Hassell 1

Sophie Hassell
Professor Jizi
University Writing 1103
5 November 2015
Research Proposal
1. My inquiry question is: How is marketing ethics prominent in todays society and
what are some examples of marketing campaigns that have been deemed unethical?
2. The primary purpose of my inquiry topic is to explore more in depth the ideas and
issues with companies being unethical in their marketing. While this essay could
become argumentative, including me discussing my opinions on different marketing
campaigns, I want to focus more on discovering information and finding the
controversial topics. What really interests me is the fine line between what is ethical
and unethical because there are no real legal actions that can be taken. A good way to
find out more about this is to research the marketing ads and strategies that have
proven to be ethical and unethical and then describing why they are perceived this
way.
3. My prior preconceptions that brought me to this project was my marketing class
senior year of high school. In this class we discussed different marketing tactics and
how some were controversial and unethical. I was immediately interested in this
because I love learning about controversies and forming my own viewpoints. Before I
began developing a working knowledge on ethical marketing I was thinking of the
limited examples of unethical marketing I already knew. Although very few came to
mind, I knew that there were a vast amount of examples out there. Now, I am thinking

Hassell 2
about the fine line that defines what is ethical and what is not and how this can be
perceived different depending on the person you ask.