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Research on Marketing Ethics: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Alexander Nill and John A. Schibrowsky
Journal of Macromarketing 2007 27: 256
DOI: 10.1177/0276146707304733

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 Research on Marketing Ethics:
A Systematic Review of the Literature
Alexander Nill and John A. Schibrowsky
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 jour-
nal 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 lit-
erature. Much progress has been made in areas such as improv-
ing our understanding of marketers’ values, marketers’ ethical
decision-making processes, and cross-cultural related issues.
Societal issues and basic normative questions attracted sub-
stantially less interest from researchers.
Keywords: marketing; ethics; literature; review; categori-
zation; content analysis
The high visibility of marketing activities and managers’
efforts to administer their firms’ relationships with its stake-
holders—including but not limited to customers, employees,
stockholders, and the general public (Mundt 1993)—
continue to keep ethics among the most challenging issues
for marketing managers and academics alike. The rising
focus of marketers on building and maintaining relation-
ships through trust and commitment clearly has ethical
dimensions (Whysall 2000; Gundlach and Murphy 1993).
The global integration of markets and marketing, which is
accelerated by the transformative changes in electronic
communication (Kilbourne 2004), coupled with political
transformations toward free market systems in many countries,
has further propelled ethical problems for marketers. Indeed,
“as more firms move into multinational marketing, ethical
issues tend to increase” (Murphy and Laczniak 1981, 258). As
documented by an increasing deluge of literature discussing
ethical issues in marketing and business, the general public
distrust of marketing activities, and a continuous string of
256
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ethics scandals, marketers are constantly struggling with the eth-
ical or moral side of their activities. Thus, marketers were often
criticized for ethical misconduct long before Enron, Worldcom,
and others were in the headlines (Armstrong and Sweeney
1994). While many of the recent scandals were primarily linked
to accounting irregularities and financial misdeeds, “marketing
misconduct clearly had a role in the scandals involving financial
services firms” (Murphy et al. 2005).
A systematic review of the marketing ethics literature,
along with implications for future research based on trends
as well as gaps in the literature, is needed to extend the mar-
keting ethics discussion and shed some light on the current
state of marketing ethics research. More specifically, the
purpose of this article is fourfold: First, the article will
develop a categorization scheme for marketing ethics
research that allows for a methodical comparison and analy-
sis of marketing ethics articles. Second, a systematic selec-
tion of journal articles employing an electronic database
such as ABI/INFORM and Business Source Premier will be
presented. The review will cover journal articles published
between 1981 and 2005—the timeframe of the Journal of
Macromarketing—in marketing journals that are listed in
the electronic database—including the top journals of the
field such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing
Research, and Journal of Consumer Research, and the inter-
disciplinary journals Harvard Business Review, Sloan
Management Review, California Management Review,
Business Horizons, Journal of Business, Journal of Business
Ethics, and Journal of Business Research. Third, the review
should provide Journal of Macromarketing readers with a
sense of the quantity of marketing ethics articles published, the
scope of the research (macro versus micro and normative ver-
sus positive coverage), how marketing ethics research has
evolved in terms of content (i.e., which topics have been stud-
ied and which have not), and where the ethics literature is pub-
lished. Finally, in the hope of sparking academic debate and
inquisitiveness, the article seeks to identify the most impor-
tant trends in the marketing ethics literature and provide
Journal of Macromarketing, Vol. 27 No. 3, September 2007 256-273
DOI: 10.1177/0276146707304733
© 2007 Sage Publications

future direction, particularly in terms of research gaps and
expected topical areas of interest.
ETHICS IN THE MARKETING LITERATURE
While ethical issues in marketing are not a new area of
concern—ancient philosophers from Aristotle to Cicero
analyzed typical marketing ethics problems more than two
thousand years ago—they have demanded substantially more
attention from researchers and practitioners over the last two
decades. The public mistrust of modern business has been
reported consistently almost since its inception (Stevens 2004).
The Gallup Polls that report on the perceived ethics of various
professions show marketing practitioners rank near the bottom
among professionals in honesty and ethical standards
(Advertising Age 2002). The field of marketing has long been
criticized along a number of ethical lines, including issues such
as product liability, personal selling tactics, false or misleading
advertising, product dumping, price gouging, marketing to low-
income consumers, foreign child labor, and a host of other areas
of ethics that have gained international attention (e.g., Dunfee,
Smith, and Ross 1999; Lawrence, Wotruba, and Low 2002;
Laczniak 1999; Lund 2000). While chief executive officers
seem to have a tendency to view such behavior as the excep-
tion, the public appears to consider it as the rule. “It seems the
U.S. public is far more pessimistic about the ethical climate of
business these days than are members of top management”
(Laczniak et al. 1995).
In one of the first comprehensive reviews of the marketing
ethics literature with more than one hundred references,
Murphy and Laczniak (1981) come to the conclusion that it is
nonmainstream, predominantly prescriptive in terms of giving
normative advice to marketers, and is dominated by ethical
issues in advertising and marketing research ethics. Murphy
and Pridgen (1991) provide an extensive inventory of the dif-
ferent subject areas covered in the marketing ethics literature.
In the early nineties, Laczniak comments on the evolution of
the marketing ethics literature in reference to the Murphy and
Laczniak article of 1981: “In the past decade, there has been a
broader coverage of marketing issues, greater academic visi-
bility for publications addressing marketing ethics, and the
development of a theoretical and empirical foundation for
future research in this area” (Laczniak 1993, 91).
Tsalikis and Fritzsche (1989) analyze the literature on
business ethics with a special focus on marketing ethics
using the categories normative and positive. They conclude
by voicing two major concerns that reduce the utility of sci-
entific studies of marketing ethics: (1) the focus of the mar-
keting ethics literature on deontological and teleological
moral philosophies given the pluralistic nature of the field of
moral philosophy and (1) the preponderance of single global
measures, which lead to unreliable results and cannot detail
the dynamics of ethical evaluations. While their extensive
research provides valuable insights on the state of marketing
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JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING 257
ethics research, the categories being used are somewhat nar-
row. Also, the selection of the literature being discussed is
not explained and might not necessarily be representative of
the field.
Gaski (1999) undertook a review of the prescriptive mar-
keting ethics literature with the purposes of subsuming all
standard ethical prescriptions under the categories “obey the
law” and “act in your own self interest.” He concluded that
marketers would end up acting ethically as long as they
heeded the law and acted in their own self-interest. A simi-
lar evaluation of the superfluous nature of the study of ethics
in business was offered earlier by some supporters of the
neoclassical theory who contended that marketers should
not bother with normative ethical questions (Levitt 1958;
Friedman 1970). Smith (2001) rejected this line of thinking
by explicating that “obey the law” is an often necessary but not
sufficient requirement for good conduct. Marketers who are not
genuinely interested in ethical conduct might look for legal
loopholes and their “obedience to the law may be colored by
beliefs about whether others obey the law and the possibility of
being caught” (Smith 2001, 8). There are many situations
where the law and self-interest are too inconsistent to provide
any guidance for marketers.
Whysall (2000), the most recent review article on the mar-
keting ethics literature, provided an overview of the dimen-
sions of ethical research and ethical dilemmas in marketing by
extending Tsalikis and Fritzsche’s (1989) categorization
scheme with green issues in marketing, health related con-
cerns, consumer attitudes, disadvantaged consumers, privacy
issues, and ethics in supply chains. He asserted that teleologi-
cal and deontological theories have dominated the field and
argued that the importation of ethical models developed by
moral philosophers were rarely “adequate in themselves to
guide marketing decisions” (Whysall 2000, 189). As could be
argued in the case of all the above cited literature reviews,
Whysall (2000, 175) noted that his review was “inevitably
somewhat selective and personal.”
THE SCOPE OF MARKETING ETHICS
While research efforts in the area of marketing ethics
have increased dramatically over the last two decades with
more depth and breadth of coverage, and more publications
in mainstream marketing journals, there are surprisingly few
systematic literature reviews. Part of the problem is the
somewhat elusive and controversial definition of the scope
of marketing ethics and the difficulty to systematically
select and analyze the contributions in the field. While some
authors (Murphy and Laczniak 1981; Murphy and Pridgen
1991; Whysall 2000) categorize the field according to mar-
keting’s diverse subdisciplines, such as marketing research,
advertising, pricing, and so on, others (Gaski 1999; Hunt
and Vitell 1986) divide the literature into the broad categories
normative and positive, or a combination of both (Tsalikis and
258 SEPTEMBER 2007

