Introduction

Market research “continually raises ethical concerns” (Castleberry et al., 1993: 39). Reflecting this, the ethics of marketing research has attracted “special attention” from marketing scholars (Skinner et al., 1988: 212). As Segal and Giacobbe (2007: 35) explain, this is “largely due to the research industry’s self-interest”. Practitioners must “be at the forefront of being able to manage ethical issues’ to maintain research clients” confidence in the objectivity, independence, and rigour of market research results (Yallop & Mowatt, 2016: 381) and “ensure participants” wellbeing and safety (Dodds et al., 2023: 14).

Yet, this interest is decreasing. A decade ago, Aggarwal et al. argued that the “time has come” for marketing scholars “to revisit the issue of ethical perceptions in marketing research” (2012:463). But, despite recent high-profile controversies involving consumer privacy (Nunan & Domenico, 2016), neuromarketing (Ulman et al., 2015), data trading, ad fraud (Cluley, 2019) and artificial intelligence (Nunan & Domenico, 2013), the call for further research remains largely unanswered within the marketing field. The ethics of commercial marketing research is increasingly treated as a technical specialism and discussed outside of marketing scholarship. Indeed, the last article addressing the ethics of commercial marketing research in the Journal of Marketing was Sparks and Hunt (1998).

This presents us with an increasingly fragmented and outdated research base. In response, in this paper we take stock of knowledge about marketing research ethics via a systematic literature review. Our objective is to provide a holistic framework to make sense of the literature, consider the need for fresh thinking and identify opportunities for theory development. We aim to encourage a debate about how to put marketing research ethics back on the agenda (Hunt, 2013).

We highlight four research themes from a systematically reviewed corpus (N = 134). The normative theme examines the boundaries of ethical behaviour with a focus on codes of ethics. The descriptive theme tracks practitioners’ attitudes towards controversial techniques. The theoretical theme engages with psychological thinking to model market researchers' ethical decision-making processes. The technical theme explores the ethical issues and conflicts inherent in market research techniques and tools, with a focus on new technologies. Overall, we find that the literature has moved towards technical discussions of specific ethical issues, typically published in specialist outlets.

The result is that theoretical progress has largely come to a standstill. This may be because business ethics and marketing scholars’ attention centres on consumption issues such as the significant body of research exploring the gap between consumers’ espoused ethical commitments and their actual behaviours in the market (Sun & Govind, 2022). It might be because discussions of ethics have been rebranded around sustainability, responsibility, and social justice. It may also reflect the facts that the market research industry “is increasingly defining itself in other ways” (Nunan, 2016: 518). Much commercial market research is “not being created and run by people who call themselves ‘market researchers’” (Poynter, 2021: 403–404). System designers and programmers who administer online data collection services might not think to consult codes of conduct written for marketing researchers.

There is a risk that in approaching ethical issues from a range of specialist perspectives, often divorced from core marketing concerns, such practitioners may ignore existing knowledge and miss readily discernible ethical pitfalls and vice versa. For instance, scholars are well-versed in debates about data fraud in their own research, meanwhile fraudulent practices in online data collection marketplaces have flourished, with little attempt to take lessons from academic marketing research into commercial settings. Through this article, then, we seek to contribute to the attempt to “resolve the perceived lack of relevance of scholarly marketing work” (Wieland et al., 2021: 268).

Method

The paper adopts a systematic scoping review approach to identify a comprehensive body of research that addresses the ethics of market research from a range of disciplines (Tranfield et al., 2003; Arksey & O'Malley, 2005). Although not guaranteed to identify all relevant work, as literature may be missing or excluded based on inclusion criteria, systematically reviewing literature has a number of advantages in comparison to other review methods. It promotes “reproducibility and transparency in the review process” (Domenico et al., 2021: 330). Most importantly given our aim to support practice, evidence from systematic reviews has been shown to have a “real impact” with “practicing managers, policy-makers or researchers” (Macpherson & Jones, 2010: 110).

To conduct our review, we follow Littell et al.’s (2008) five step protocol: identify a review panel, formulate the topic, determine the review characteristics, retrieve literature, and synthesize and report. This approach also reflects those defined for scoping reviews in the medical and health sciences (Arksey & O'Malley, 2005; Peters, et al., 2015). Our interest in the topic emerged through action research conducted by the authors with a large multinational market research company. This brought our attention to news stories about consumer privacy, data management and artificial intelligence. Following Rotfeld and Taylor’s (2009) call for marketing academics to move beyond headline stories, we formulated our concern with the ethics of market research. This led us to ask:

RQ1

How has the marketing research ethics literature developed?

RQ2

What are the key research issues in the marketing research ethics literature?

RQ3

How does marketing research ethics relate to marketing practice, consumers and society?

Search strategy and article selection process

To ensure our review retrieved as many relevant sources as possible, we adopted a broad definition of commercial market research. We used ESOMAR's (2021) definition of commercial market research as the collecting, analyzing and interpreting “data to build information and knowledge that can be used to predict, for example, future events, actions or behaviours” for clients in consumer, industry, policy and civic sectors as the basis of our search criteria. To ensure an inclusive search strategy, we expanded the search terms to include 32 “descriptions of core business activity” of commercial market research reported by Nunan (2016: 512). See Supplementary Table 1 for the results of the search queries and results.

