Question

Ethics of Research

1. Marketing researchers have access to a great deal of information about consumers. What kinds of pressure might be brought to bear on a marketing researcher that might cause ethical dilemmas?
2. In 2005, a new federal law allowed consumers once-a-year free access to their credit reports. Many consumers who accessed their credit reports were surprised by the amount of information collected. What can marketers and marketing researchers do to minimize consumers' privacy fears?
3. What role do YOU (as the consumer) play in protecting your own privacy? In other words, what can you do to protect your privacy and what are ways that we give up access to our privacy?

Answer 1

The kinds of pressure that might be brought to bear on a marketing researcher that might cause ethical dilemmas are those pressures in which the researcher is pressurized to dilute his/her control over confidential information. Marketing researchers have access to confidential information and hence pressure with regards to sharing the confidential information often causes ethical dilemmas.

To minimize consumer’s privacy fears marketers and marketing researchers should focus on two aspects – keeping the access to confidential information limited to them and obtaining the information about customers in a proper and ethical manner. Marketers and marketing researchers should not support selling and fundraising under the guise of conducting research. Rather they should support maintaining integrity and should completely avoid any misrepresentation and omission of data. Most importantly marketers and marketing researchers can minimize consumer’s privacy fears by protecting and respecting their right to privacy and by working in a manner that produces information that is factual as well as unbiased.

As a consumer I protect my own privacy by sharing only the pertinent information and avoiding sharing information that is not relevant to the research objective and purpose. I also avoid sharing information that can be misused against me like my social security number. This information is not very relevant for marketing research but often is asked for in surveys and should be avoided being shared. We, as consumers, give up access to our privacy, by sharing confidential information about ourselves and sharing information that is not relevant or pertinent to a marketing research or survey.