TABLE 1
CATEGORIZATION SCHEME FOR MARKETING ETHICS
Normative (Examination of What Ought to Be)
Macro • What should be the role of marketing ethics in a
free enterprise, private-property system?
• What should be the role of marketing ethics in non-
democratic societies and transitional societies?
• What should be the relationship between law and
ethics?
• What should be marketers' role in helping to solve
societal problems?
• What should be marketers' ethical responsibility
toward the society?
• Which ethical position should marketers take when
acting in foreign cultures with different value systems?
• What should be the role of consumer sovereignty?
• What should be marketers' responsibility toward
vulnerable consumers?
Micro • How should firms define their ethical responsibility?
• How should firms make ethical decisions in marketing?
• How should firms deal with specific ethical
challenges?
• How should firms implement marketing ethics?
• How should a code of conduct be designed?
• How should firms train marketing ethics?
• How should marketers cope with intrapersonal
value conflicts?
Positive (Examination of What Is)
• What is the role of marketing ethics in a free enterprise, private-
property system?
• What is the role of marketing ethics in nondemocratic societies
and transitional societies?
• What is the impact of laws on marketing ethics?
• What are marketers doing to help to solving societal problems?
• What is the ethical decision-making process of aggregated
groups of marketers?
• What is the relationship between ethics and profits?
• What are marketers, differing value systems across cultures?
• What are (if any) universally accepted ethical norms?
• What is the role of consumer sovereignty in marketing decisions?
• What are common ethical dilemmas?
• How do firms define their ethical responsibility?
• How do firms implement marketing ethics?
• How do firms train marketing ethics?
• What is the role of codes of conduct?
• How are marketers coping with intrapersonal value conflicts?
• What are conflicts between personal values and the marketer's
occupational role?
• What is the ethical decision-making process in firms?

Fritzsche 1989). Still others (DeGeorge 2005) distinguish TABLE 2

between general ethics—subdivided into descriptive ethics, FUNCTIONAL AREAS OF MARKETING ETHICS
normative ethics, and metaethics—and special ethics such as
Abbrev. Topic
marketing ethics, accounting ethics, and so on.
In the following, a categorization scheme is introduced with Functional areas
1. Prod Product related issues
the purposes of (1) analyzing the approaches to the study of
2. Price Price related issues
marketing ethics, and (2) systematically reviewing the market- 3. Place Placement related issues
ing ethics literature. Inspired by Hunt’s (1976) conceptual 4. Prom Promotion related issues
model of the scope of marketing, marketing ethics is divided
into the broad dichotomies positive/normative and micro/ Subdisciplines of marketing
5. Sales Sales related issues
macro, followed by a categorization into the functional areas of 6. Cons Consumer related issues
marketing ethics. The categorization scheme is presented in 7. Intl International related issues
tables 1 and 2. For the purposes of this article, the dichotomies 8. Edu Marketing ethics education related issues
positive/normative and micro/macro, which yield 2 × 2 = 4 9. MRes Marketing research related issues
10. SocM Social marketing related issues
classes or cells, are assumed to be mutually exclusive. Thus, an 11. Inter Internet related issues
article is either placed in positive and micro, positive and 12. Law Law and ethics related issues
macro, normative and micro, or normative and macro. This is
not to say that an article could not reasonably be placed into Specific ethics related topics
two classes at the same time. For example, many positive con- 13. Soc Ethics and society related issues
14. Dec Ethical decision making models related issues
tributions might also come up with normative recommenda- 15. Stake Ethical responsibility toward marketers’
tions that can be deduced from the results of their studies. stakeholders related issues
16. Valu Ethical values related issues
17. Norm Norm generation and definition related issues
The Positive/Normative Dichotomy 18. Impl Marketing ethics implementation related issues
19. Relig Relationship between ethics and religion
The positive/normative dichotomy suggests a classifica- related issues
tion “based on whether the focus of the analysis is primarily 20. Discr Discrimination and harassment related issues
descriptive or prescriptive” (Hunt 1976, 20). Descriptive 21. Green Green marketing related issues
22. Vuln Vulnerable consumer related issues
contributions in marketing ethics aim to describe, explain,