We searched Web of Science for all dates until November 29th, 2022. Forty-eight duplicates were removed from the initial 769 articles. Article titles, keywords and abstracts were reviewed to ensure they met the definitions of commercial market research and included discussions of ethics. We assumed that if “ethic*” was mentioned in the title or abstract, ethics formed a significant part of the subsequent paper. In total, 134 articles were identified for full article review (Fig. 1). The complete bibliography is available in Supplementary Table 2.

Fig. 1
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Systematic review flow diagram (adapted from Page et al., 2021)

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Analysis and synthesis

To scope the field, we conducted a thematic synthesis (Popay et al., 2006). Practically, the author/s read the papers in chronological order and engaged in a first round of descriptive coding to summarize the research topics. This settled on an analytical scheme comprising four themes, with each theme operating as an “ideal type” and, collectively, representing essential features of the literature on the ethics of marketing research. We proceeded to thematically code each text identified in the systematic review according to these four themes. We placed each text in what we judged to be the most applicable theme. We recognize that many papers speak to multiple themes and could therefore have been positioned in multiple themes. As we aim to expose broad trends in the literature and distinguish characteristics from the literature, we feel justified in our approach. The themes are illustrated in the “Thematic analysis” section.

Results

Publication year

Figure 2 presents the frequency of published contributions to the field of marketing research ethics. The earliest contributions were published in the 1960s as the American Marketing Academy (AMA) Standards Committee was creating a code of ethics for market research practitioners (Blankenship, 1964; Twedt, 1963). The number of publications has subsequently increased on an upward trend as market research has expanded into new fields (Tybout & Zaltman, 1974) and adopted new technologies (Nunan & Di Domenico, 2013).

Fig. 2
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Publications by year

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Journal orientation

As illustrated in Table 1, the literature has moved from general marketing-oriented outlets such as the Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Marketing towards business ethics-centred outlets such as Journal of Business Ethics and, more recently, to specialist outlets for neuroethicitians, statisticians and engineers. Despite publishing the earliest contributions, the Journal of Marketing has not published a paper on the ethics of marketing research since Sparks and Hunt (1998). Perhaps this explains Aggarwal et al.’s (2012) call for fresh perspectives and empirical contributions within marketing theory.

Table 1 Frequency of publication across journal-orientations by decade
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Themes

The scope of the marketing research ethics literature covers normative, descriptive, theoretical and technical contributions. The distinguishing features of themes are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2 Summary of the four themes
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The prevalence of the themes is represented in Table 3. Starting in the 1960s, the normative theme established academic interest in the topic. In the early 1960s, a number of industry bodies were developing codes of conduct (AMA, American Association for Public Opinion Research and Consumer Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association) and this appears to have prompted discussions about the content of codes. Key contributions here emphasize the importance of understanding market research practitioners’ experiences and attitudes towards unethical practices. This resulted in a descriptive literature that gathered momentum in the 1970s through to the early 2000s. To explain differences in evidenced in practitioners’ attitudes and behaviours, from the 1980s researchers began to theorize market research practitioners’ ethical judgements using general ethical decision-making models and concepts. Thus, we saw the emergence of a theoretical turn in the literature. Most recently, the technical theme has explored the potential ethical issues inherent in individual market research techniques such as big data and neuromarketing.

Table 3 Theme by publication date
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Contribution of disciplines to themes

Table 4 illustrates the contribution of different facets of marketing scholarships to the development of each theme. It demonstrates that technical research has tended to be published in journals targeting specialist and  non-marketing audiences. General marketing outlets have been more focused on exploring the normative justification for ethical decisions and describing changes in practice.

Table 4 Theme by categorised discipline
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Thematic analysis

The normative theme

In line with Hunt and Vitell (1986), we use the term normative to refer to contributions that primarily define the boundaries of ethical behaviour for commercial marketing research practitioners. Such work seeks to establish the appropriate moral foundations, principles and norms for market research practice. It considers how to develop ethical cultures in market research settings and how to enforce moral standards—primarily, it focuses on codes of conduct.

The first article that emerged in our systematic review represents this approach. Working with the American Marketing Academy (AMA) Standards Committee, Twedt (1963: 48) argues in favour of a deontological ethics, writing that “the public must be protected against market research abuses” because “the public has an inherent right to expect fair play.” At the same time, Twedt contests that practitioners have a teleological business incentive against unethical behaviour because they rely on public participation for their work. Consequently, Twedt calls for the AMA to improve ethical standards by encouraging a scientific approach among professionals. In Twedt’s view, such an approach would prioritize the virtue of truth and devalue deceptive practices.

