlegelmilch and Götze, 1999;Tsalikis and Fritzsche, 1989;Whysall, 2000). Based on these sources, 18 issues relevant to marketing ethics were identified.…”

Integrating corporate social responsibility into the business and marketing curricula in Spanish universities

“…Despite this trend toward a greater emphasis on ethics and CSR in general business education, recent findings suggest that the marketing profession's level of interest in integrating ethics into marketing education has been conflicting (Ferrell and Keig, 2013). An analysis of the marketing literature revealed that education was the second most researched sub discipline within marketing ethics (Nill and Schibrowsky, 2007). However, Schlegelmilch and Öberseder (2010) point out that although the educational aspects of marketing ethics and CSR may have a high number of total publications, the topic's relatively lower number of citations indicates marketing ethics and CSR education may be a less important topic overall for the marketing discipline.…”

Value differences as determinants of importers’ perceptions of exporters’ unethical behavior: The impact on relationship quality and performance

“…In fact, while dozens of articles have been written on business ethical issues at the domestic level (see, for example, reviews by Vitell (2003), O'Fallon and Butterfield (2005), Nill and Schibrowsky (2007), and Schlegelmilch and Öberseder (2010)), only a handful of studies stress the international dimensions of business ethics (Enderle, 1997). To some extent, this has been ascribed to the fact that the business ethics discipline and the international business discipline rarely 'speak' to each other, and when they do, they 'speak different languages' (Doh et al, 2010).…”