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understand, and possibly predict ethically relevant marketing
activities, processes, and phenomena. Empirical investiga-
tions that describe the values or the ethical decision-making
process of individuals and groups can be subsumed under
this category. Also, conceptual approaches suggesting a pos-
itive theory of marketing ethics fall under this category.
Examples of emerging descriptive theories are the models
from Hunt and Vitell (1986), Ferrell and Gresham (1985),
Ferrell, Gresham and Fraedrich (1989), and Jones (1991).
These models offer a better understanding of marketers’
decision making in ethically relevant situations. The purpose
of these models is “not to provide normative guidance for
marketing decisions that are more ethical” (Hunt, forthcom-
ing), but “to increase our understanding of the ethical deci-
sion-making by means of a process theory.” It is assumed
that the ethical decision-making process is influenced by a
variety of situational and contextual factors such as the
industry environment, the organizational environment, per-
sonal experiences, and the cultural environment. According
to the Hunt and Vitell (1986) model, it is thought that
depending on how the individual perceives the ethical prob-
lem, the available alternatives, and the probability of result-
ing consequences, a deontological and a teleological
evaluation occur. Singhapakdi and Vitell (1990, 16) and
others (Mayo and Marks 1990) found “partial support to
Hunt and Vitell’s propositions.”
In contrast, normative marketing ethics adopt a prescriptive
perspective. That is, it attempts to prescribe from an ethical per-
spective “what marketing organizations or individuals ought to
do or what kinds of marketing systems a society ought to have”
(Hunt 1976, 20). Thus, normative marketing ethics generate
ethical standards for marketers regarding the question of what
is right and what is wrong (Laczniak and Murphy 1993; Smith
and Quelch 1993; Chonko 1995). They are concerned with the
justification of moral norms and ethical values and can be seen
as an instrument to criticize and assess differing value systems.
Deontological and teleological theories, which have been bor-
rowed from moral philosophy, are the two dominating
approaches in the marketing ethics literature (Whysall 2000).
Teleology, such as utilitarianism and egoism, judges the
value of an action from its outcome only. According to util-
itarianism as it has been introduced by John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873) and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), one should
choose the alternative that leads to the greatest happiness of
the greatest number (Mill [1861] 1979; Frankena 1963).
Deontology judges the value of actions only from the per-
spective of their inherent wrongness or rightness regardless
of the consequences. Thus, deontological approaches rely
on the duty to follow absolute principles. Kant’s moral
laws—the famous categorical imperatives—are truly deon-
tological (Kant [1783] 1965). Thus, Kant ([1783] 1965, 10)
argued that “being ethical is having ethical intentions with-
out considering the consequences because any result of any
action is influenced by uncontrollable variables.”
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JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING 259
The Micro/Macro Dichotomy
The micro/macro dichotomy categorization was based on the
level of aggregation. Micro suggests a low level of aggregation
and refers to ethically relevant marketing activities of “indi-
vidual units, normally individual organizations (firms) and
consumers or households” (Hunt 1976, 20). Thus, micro-
ethical questions usually focus on ethical dilemmas faced by
individual firms and the individual decision maker within the
firm. Intrapersonal conflicts which may emerge between an
individual’s personal value system and the value system of
his/her company—the prototypical question in this area is
whether an employee should blow the whistle—fall under
this category (Brummer 1985).
In contrast, macro suggests a high level of aggregation and
refers to ethically relevant marketing activities for consumer
groups, the society, and marketing systems. Thus, macro refers
to the ethical perspective of aggregate marketing activities
including macromarketing with a focus on “big, complex, and
systemic issues, the interplay of marketing and society, and
ultimately, improvements to life quality for large numbers of
stakeholders affected by marketing systems” (Shultz 2005, 3).
Complex issues such as the general role of marketing ethics
in a free enterprise, private-property system, the relationship
between law and ethics, and marketers’ role in helping to
solve societal problems are subsumed under this category.
From the viewpoint of decision makers, there are areas of
overlap between microethical and macroethical issues.
Many executives might face both categories in a single deci-
sion. That is, some decisions might pose microethical prob-
lems but have far reaching consequences for a large group of
consumers or even the society as a whole at the same time.
For example, the recent decision of Deutsche Bank CEO
Joseph Ackermann to lay off 20,000 employees to improve
the bank’s return on investment did not only have an imme-
diate impact on the life of these employees, it also sparked a
fierce political discussion with potentially regulatory conse-
quences in Germany (Walker 2005).
Topical Areas of Marketing Ethics
Topical areas of marketing ethics had to be defined with
the purpose of classifying the analyzed articles in the litera-
ture (see table 2). This is not to say that one article cannot
address more than one topic. Thus, the proposed topical
areas are not mutually exclusive and one article might be
placed in several functional categories at the same time.
However, for purposes of this article, we tried to identify the
primary topical areas and limited the categorization of func-
tional areas to two per article. A topical categorization
scheme should be relevant for marketing scholars, reflect the
topical foci in the marketing ethics literature, and be exhaus-
tive enough that no important topics are left out without
becoming unwieldy. Thus, the categorization scheme
required an incremental step-by-step approach.
260 SEPTEMBER 2007
In a first step, we looked at the American Marketing
Association (AMA) for orientation. As expressed in its mis-
sion statement, the AMA sees one of its principle roles as to
“advance the thought, application and ethical practice of
marketing” (AMA 2006b). The AMA provides three general
ethical norms—(1) do no harm, (2) foster trust in the mar-
keting system, and (3) embrace, communicate, and practice
the fundamental ethical values honesty, responsibility, fair-
ness, respect, openness, and citizenship. These values are
intentionally abbreviated and aspirational, and do not—and
probably should not—provide recipe-like guidance for mar-
keters facing ethical questions. For example, what are mar-
keters in a global environment, where different customs,
values, and even laws clash, to do with the first norm—to do
no harm—which is defined as “adhering to all applicable
laws and regulations and embodying high ethical standards”
(AMA 2006a, 1)? Furthermore, one could argue that the
AMA norms do not specifically address the problem of bal-
ancing the differing interests of stakeholders—a problem
that marketers often have to face when trying to adhere to
different values of different stakeholders. Given the some-
what inspirational but elusive character of its norms and val-
ues, the AMA concludes with the expectation that every
marketing subdiscipline has its own specific ethical issues
that require policies and commentary.
In a second step, we looked at functional areas of
marketing—the four Ps that have been introduced first by
Jerome McCarthy (1960)—and marketing subdisciplines, as
suggested by the AMA. Next, on a preliminary review of the
literature, we expanded the list with ethics-specific topics rel-
evant for marketing. Procedurally, we added new categories
as the literature dictated. Finally, we arrived at a topical cate-
gorization scheme that is loosely organized as (1) functional
areas of marketing, (2) subdisciplines of marketing, and (3)
specific ethics related topics (see table 2):
Functional areas of marketing
• Product related issues. The sale of potentially dangerous,
malfunctioning, and environmentally harmful products is
subsumed under this category. AMA’s responsibility
value: “this means that products are appropriate for their
intended and promoted uses” (AMA 2006a, 2).
• Price related issues. All pricing-related marketing
ethics. AMA’s fairness value: “we will not engage in
price fixing, predatory pricing, price gouging or bait-
and-switch tactics” (AMA 2006a, 2).
• Placement-related issues. The ethical responsibility
and ethical problems that might arise in the relation-
ship with middlemen. AMA’s respect value: “we will
make a special effort to understand suppliers, interme-
diaries, and distributors” (AMA 2006a, 2).
• Promotion-related issues. Ethical challenges of adver-
tising and promotion, such as manipulating consumers
to buy what they don’t need or can’t afford and the
question of whether this is possible, are placed in this
category. AMA’s norm to foster trust in the marketing
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system: “it requires that marketing communications
about goods and services are not intentionally deceptive
and misleading” (AMA 2006a, 1) and AMA’s fairness
value: “this includes the avoidance of false misleading
and deceptive promotion” (AMA 2006a, 2).
Subdisciplines of marketing
• Sales-related issues. All sales-related ethical challenges.
AMA’s fairness value: “we will reject manipulations and
sales tactics that harm customer trust” (AMA 2006a, 2).
• Consumer-related ethical issues. The ethical decision
making of consumers and ethical perceptions of con-
sumers and their potential impact for marketers.
• International-related issues. An ever-increasing num-
ber of companies do business in foreign countries and
cultures. Cross-cultural issues and problems that may
arise when different cultures clash, when laws and cus-
toms are conflicting, are subsumed under this category.
• Marketing ethics education–related issues. The ques-
tion of how—if this is even possible—marketers
and/or marketing students are (or should be) trained to
act more ethically falls under this category.
• Marketing research–related issues. What are (or
should be) the ethical responsibilities of marketers
conducting marketing research?
• Social marketing–related issues. What are (or should
be) specific ethical considerations for marketers
engaged in social marketing, a small but important
discipline of marketing?
• Internet-related issues. New advances in electronic
communication such as e-mail and the Internet have
raised a plentitude of privacy issues and other ethi-
cally relevant problems.
• Law and ethics–related issues. The relationship between
law and ethics in marketing. AMA’s first norm to do no
harm: “adhering to all applicable laws and regulations”
(AMA 2006a, 1).
Specific ethics-related topics
• Ethics and society–related issues. What is (or should be)
the role of marketing ethics in free enterprise, private-
property, and nondemocratic or transitional systems?
What are (or should be) the ethical implications for mar-
keters’ ability (or inability) to solve societal problems?
• Ethical decision making. How are marketers making
(or how should they make) decisions from an ethical
perspective? What drives the decision-making process?
• Ethical responsibility toward marketers’ stakeholders–
related issues. What ethical responsibilities do marketers
have (or should they have) toward their stakeholders?
The relationship between ethics and profits, the questions
of the appropriateness of philanthropic contributions, and
the primacy of the stockholder fall in this category.
• Ethical values–related issues. Which ethical values are
marketers adhering to or which should they be adher-
ing to? How can ethical values be measured?