Shortly after, Blankenship (1964) argues that the market research industry cannot rely solely on codes of ethics to enhance ethical behaviours. For Blankenship (1964), codes of conduct cannot address the most controversial research practices because they emerge from the competing demands placed on research practitioners and are not inherent in any particular research technique or technology. Virtues might be simple on paper but difficult to put into practice. For example, researchers’ relationships with clients “are fraught with pressures that might easily lead less scrupulous people to unethical behaviour” (Blankenship, 1964: 27). Needing to keep a client’s business, a researcher “may find it difficult to tell his (sic) president or his (sic) customer that he (sic) is wrong” (Blankenship, 1964: 29). In response, Blankenship argues that market research industries must find other ways to raise ethical conduct rather than expect codes to be sufficient.

A decade later, Tybout and Zaltman (1974, 1975) argue that, as market research moves into new domains beyond consumer-settings, ethical values relating to “education, family planning and municipal government” will change the nature of ethical dilemmas in market research practice (1974: 357). They also note that, as the range of techniques used in market research expands, new ethical questions are likely to emerge. Based on these observations, Tybout and Zaltman (1974) criticize the AMA code for focusing on survey techniques and commercial researcher-client relations. They argue for new standards relating to the ethics of care that researchers owe respondents. These include informed consent; the right to safe treatment; protecting anonymity and privacy; ensuring relief and support for potential stress and anxiety caused by research tasks; and honest research techniques as a default.

This prompted a direct response from Day (1975), who argues that ethical duties other than a commitment to scientific objectivity have no place in market research. However, later discussions accept that the boundaries of ethical practice must reflect the changing the nature of market research, methods and social conventions. For example, Sojka and Spangenberg observe that “the broadened domain of consumer research”, which introduces qualitative inquiry through consumer culture theory and consumer anthropology, “makes it necessary to look beyond marketing guidelines alone for prescriptions to ethical questions” (1994: 393). Turning to cognizant literature, they emphasize two ethical duties: deception and confidentiality.

More recently, Alsmadi (2008, 2010) argues for greater ethical consideration of respondents and wider society. Nunan and Di Domenico (2013) advocate changing industry guidelines to accommodate new ways of collecting, storing, and analysing big data. They argue that codes must include the right to be forgotten, data expiry and users’ and respondents’ maintaining ownership of their data and sharing any economic value it creates.

Many of these more recent contributions do not explicitly draw on ethical systems to justify the rights of respondents nor duties of market researchers—although, many implicitly adopt a deontological standpoint. But this is not to say that no contributors to the normative theme incorporate specific philosophical frameworks to argue for particular ethical imperatives. Boulanouar et al. (2017) address research ethics specific to Muslim women. Adler et al. (2022) draw explicitly on virtue ethics to derive four conditions (sophisticated, suppressed, contagion, and impeded) in which teams can overcome ethical dilemmas faced in market research practice. Michaelides and Gibbs (2006: 50) use phenomenological hermeneutics “to enhance the self-awareness of market researchers”. They argue that marketing researchers' tendency to dehumanize individual participants does “not permit caring for the research subjects by the researcher who following the market system has no time to engage fully with them as people, and rather treats them as consumer objects” (Michaelides & Gibbs, 2006: 50). Wilson et al. (2008) use a Rawlisian ethics of free will to examine neuromarketing.

In the 2000s, the normative literature took an empirical turn to explore the relationship between codes of ethics and research practice. Here, Giacobbe and Segal (2000) compare the ethical norms included in seven national codes of conduct against commercial research practitioners' attitudes in the USA and Canada. They identify notable differences and conclude that “market research codes of ethics do not reflect the perspectives of the very group they intend to direct” (2000: 240). Developing this issue through semi-structured interviews with 29 research practitioners recruited through purposive sampling, Yallop and Mowatt find “that ethical codes do not appear to have a significant effect on ethical behaviour” (2016: 392). They argue that the ineffectiveness of codes of ethics may be explained by the lack of awareness of their existence, a lack of familiarity of their content and a lack of proactive enforcement (see also Dutka, 1994). Consequently, Yallop and Mowatt conclude that “codes of ethics have the potential to influence behaviour, but only when there is adequate awareness of and familiarity with codes’ content, and when they are understood, used and enforced in organizations” (2016: 395).

In summary, the normative theme explores the boundaries of ethical practices. Early contributions assumed that market researchers and industries have an implicit incentive to behave ethically because of their need to maintain public trust. Consequently, there was a focus on the content of codes of conduct and an assumption that practitioners would follow them. Later work, testing these assumptions empirically, suggests that codes of ethics have a marginal impact on practitioners’ ethical decisions and struggle to reflect the pertinent ethical decisions that practitioners face in their work. Substantively, then, a distinguishing feature of this theme is its focus on setting the boundaries of ethical behaviors for commercial market researchers. Here, much of the literature is anchored to notions of scientific objectivity as the key ethical value that should guide research practitioners’ behaviours. While later contributions test the assumptions in this theme empirically, much of the literature is discursive in nature—with key contributors making value-laden arguments for particular ethical values.

The descriptive theme

The descriptive theme focuses on commercial marketing research practitioners’ attitudes towards controversial practices. Crawford (1970) offers a founding contribution. He invites 700 market researchers to express their approval for 30 fictitious vignettes relating to research practice, the role of the marketing director and contemporary social concerns and asks participants if they judged the practices described in the vignettes to be ethical or not. He reveals consistent attitudes concerning the boundaries of acceptable practice, with senior managers and directors having even highest levels of agreement.

Crawford (1970) forms the basis of an ongoing empirical analysis of researchers' attitudes (Murphy & Laczniak, 1992). Building on this work and testing the key ethical dilemmas research practitioners experience through an open-ended survey item, Hunt et al. (1984) argue that the ethics of market research identified by practitioners revolve around: research integrity; treating outside clients fairly; research confidentiality; marketing mix and social issues; personnel issues; treating respondents fairly; treating others in one’s company fairly; interviewer dishonesty; gifts, bribes, and entertainment; treating suppliers fairly; legal issues; misuse of funds. They do “not find many researchers indicating fundamental conflicts involving the rights of respondents or subjects used in marketing research” (1984: 318).

Akaah and Riordan (1989) explicitly replicate Crawford’s (1970) work. They find 15 significant shifts (out of 22) in comparison to the attitudes uncovered by Crawford (1970). Some of these relate to technical aspects of market research but, overall, suggest greater concern for social issues and a lessening of concern for ethical conflicts involving clients. Akaah and Riordan suggest these results “defy easy explanation” but most likely “derive from societal and industry changes” (1989: 119). Aggarwal et al. (2012) retain six of Akaah and Riordan’s (1989) ethical scenarios and develop five new scenarios to reflect contemporary controversial practices. Summarizing their results, they conclude: “one trend that is quite clear is that disapproval for unethical research conduct has grown across the board in the last 20 years among professionals (both managers and researchers)” (2012: 473). They then compare market researchers’ judgements against a general consumer sample. Here, Aggarwal et al. (2012: 474) note: “Surprisingly, and with a couple of important exceptions, the general public is more tolerant of [unethical] conduct (as indicated by lower disapproval ratings) compared to the marketing professionals”.

Despite this consensus among descriptive studies, in the pages of a practitioner outlet, Whalen (1984) reports on a study of 500 research practitioners from blue-chip companies conducted by a private research firm that uncovers much higher levels of acceptance for unethical practices among commercial researchers than previously thought. Whalen (1984) highlights three potential reasons: business respondents are becoming more knowledgeable about market research techniques and are going to greater lengths to withhold proprietary information from researchers; deregulation removing reporting requirements making it harder for researchers to access business data; and increased competition in the market research industries leading to aggressive tactics. Whalen (1984) also reports an “ethical gap” whereby respondents indicate they believe their competitors are more willing to engage in unethical practices than they are. This perspective is developed by Pallister et al. (1999)—who argue that unethical practices might be more profitable than ethical ones.

A second component of the descriptive theme examines the antecedents of market research practitioners’ attitudes. In a highly influential contribution, Hunt et al. (1984) argue that ethical issues that emerge in commercial marketing research practice are caused by conflicts between the values and responsibilities among clients, employing organizations, colleagues, self, industry competitors, and society. Informed by this theory, researchers have investigated cross-cultural differences between national industries. Here, Akaah notes that the majority of previous studies focus on the “viewpoints of ‘domestic’ (United States) marketing professionals” (1990: 46), and, in response, compares Australian, British and American respondents using a similar survey instrument to Akaah and Riordan (1989). Akaah finds that practitioners from different industries “do not differ in terms of their research ethics attitudes” (1990: 52).

Others explore the organizational antecedents of ethical attitudes and behaviours. Crawford (1970) had suggested a potential role modelling effect whereby senior executives could influence the ethical behaviour for junior researchers within an organization. This is confirmed by Segal and Giacombe (2007). Based on 86 survey responses from Australian practitioners, they find that practitioners attribute improved ethical behaviour to ethical leadership displayed by senior leaders in their firms, followed by immediate supervisors and, to a lesser degree, legal departments. However, Akaah and Riordan report that “code of ethics, organizational rank, and industry category lack significance as correlates of research ethics judgments” (1989: 119). Ferrell and Skinner (1988) study the effect of organizational bureaucracy on market researcher ethics in three types of marketing organizations (data subcontractors, marketing research firms and corporate research departments). Drawing on 550 survey responses from members of a market research association, they find that increased levels of bureaucracy improve ethical behaviour in all settings.

Finally, studies have considered the role of demographics on researchers' ethical judgements. Ferrell and Skinner report that gender “is a significant predictor of ethical behavior” in data subcontractors and research firms but not corporate research departments (1988: 106). This is confirmed by Kelley et al. (1990). Analyzing 602 surveys, they explore 10 ethical dilemmas and report significant differences between sex, age, education level, job title, and job tenure. Specifically, they tell us that “the perceptions of female researchers are more ethical than their male counterparts” and the “self-ratings of older marketing researchers were found to be significantly more ethical than their younger associates” (Kelley et al., 1990: 687). Explaining their results, Kelley et al. (1990: 688) ask: “Have younger, less experienced marketers been socialized into a different value system than were their older counterparts?”