• Norm generation and definition–related issues. How is
ethics (or how should it be) defined? How can ethical
values relevant for marketers be generated?
• Marketing ethics implementation–related issues. How
is ethics (or how should it be) implemented in the
decision-making process of marketers? The discus-
sion about the usefulness of codes of conduct and mis-
sion statements falls under this category.
• Relationship between ethics and religion–related
issues. The impact religion and religious values
(should) have on marketing ethics and the ethical deci-
sion-making process of marketers.
• Discrimination and harassment–related issues. AMA’s
value respect: “we will value individual differences even
as we avoid stereotyping customers or depicting demo-
graphic groups (e.g. gender, race, sexual orientation) in
a negative or dehumanizing way” (AMA 2006a, 2).
• Green marketing–related issues. Marketing ethics
challenges germane to protecting the natural environ-
ment. AMA’s value citizenship: “we will strive to pro-
tect the natural environment” (AMA 2006a, 3).
• Vulnerable consumer–related issues. Ethical problems
and challenges in dealing with vulnerable consumers.
AMA’s value responsibility: “we will recognize our
special commitments to economically vulnerable seg-
ments of the markets such as children, the elderly, and
others who may be substantially disadvantaged”
(AMA 2006a, 2).
METHOD
Given the vast number of marketing ethics articles and
the potential number of publication outlets, it was necessary
to explicitly specify the scope of the review and establish
straightforward procedures. While contributions with mar-
keting ethics content can be found in a wide variety of jour-
nals and other outlets, for this review, we focused on
peer-reviewed marketing journals and some business jour-
nals that cover marketing issues (Harvard Business Review,
Sloan Management Review, California Management
Review, Business Horizons, Journal of Business, Journal of
Business Ethics, and Journal of Business Research). We
started out with the “comprehensive set of marketing and mar-
keting related journals” (Baumgartner and Pieters 2003, 123)
that have been analyzed concerning their overall and subarea
influence on the marketing discipline. On preliminary review
of the literature, we expanded the list to fifty-eight journals rel-
evant to marketing ethics (see table 3). A cross-check of the
journals not included on the list was performed to get a sense
for the nature and scope of marketing ethics articles not pub-
lished in these journals. During the time period studied,
approximately 77 percent of all marketing ethics articles
published appeared in these fifty-eight journals.
Second, an electronic database had to be selected. The
two criteria were the comprehensiveness of the database in
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JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING 261
terms of journal coverage and the time frame (it had to cover
the whole period under review). After consideration of vari-
ous databases, Business Source Premier was selected as the
primary database because it appeared to be the most com-
prehensive and complete for the time frame evaluated.
Third, appropriate search terms had to be identified. After
preliminary analysis, the source words marketing and ethics
were found to be the most comprehensive. For the time
frame of this review (1981 to 2005), Business Source
Premier produced 930 ethics contributions. However, this
search algorithm did not necessarily reveal all articles focus-
ing on marketing ethics. For example, the keywords market-
ing and deception revealed 88 articles. Of those 88
contributions, 10 were already discovered by the original
keywords marketing and ethics. Of the 78 remaining arti-
cles, we checked the first 20. One of those 20 was an article
whose main focus is marketing ethics. That is, in this case,
the search algorithm missed one article. We also cross-
checked the keywords marketing and misconduct (14 arti-
cles with an overlap of 7 articles, and no marketing ethics
articles in the remaining 7) and marketing and fraud (102
articles with an overlap of 10 articles).
Another limitation of the search algorithm was the overlap
between ethics and social responsibility, since both expres-
sions are sometimes used interchangeably. While there is no
comprehensive definition of marketers’ responsibility to soci-
ety, the orthodox view is that “a socially responsible cooper-
ation pursues profit while respecting the moral minimum”
(Bowie 1991, 58). A more comprehensive definition argues
that corporations have a duty to help solve social problems.
Many of the articles in the macro/normative cluster are in line
with this definition. There was a 50 percent overlap in the
electronic database using the keywords marketing and social
responsibility, which revealed 231 articles, of which 115 were
already discovered by the original keywords marketing and
ethics. We checked the first 20 of the remaining 116 articles
and found 2 articles focusing on marketing ethics. Both arti-
cles fall in the macro/normative category. Therefore, the
search algorithm using the keywords marketing and ethics
might have lead to a slight underrepresentation of articles in
the macro/normative category.
Fourth, each abstract had to be evaluated to determine
whether it was a marketing ethics article or just ethics
related. Articles that cover some ethical aspects but whose
main focus was not ethics were not included. The reasoning
is that it is common for many marketing studies to include
ethical implications without actually focusing on marketing
ethics as the primary research topic. As an illustration,
Holbrook’s article (Holbrook 2005 a), which sheds some
light on conflicts between commercial and artistic interests,
also raises ethical questions, but its main emphasis is not on
marketing ethics. Furthermore, ethical contributions without
a focus on marketing content were also not included.
Fifth, a content analysis was performed on the abstracts of
all selected journal articles (see table 3). These articles were
classified according to the categorization scheme discussed
262 SEPTEMBER 2007

TABLE 3
LIST OF JOURNALS

Abbrev. Journal Abbrev. Journal

ACR Advances in Consumer Research JEP Journal of Economic Psychologyb
AMA AMA Educators’ Conference Proceedingsb JGM Journal of Global Marketingb
BE Business Ethics: A European Reviewa JHCM Journal of Health Care Marketing
BEQ Business Ethics Quarterlya JIBS Journal of International Business Studiesb
BH Business Horizons JICM Journal of International Consumer Marketinga
BS Brand Strategya JIM Journal of international Marketing
CMR California Management Review JM Journal of Marketing
DS Decision Sciencesb JME Journal of Marketing Education
EJM European Journal of Marketing JMM Journal of Macromarketing
HBR Harvard Business Review JMMA Journal of Marketing Management
IJM International Journal of Managementa JMR Journal of Marketing Research
IJRM International Journal of Research in Marketing JMRS Journal of the Market Research Society
IMR International Marketing Reviewa JMTP Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice
IMM Industrial Marketing Management JNPSM Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketingb
JA Journal of Advertising JPIM Journal of Product Innovation Managementb
JAMS Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science JPPM Journal of Public Policy and Marketing
JAR Journal of Advertising Research JPSM Journal of Professional Services Marketing
JB Journal of Businessb JPSSM Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management
JBBM Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing JR Journal of Retailing
JBE Journal of Business Ethics JSM Journal of Services Marketing
JBIM Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing JSR Journal of Services Researcha
JBL Journal of Business Logistics MER Marketing Education Review
JBR Journal of Business Research MKS Marketing Science
JCA Journal of Consumer Affairs ML Marketing Letters
JCM Journal of Consumer Marketing MM Marketing Management
JCPO Journal of Consumer Policyb MNS Management Scienceb
JCPS Journal of Consumer Psychology MR Marketing Researcha
JCR Journal of Consumer Research PM Psychology and Marketingb
JDM Journal of Direct Marketingb SMR Sloan Management Review

a. Journals that are not in the Baumgartner and Pieters (2003, 123) list.
b. Journals that did not have any marketing ethics articles.

earlier. If a categorization using the abstract was not possible,
the whole article was analyzed to more clearly ascertain the
“primary” topics under investigation. Two independent judges
were used to increase the objectivity of this research method.
When they disagreed about a classification, they discussed the
article until an agreement was reached.
Quantity: how many articles have been published over the years?
Nature and scope of the marketing ethics literature: what is the
primary focus of the articles in terms of the categorization
scheme positive/normative and macro/micro?
Topical areas of the marketing ethics literature: what are the pri-
mary topical areas of the articles?
Publication outlets: what is published in which journals?