In summary, the descriptive theme examines practitioners’ perceptions of controversial practices. It finds that variables such as gender, age, job tenure, level of seniority, organizational culture and type have significant effects on commercial marketing researchers' attitudes. Compared chronologically, it suggests that market researchers have become less tolerant of controversial practices and may even hold themselves to higher ethical standards than the general public. This theme can be distinguished from the normative theme, then, in the sense that contributors rarely advocate a specific ethical position. Rather than seeking to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior, contributors explore how market researchers themselves define ethical practices. Typically, this is achieved via survey methods and, in focusing on researchers' attitudes, tends to assume congruence between market researchers' attitudes and behaviours.

The theoretical theme

A third theme of research theorizes the ethical decision-making processes of market research practitioners. It focuses on why, when and how research practitioners engage in ethical decision making. The emergence of this stream of the literature can perhaps be explained as a consequence of the influential general theorizations of ethical decision-making among marketing practitioners (e.g. Hunt & Vitell, 1986).

Ferrell and Gresham (1985) exemplify this strand of thinking. Their contingency model suggests that individual marketers’ ethical decision-making will be determined by contextual and organizational factors. Contextual factors include the opportunity to make ethical decisions. Organizational factors include “managers' everyday performances in achieving company goals” (1985: 90). To build this model, Ferrell and Gresham integrate several perspectives covering philosophies such as rights theory and sociological thinking including differential association theory and role set theory. They do not, however, empirically test the model. Their aim is, rather, to provide a “starting point for the development of a theory of ethical/unethical actions in organizational environments” (1985: 87).

A prominent strand of the theoretical theme turns to psychological theories (Toy et al., 2001). For example, Castlebury et al. (1993) explore the moral reasoning research practitioners use to make ethical judgements. To do so, they compare the moral reasoning of advertising and market researchers and the general public. They find that research practitioners utilize “a level of moral reasoning that emphasizes social utility rather than personal reward” and that researchers’ moral reasoning follows that of the general population (1993: 45).

Recognizing changes in the industry relations, a second strand of the theoretical theme models the relationships between the stakeholders within market research practice. Following Hunt et al. (1984), much of this work assumes that ethical dilemmas emerge from the competing interests of different stakeholders in market research (e.g. Malhotra & Peterson, 2001; Skinner et al., 1988). In this regard, Ferrell et al. (1998) use metaphors to theorize the similarities and differences between various stakeholders in relation to a code of ethics. They argue for a two-communities theorization of ethics in market research, suggesting that market research firms and data subcontractors should be considered a single community in terms of their ethical values and that this community should be distinguished from commercial research departments as a second community. It has less awareness of and enforcement of codes of ethics. Malhotra and Miller (1998) develop an integrated model setting out relations between the public, project commitments, employing firm, the industry, clients, the individual research, wider culture and respondents. These provide a context within which individual researchers work through ethical decision-making processes.

In summary, the theoretical theme assumes that commercial marketing research practice involves unique ethical decision-making not covered by general decision-making theories. Research reveals that research practitioners have consistent and distinct moral reasoning underpinning their ethical judgements and are uniquely sensitive to ethical issues and conflicts. Much like the descriptive theme, this theme is largely agnostic towards particular ethical values and ethical frameworks. It is distinguished, instead, by its psychological-focus. That is to say, rather than describing market researchers’ perceptions and attitudes, this theme aims to explain how researchers make ethical decisions. To achieve this aim, research tends to adopt a more experimental approach to test the effects of variables on researchers’ ethical decision-making.

The technical theme

The technical theme focuses on the ethical issues with research techniques, tools, data, and working practices. One stream of this literature crosses into normative research as it uses philosophical frameworks to evaluate specific techniques and tools. However, much of the research in this area evaluates ethical issues inherent to a technique or tool without relying explicitly on an ethical perspective. Kimmel (2001) and Kimmel and Smith (2001), for example, highlight issues with deceptive research practices. Signal et al. (2017), Nairn and Clarke (2012), Nairn (2006) and Ahuja et al. (2001) discuss the ethics of researching children. Phillips (2010) looks into observational techniques.

Emerging digital technologies have attracted much interest in this theme. Strother et al. (2009) discuss corporate blogging; Boyd and Crawford (2012) discuss the social consequences of big data; Nunan and Di Domenico (2013) highlight the ethics of privacy, security, and issues emerging from the volume of big data and the ability of firms to store, analyze and combine data in ways that were not covered by original informed consent; Tan and Salo (2023) discuss the block chain. Others consider the impact of digital technologies for traditional research practices and ask whether existing ethical ideas are sufficient in these new contexts and applications. Here, Hair and Clark (2007) focus on the challenges of ethnographic research in a digital context; Nunan and Di Domenico (2016) discuss the ethics of anonymization.

A prominent strand of the technical theme focuses on ethical considerations of neuromarketing (Murphy et al., 2008). As Bakardjieva and Kimmel (2017: 182) explain: “the emergence of neuromarketing has rekindled some of the early concerns relating to the intrusiveness of physiological measurement and the potential applications of research findings”. Much of this work is informed by neuroethics. For example, Olteanu (2015) uses neuroethics to highlight neuromarketers’ responsibilities to research subjects, consumers and researchers including informed consent; enhancing public understanding of neuromarketing; assuring the public that neuromarketing is not used for manipulation.