Quantity of Ethics Articles

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The above procedure produced a total of 930 articles
published from 1981 through 2005. Of those articles, 379
were determined not to be primarily marketing ethics
articles. The net result was 551 marketing ethics articles
appearing in marketing and business journals. Of these arti-
cles, 421 appeared in the fifty-eight journals listed in table
3. These articles were the data used for this review. The
results are shown in tables 4 through 8. In most cases, the
results are displayed by individual years along with five year
summaries. While we present and interpret the results in the
next few sections, we encourage readers to review the tables
and draw their own conclusions. The findings of this review
are summarized and organized using four categories that
will be discussed separately:
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Over the past twenty-five years, the fifty-eight journals
under consideration published 421 marketing ethics articles.
As table 5 indicates, the first five-year period, 1981 to 1985,
produced 21 articles. This amount doubled for the next five-
year period (1986 to 1990) and again from 1991 to 1995, when
a total of 86 articles were published. The number of marketing
ethics articles continued to grow for each five-year time period.
From 2001 to 2005, 147 articles were published, compared to
125 from 1996 to 2000. While the field continued to grow over
the past five years, it was the smallest percentage growth rate
for any five year period (18 percent). We find this slow growth
somewhat surprising, given the high levels of interest in busi-
ness ethics by the government, academia (e.g., Association to
Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), the media, and busi-
ness itself, during that time period.
 JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING 263

TABLE 4
NUMBER OF MARKETING ETHICS ARTICLES AND PERCENTAGES OF THE DICHOTOMIES BY YEAR

Contributions % Macro/ % Macro/ % Micro/ % Micro/

Year Total Normative Positive Normative Positive % Macro % Micro % Normative % Positive
2005 37 8 22 13 57 30 70 22 78
2004 34 15 26 21 38 41 59 35 65
2003 25 12 16 24 48 28 72 36 64
2002 23 4 17 22 57 22 78 26 74
2001 27 19 22 22 37 41 59 41 59
2000 18 6 28 11 56 33 67 17 83
1999 39 26 13 28 33 38 62 54 46
1998 27 30 19 15 37 48 52 44 56
1997 22 14 14 27 45 27 73 41 59
1996 20 15 20 10 55 35 65 25 75
1995 15 13 7 33 47 20 80 47 53
1994 17 12 18 18 53 29 71 29 71
1993 18 11 28 39 22 39 61 50 50
1992 20 0 25 50 25 25 75 50 50
1991 16 6 13 31 50 19 81 38 63
1990 14 7 14 43 36 21 79 50 50
1989 12 0 42 25 33 42 58 25 75
1988 7 14 71 0 14 86 14 14 86
1987 5 0 0 60 40 0 100 60 40
1986 4 0 25 75 0 25 75 75 25
1985 5 0 20 20 60 20 80 20 80
1984 4 0 25 25 50 25 75 25 75
1983 7 0 14 29 57 14 86 29 71
1982 3 0 0 67 33 0 100 67 33
1981 2 0 50 0 50 50 50 0 100

TABLE 5
FIVE YEAR SUMMARIES OF THE MARKETING ETHICS ARTICLES AND PERCENTAGES OF THE DICHOTOMIES

Total # Macro/ # Macro/ # Micro/ # Micro/

Contributions Normative Positive Normative Positive # Macro # Micro # Normative # Positive % Micro % Macro % Positive % Normative
2005–2001 147 17 32 29 69 49 98 46 102 66.7 33.3 68.7 31.3
2000–1996 125 25 22 25 53 47 78 50 75 62.4 37.6 60.0 40.0
1995–1991 86 7 16 30 33 23 63 37 49 73.3 26.7 57.0 43.0
1990–1986 42 2 13 15 12 15 27 17 25 64.3 35.7 59.5 40.5
1985–1981 21 0 4 6 11 4 17 6 15 81.0 19.0 71.4 28.6
25 year totals 421 51 87 105 178 138 283 156 265 67.2 32.8 62.9 37.1
% last 5 years 35% 33.3% 36.8% 27.6% 38.8% 35.5% 34.6% 29.5% 38.1%
% last 10 years 65% 82.4% 62.1% 51.4% 68.5% 69.6% 62.2% 61.5% 66.4%

In summary, 35 percent of all marketing ethics articles
were published in the past five years. Even more surprising,
65 percent of the marketing ethics articles in this study were
published in the past ten years. It can be concluded that mar-
keting ethics is a relatively young and evolving field.
Nature and Scope of the Marketing
Ethics Literature
Two areas of interest for marketing ethics researchers
are the nature (positive versus normative) and scope (micro
versus macro) of the publications.
The positive/normative dichotomy. In total, 265 articles (63
percent) were classified as positive in nature and 37 percent
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were determined to be normative. In addition, since 1985, the
ratio of positive versus normative marketing ethics publica-
tions has been growing. Normative articles that provided
(sometimes simplistic) advice on how to behave ethically
almost completely vanished. This might show that the field is
maturing and becoming more appreciative of the many com-
plexities of marketing ethics. Contributions that offered a
“quick fix” became a thing of the past. The micro/positive cat-
egory emerged as the largest category over the last fifteen
years. About half of all contributions fall in this category. This
certainly led to a much-improved understanding of pressing
questions such as: What are the main issues in marketing
ethics? Which issues are perceived as the main problems by
marketing managers? Which values do marketers believe in?
How do marketers make ethical decisions? In short, these
 264
TABLE 6
TOPICAL AREAS OF THE MARKETING ETHICS LITERATURE