Some studies adopt a more descriptive approach to explore attitudes towards neuromarketing. For instance, Eser et al. (2011) survey 111 marketing academics, 52 neurologists, and 56 marketing professionals with a 14-item survey asking participants to rate their agreement with statements such as “Neuromarketing techniques are ethical” and “Neuromarketing is a manipulative way to sell unnecessary goods and services”. They report that neurologists and practitioners hold a more positive view of neuromarketing than marketing academics. Hensel et al. (2017) examine the ethical dimensions of neuromarketing through 10 expert interviews with practitioners. They find agreement for 12 ethical principles as the basis of an ethical use of neuroscience within marketing including appropriate incentives, no manipulation of consumer behaviours, protection for vulnerable groups and the importance of informed consent. Bakardjieva and Kimmel (2017) conduct two online questionnaires with student samples from North America and France and find that a positive attitude towards neuromarketing and science was related to respondents classing neuromarketing as an ethical activity.

The technical theme is, then, distinguished from other approaches by an interest in understanding the ethics of particular techniques and technologies which have been or could be used within market research. The aim is to identify potential issues that might emerge through the use of certain techniques or tools. It is implicitly informed by a media and cultural studies view that sees ethical issues as inherent within a technology or technique. Work in the technical theme does not typically rely on a specific ethical framework, nor specific method other than a broadly case study approach that focuses on individual techniques and tools.

Critical analysis

There are common threads that run across the four research themes. First, there is agreement on the object of study. The four themes assume that market research practice and practitioners have unique ethical concerns and values. Second, there is agreement that the ethics of market research derive “from a researcher's relations with the parties in the research process, including respondents, clients of research agencies, clients of research departments (as in the case of large organizations), and the general public. Each of the parties is owed duties and responsibilities” (Akaah & Riordan, 1989: 113). As Akaah writes: “To the extent that the fulfilment of these responsibilities creates a conflict, a research ethics problem arises” (1990: 45). Thus, across the four themes, there is an interest in understanding the views, attitudes and ethical decision making of the public, consumers, academicians and as well as commercial marketing researchers themselves. Finally, there is agreement on the objectives of the research. The four themes share a desire to raise ethical standards in market research. In some cases, this aim is driven by pragmatic reasons, in others specific ethical frameworks. But to what extent has the literature delivered on these aims?

How to impact market research practice?

It is generally assumed that codes of ethics offer the most efficient way to affect market research practitioners’ behaviours. This means that the effectiveness of codes should be measured by the extent to which commercial marketing research practitioners follow them. Yet, research in the normative and descriptive themes show that marketing researchers’ ethical judgements often differ from those in codes and that researchers’ ethical decisions are more often influenced by other factors. Some argue that the problem is not codes per se but their content. It is essential they reflect real ethical dilemmas that practitioners actually encounter in practice. These might not be the most obvious to outsiders. This is indicated by the research. It shows that students and the general public rate protections for market research respondents more highly than market research practitioners. Equally, the most difficult ethical dilemmas practitioners encounter may not be the most frequently encountered. As Hunt et al. explain: “The most difficult ethical problem is not the same as the problem that occurs most frequently” (1984: 318).

Put simply, studies of marketing research have yet to fully account for the role of codes of conduct. This is different to other areas of ethical research. The wider marketing ethics literature tells us that the real purpose of codes of ethics is to signal that a profession upholds ethical standards and, as a result, to maintain public acceptance of the practice. This is particularly true in fields such as advertising where unethical practices might benefit individual practitioners (Cluley, 2022; Harker, 1998; Boddewyn, 1989; Zaltman & Moorman, 1988; LaBarbera, 1983). Accordingly, codes of conduct in marketing have been theorised as an accommodation among adversaries (Kanter, 1974). They represent a marketing industries’ collective need to maintain public trust. But this means there can be a gap between the signalling effect of codes and their impact on practice. Codes, in other words, can serve their true purpose even if they are not followed.

To date, research on marketing ethics has little concern for theorizing codes of conduct beyond their content and effect on practitioners. It rarely questions what incentives researchers are offered for engaging in unethical practices. We need research to explore the ways codes are produced and enforced by researchers and clients, the operation of systems of redress and their utility to wider society. If the main function of a code of conduct is to support the public acceptance of market research, research also needs to establish how well codes map to wider public concerns. Notably, here, descriptive research could expand beyond its focus on market researchers and, following empirical studies in the technical theme, needs to consider wider views about controversial research practices. Research could draw on social contract theory to establish the most ethical basis on which to create codes.

Given findings about the limited effects of codes of conduct in commercial marketing research, we might need to develop a better understanding of the mechanism through which we can raise ethical standards. This raises questions for research practitioners and industry bodies as it may suggest a different role for marketing education and professional training. If ethical issues can only be resolved when stakeholders in the industry develop shared values, it is necessary to train market researchers to engage in reflective practice and to borrow for other sectors where different attitudes to ethical conflicts exist. For example, the airline industry prioritizes psychological safety and no-blame cultures to allow stakeholders to raise ethical concerns and deal with issues openly. Clearly, such changes require leadership from industry bodies and senior executives.

Are ethical practices good business?

There are almost no empirical explorations of why some market researchers engage in practices they and others deem controversial. There is a lack of studies exploring whether unethical practices produce more insightful findings or produce greater returns for research firms or their clients. It is, though, entirely possible that controversial practices produce better research.

Indeed, a vast amount of research into the ethics of commercial marketing research seeks to identify “readily discernible and easily avoidable ethical pitfalls” (Malhotra & Miller, 1998: 264). But, as the literature has moved away from normative explorations, there is less concern for establishing what makes a research practice controversial. Practitioners have a key role to play here in driving the scholarly agenda. They can identify controversial practices but, by understanding the normative frameworks which influence their judgements, we can infer potential issues and conflicts on the horizon.

Such research has the potential to reveal unexpected ethical issues and behaviours within market research. For example, commenting in Whalen (1984: 31) on a study showing a high acceptance of unethical practices, Jack Richardson, who drafted the code of ethics for the AMA’s New York Chapter, stated that “the results surprises the heck out of me…I realize this isn't the type of thing we talk about in professional conferences, but I have never even heard of some of those practices discussed, even at social functions”. More recently, Green et al. (2020) describe how research practitioners are using smartphones to access consumers' experiences in ways that challenge existing ethical conventions. In one case, they explain how a brand recruited families to record themselves (including children) consuming toothpaste at home. Granting consumers freedom to reveal their experiences in this way handed control of research design to participants and opened unforeseen ethical problems for the research practitioners.

We should expect new ethical issues will emerge and existing ethical values to become outdated (Poynter, 2021). But these are not necessarily the ones that scholars pay the most attention to. Hype around new research techniques can often attract academics’ attention before emerging technologies are adopted in practice. This creates a risk that scholarly resources are diverted towards new techniques and tools which, in reality, have limited adaption. The expansive literature on neuromarketing, for example, appears to have been based on the possibility, not the reality, of neuroscience within market research. We can compare this against a much more limited discussion of facial recognition and facial coding even though this technique is widely adopted in advertising testing (Cluley, 2022).

Indeed, research shows us that new technologies can have counterintuitive effects once adopted in commercial research practice. Cluley et al. (2020), for example, show how the adoption of data-driven marketing research, which has long been assumed to prioritize quantitative over qualitative interpretation, has actually led to a need for more “brand journalists” and fewer “quants”. This has implications for the idea that market research is centered around a scientific ethics of independence and objectivity as is often assumed in the normative literature.

Is it time for an update?

There is little doubt that the market research industry has undergone significant change since the publication of foundational accounts and theories of marketing research ethics (Lewis, 2012; Nunan, 2016). Marketing research methods have changed thanks to the rise of big data and digital technology. Industry relations and working practices have favoured automation, internationalization and outsourcing. In this regard, we cannot assume that practitioners and stakeholders are organized, act nor perceive ethical problems in the same ways as they once did. Indeed, responding to Yallop and Mowatt (2016) on behalf of the Research Association of New Zealand, Curran et al. (2017) highlight the need to update thinking. They write that descriptive studies offer “a springboard for discussion around ethical issues and practices in market research” but that we cannot assume that past studies present “an accurate picture of the current market research industry” (2017: 280). We agree. In this section, we set out some pressing areas that demand attention.

Digital technology has fundamentally altered the relationships within marketing research (Cluley et al., 2020). This provides a route for knowledge exchange as, in responding to these issues, new relationships are being formed. For example, the Global Data Quality (2024) mission represents a partnership of marketing research associations who have come together to tackle the risks presented through artificial intelligence and machine learning. It brings together the Canadian Research Insights Council (CRIC), ESOMAR, Insights Association, Market Research Society (MRS), The Research Society (TRS), SampleCon, and The Association of Market Research Austria (VMÖ)).

As we move in the age of generative AI, complex and profound new ethics questions are likely to emerge (Candelon et al., 2021; Oliver & Vayre, 2015). We are entering an age where brands may use AI systems to conduct brand journalism and desk-based research tasks rather than commissioning marketing research firms. Likewise, marketing research companies may train large language models to replace human data analysts. Data providers might generate artificial panel members using AI technology.

Marketing scholarship must document and understand these practices. It can support practice by interrogating the ethical issues that such new technologies involve in a marketing research setting. This may help avert ethical controversy, legal risks and industrial action of the kinds seen in other industries such as publishing and entertainment (Bedingfield, 2023). A large-scale screenwriters strike, for example, was resolved when entertainment companies changed the compensation they offer and agreed to limit the role of AI (Hastings, 2024; Nicoletti & Bass, 2023). As well as taking direct lessons from other areas, marketing scholarship needs to consider what is unique about the application of these technologies in marketing practice. The risk of cyclical, self-defeating bias in AI-generated respondents, for instance, might be relatively specific to commercial research applications (Leffer, 2023).

At the same time as practice is changing, new ethical concerns and new ethical frameworks have risen to prominence. The social justice movement has shifted many consumer brands’ relationship to moral issues (Peñaloza et al., 2023; Rhodes, 2021). Although socially-responsible investment has been a concern for over a century, environmental ethics have more recently inspired attention beyond financial measures such as ESG (environmental, social and governance) metrics (Székely & Knirsch, 2005; UN Global Compact, 2004). We need to explore how these concerns might affect commercial research. For example, should also research tasks include environmental impact assessments?