Date Prod Price Place Prom Sales Cons Intl Edu MRes SocM Inter Law Soc Decision Stake Valu Norm Impl Relig Discr Green Vuln
2005 1 0 0 4 4 6 8 6 0 0 1 0 2 7 3 9 0 5 1 0 1 1
2004 1 1 1 1 4 3 8 8 0 0 1 0 4 6 4 5 2 2 1 0 1 0
2003 1 0 1 2 2 5 5 2 1 1 0 0 2 2 3 5 1 1 0 0 1 0
2002 1 0 1 0 1 1 7 1 1 3 0 0 2 4 0 3 0 2 0 2 0 0
2001 1 0 0 0 2 3 10 1 1 0 1 0 2 5 3 6 1 1 0 0 1 1
2001–2005 5 1 3 7 13 18 38 18 3 4 3 0 12 24 13 28 4 11 2 2 4 2
2000 0 0 0 0 4 0 4 2 1 0 1 0 0 5 1 1 0 1 2 0 2 0
1999 1 0 2 3 1 3 12 1 0 0 1 1 3 7 3 3 4 4 0 0 0 1
1998 1 0 1 4 1 1 5 2 0 1 0 2 1 6 1 3 1 0 3 0 1 2
1997 1 0 1 2 2 3 3 0 2 0 0 0 1 6 0 5 2 3 0 0 0 2
1996 0 0 0 0 1 1 5 0 1 0 0 0 1 6 2 8 1 1 0 0 0 0
1996–2000 3 0 4 9 9 8 29 5 4 1 2 3 6 30 7 20 8 9 5 0 3 5
1995 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 1 3 1 2 0 0 1 0
1994 0 0 0 1 1 3 2 0 1 0 0 0 2 2 1 7 0 0 0 1 1 0
1993 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 3 2 0 0 1 0 3 1 4 1 1 1 0 0 1
1992 0 0 0 2 1 1 1 1 3 1 0 1 1 5 0 5 0 1 0 0 1 0
1991 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 3 1 6 0 2 0 0 0 0
1991–1995 0 0 1 6 5 7 6 7 6 1 0 2 5 20 4 25 2 6 1 1 3 1
1990 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 3 3 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 1 2 0 0 0 0
1989 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 5 0 4 0 1 0 0 0 0
1988 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 2 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 0
1987 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 0 0 0

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1986 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1986–1990 1 0 0 1 4 0 3 4 8 0 0 0 2 12 4 9 2 5 0 0 0 0
1985 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
1984 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1983 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 3 1 1 0 0 0 0
1982 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
1981 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
1981–1985 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 5 0 0 0 1 3 1 8 1 1 0 0 0 0
Total Articles 9 1 8 24 33 33 76 37 26 6 5 5 26 89 29 90 17 32 8 3 10 8

NOTE: For abbreviation definitions, see table 2.

 JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING 265

TABLE 7
LEADING PUBLICATION OUTLETS FOR MARKETING ETHICS ARTICLES

All All
Years Years 2001–2005 1996–2000 1991–1995 1986–1990 1981–1985
Ranking
Journal B&P 2003a Total % Total % Total % Total % Total % Total %
JBE 23 163 38.70 53 36 68 54 28 33 11 26 3 14
EJM 15 22 5.20 13 9 5 4 2 2 1 2 1 5
JME 24 20 4.80 4 3 2 2 8 9 2 5 4 19
MER 46 19 4.50 11 7 3 2 3 3 2 5
JAMS 7 18 4.30 2 1 4 3 6 7 4 10 2 10
JBR 12 16 3.80 6 4 5 4 2 2 3 7
JCM 35 16 3.80 8 5 6 5 1 1 1 2
JMM — 16 3.80 2 1 5 4 1 1 5 12 3 14
JM 1 14 3.30 1 1 3 2 4 5 4 10 2 10
JPSSM 18 14 3.30 3 2 1 1 7 8 2 5 1 5
IMR — 13 3.10 7 5 6 7
BE — 10 2.40 5 3 5 4
JPPM 21 7 1.70 1 1 4 3% 2 2
JMR 2 5 1.20 1 1 1 1 2 5 1 5
JMTP 48 5 1.20 1 1 2 2 2 2
BEQ — 4 1.00 2 1 1 1 1 1
JA 15 4 1.00 1 1 1 1 2 2
JMMA 34 4 1.00 4 3
MR — 4 1.00 2 2 2 5
HBR 4 3 0.70 1 1 2 5
ACR 5 3 0.70 1 1 2 2
IMM 9 3 0.70 1 1 1 1 1 5
BS — 3 0.70 3 2
CMR 19 3 0.70 2 1 1 5
JSM 31 3 0.70 1 1 2 2
JR 10 2 0.50 1 2 1 5
IJM — 2 0.50 2 1
IJRM 22 2 0.50 1 1 1 1
JBIM 39 2 0.50 2 1
JCA 30 2 0.50 2 1
JHCM 33 2 0.50 2 2
JMRS 38 2 0.50 1 1 1 1
JPSM 41 2 0.50 2 2
JCR 3 1 0.20 1 1
MKS 6 1 0.20 1 1
BH 20 1 0.20 1 1
JAR 11 1 0.20 1 5
JBBM 47 1 0.20 1 1
JBL 44 1 0.20 1 1
JCPS 40 1 0.20 1 1
JICM — 1 0.20 1 1
JIM 42 1 0.20 1 1
JSR — 1 0.20 1 1
ML 25 1 0.20 1 1
MM 28 1 0.20 1 1
SMR 14 1 0.20 1 1
MNS 8 0 0.00

NOTE: For list of journal acronyms and their full journal titles, see table 3.
a. Number refers to the ranking by Baumgartner and Pieters 2003.

contributions provide a description, an explanation, and
potentially a prediction of existing marketing ethics phe-
nomena. Thus, they seek to shed some light on the quintes-
sential positivist question: what is?
However, marketing ethics also entails normative questions.
While most of the normative contributions advise marketers on
specific ethics questions, only very few investigated the princi-
pal problem of defining marketing ethics in terms of norms
and values that marketers should follow—the quintessential
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normative question: what ought to be? A cynic could argue
that all the knowledge we gained about how marketers han-
dle ethical problems does not provide an answer to the ques-
tion of what marketers ought to do. To suppose that one can
deduce an “ought” from an “is,” or what amounts to the same
thing, that one can deduce a normative ethical conclusion
from existing ethical practices, is to commit a logical mistake
and a contradiction to David Hume’s (1711–1776) distinction
between factual statements and value statements known as
 266
TABLE 8
PUBLICATION OUTLETS FOR MARKETING ETHICS ARTICLES