Posthuman ethics challenges us to consider the effects of business activity beyond human interests. They have motivated, among other things, concerns for animal welfare in production and research and a concern for understanding the role of technology in social action (Giraud, 2019). Existing frameworks and vocabulary may be insufficient to account for these emerging issues and ethical positions. Thinking in terms of deontological or teleological bases may have less resonance in an era of climate crisis where it is impossible to ignore the greater good (Gasparin et al., 2020).

To respond to these practical and theoretical challenges we need methodological innovation. It is notable, in this regard, that there are only a handful of non-survey based research studies found in this review—especially among studies published in marketing journals. Such “check-the-box” survey methods have two significant weaknesses (Sparks & Hunt, 1998: 106). First, they can limit the practices to which participants offer their opinion. In fact, many survey-based studies only explore a small pool of research practices, frequently adapted from Crawford (1970)—as Table 5 shows. Second, they may be influenced by social desirability bias. On this point, Crawford acknowledged: “There is no way of being certain that what respondents said is what they truly believe” (1970: 46).

Table 5 Market research techniques studies in descriptive research
Full size table

There are ways around these weaknesses. Sparks and Hunt (1998) use a vignette to prompt practitioners to identify hypothetical ethical issues. Recently, though, there has been renewed interest in examining marketing practice through ethnomethodological approaches. As Zeithaml et al. (2020: 49) explain, “if the field of marketing is to continue to have relevance for the practice of marketing, we must develop ideas, concepts, and theories whose central focus is the study of marketing in its natural environment”. Technology can facilitate these approaches both insitu and remotely (Cluley & Green, 2019; Green et al., 2020). Participant observation studies, for example, in which marketing scholars go to work with practitioners, allow scholars to establish first-hand how practitioners make ethical decisions (Moeran, 2005). They offer an emic perspective on the ways that practitioners identify, discuss and neutralize ethical issues on the frontline of marketing work. This allows practitioners to reveal things about their work not set out by the researcher in advance (Homburg et al., 2000; Hult, 2011; Moorman & Day, 2016).

In short, the world of marketing research has changed, and is changing, since foundational theories have been published. We need to revisit the area with fresh empirical studies that draw on a range of methods and incorporate a range of ethical perspectives. We must be willing to test, reject and develop well-established theories. In so doing, marketing scholars can help develop market research ethics and, potentially, lead to improvements in other areas of marketing theory.

Conclusion

We can summarize the current state of knowledge as follows. We know that ethical issues emerge in market research due to the conflicting values of different stakeholders. These create tension and conflicts for practitioners as they design, execute and report their findings. Second, we know that some research techniques and technologies have inherent ethical issues when they are used within market research. Third, we know that codes of conduct do not offer an effective way to directly raise ethical standards in market research as they do not reflect the full range of ethical dilemmas practitioners face. Finally, we know that research practitioners’ attitudes towards controversial techniques change. They tend to homogenize, with research practitioners tending to be more ethically sensitive than the general public and demonstrate greater-levels of social-responsibilities when making ethical decisions.

In terms of what we know we do not know about the ethics of market research, there are still many uncertainties. We do not know conclusively what influences market research practitioners' ethical attitudes nor how these attitudes influence their actual behaviours. There are very few studies looking at the resolution of ethical issues nor is there much work exploring market researchers’ actual ethical decisions and behaviours. There are also uncertainties about the future of the industry, new working practices and techniques. To address these gaps, we not only need to understand and consider responsibly (Cluley & Green, 2024) new techniques and technology but also to find ways to study practice when research activities are increasingly dispersed among people who do not consider themselves market researchers. This work is becoming more pertinent as the market research industries have faced increasing public and commercial scrutiny in recent decades.

Here, this paper makes an important intervention. It provides a central point of reference on the ethics of market research. We have expanded beyond the normative (Hunt & Vitell, 1986; Laczniak, 1983; Laczniak & Murphy, 2006) and descriptive (Crawford, 1970; Ferrell & Gresham, 1985; Hunt & Vitell, 1986) approaches that have long been the staple in the ethical marketing decision making literature through a grounded, systematic, and holistic approach to marketing research ethics (Ferrell et al., 2013). Two novel approaches have emerged: Theoretical and Technical. This sets a research agenda for an integrated research project that can update and develop existing thinking. It combines disparate areas of research which have, in their own way, explored the ethics of market research.

In closing, we note the following limitations to our study. First, as with any systematic review, our results are dependent on the search terms. If we had adopted a different definition of market research or synonymous terms for ethics, we may have uncovered different literatures. We attempted to use a broad and inclusive definition of market research to expose literature from all relevant areas. Indeed, the range of literature we did uncover convinces us that, while we may have found additional contributions, the general impression of siloed discussions would not alter. Similarly, investigating further databases may have deepened the granularity of our review. One reason we adopt a systematic approach is to facilitate replication to deal with these issues.