2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 Total
1. JM 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 14
2. JMR 1 1 1 1 1 4
3. JCR 1 1
4. HBR 1 1 1 3
5. ACR 1 1 1 3
6. MKS 1 1
7. JAMS 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 3 1 2 19
8. MNS 0
9. IMM 1 1 1 3
10. JR 1 1 2
# of articles 1 3 1 1 2 3 1 4 1 2 2 4 3 2 3 4 2 4 0 3 2 2 0 50
the in top
10 journals
BE 4 1 2 3 10
BEQ 1 1 1 1 4
BH 1 1
BS 2 1 3
CMR 1 1 1 3
EJM 3 3 5 2 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 20
IJM 1 1 2
IJRM 1 1 2
IMR 5 1 1 5 1 8
JA 1 1 1 1 4
JAR 1 1
JBBM 1 1
JBE 14 6 7 9 17 13 23 13 6 13 3 7 6 7 5 2 4 3 1 1 2 1 156
JBIM 1 1 2
JBL 1 1
JBR 3 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 16
JCA 1 1 1

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JCM 1 1 1 2 3 5 1 1 1 16
JCPS 1 1
JHCM 1 1 2
JICM 1 1
JIM 1 1
JME 2 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 19
JMM 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 15
JMMA 2 1 1 3
JMRS 1 1 2
JMTP 1 1 1 1 1 5
JPPM 1 4 1 1 7
JPSM 2 2
JPSSM 1 1 1 1 1 4 2 1 1 1 14
JSM 1 2 3
JSR 1 1
MER 1 7 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 18
ML 1 1
 MM 1 1
MR 2 2 4
SMR 1 1
Total articles 37 34 25 23 28 17 39 27 22 20 15 17 18 20 16 14 12 7 5 4 5 4 7 3 2 421
by year
Summary by 2001–2005 1996–2000 1991–1995 1986–1990 1981–1985
5 year
increments
Total articles 147 35% 125 30% 86 20% 42 10% 21 5%
Articles in the 8 5% 9 7% 13 15% 13 31% 7 33% 50
top 10
journals
Total articles 60 41% 74 59% 29 34% 11 26% 3 14% 177
in business
ethics journals
Total articles 75 51% 46 37% 54 63% 26 62% 17 81% 218
in marketing
journals
Total articles 12 8% 5 4% 3 3% 5 12% 1 5% 26
in general
business
journals

NOTE: For list of journal acronyms and their full journal titles, see table 3.

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267
268 SEPTEMBER 2007
Hume’s Law (Donaldson and Dunfee 1994). For example, the
fact that child labor in coal mines with devastating health con-
sequences was a common and accepted business practice
in the early nineteenth century did not make it right from an
ethical point of view.
The preponderance of positivist contributions could stem
from the fact that most marketing researchers are more
familiar with positivism—the leading paradigm in market-
ing. In a similar vein, Wilkie and Moore (2003, 132) come
to the conclusion in their analysis of scholarly research in
marketing that “the reliance on the scientific approach to
knowledge development” has a preeminent position. This
might also explain researchers’ affinity for quantitative
methods, since empirical verifiability is seen as the only
credible criterion for knowledge in the positivist sciences
(Apel 1988). Furthermore, positive studies often relate more
to management issues that the discipline focuses on in
understanding existing practices. They are also helpful in
developing and implementing new practices.
The micro/macro dichotomy. As table 5 shows, of the 421
marketing ethics articles investigated in this study, 283 (67
percent) were micro and 138 (33 percent) were macro ori-
ented. This ratio of micro to macro contributions has been
fairly stable over the last twenty-five years. Relatively few
articles have investigated macromarketing ethical issues such
as the role of marketing ethics in the society and marketers’
potential role in helping to solve societal problems. In fact,
since 2000, only 32 articles were macro positive and even less
(17) were classified as macro normative. The interest of mar-
keting researchers in larger societal issues has also been
reported by Wilkie and Moore (2003, 135) who claim that the
area from 1980 to 2002 “has brought the most significant
decline in mainstream interest in this topic during the entire
history (nearly a century) of marketing thought.” It could be
speculated that “the doctrine of managerial relevance” and its
“increasingly privileged position in the halls of academia”
(Holbrook 2005b, 143) is crowding out the interest in societal
issues. That is, the reward and evaluation system of many uni-
versities is biased toward managerial relevance and/or publi-
cations in the field’s top journals as defined by ranking lists
(Baumgartner and Pieters 2003). The perceived (or real) pres-
sure by researchers to produce results that are of managerial
use for marketing managers and students might prevent them
from spending much time and resources on other issues.
Topical Areas of the Marketing Ethics Literature
The marketing ethics articles spanning the last twenty-
five years cover a wide range of topics. The results of the
analysis are displayed in table 6. When categorizing the
results, three groups of topical areas were considered: func-
tional areas of marketing (four Ps), subdisciplines of mar-
keting, and specific ethics topics. Recall that each article
could be classified into two topical areas.
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Functional areas of marketing. In the functional areas
of marketing, ethics articles pertaining to promotional
activities were most prevalent. This is in line with the
amount of attention that advertising and other communica-
tion vehicles have received in the general marketing litera-
ture. It should be noted that over the past five years there
has been an increase in the number of articles pertaining to
product-related ethics issues. The functional area with the
fewest articles is pricing. We could only identify one arti-
cle in this area. This is surprising, given the number of
ethics-related issues surrounding pricing, such as higher
prices in low-income neighborhoods, price discrimination
issues, and so on.
Subdisciplines of marketing. In the subdisciplines, inter-
national, sales, and education have generated the most inter-
est. International ethics were the most researched
subdiscipline and the third overall most investigated topic,
with seventy-six articles. The amount of research in this area
increased dramatically starting in the early 1990s and it was
the most researched area over the last five years. The
increasing globalization of businesses and markets, along
with a growing number of marketers that have to deal with
the ethical challenges of international markets, did not leave
academia unaffected. It is interesting to note that the relative
interest in this topic—while still very high—peaked in 2001
and has declined since then. Over the last ten years, most of
this research followed a positivist approach, attempting to
measure and describe ethics-related issues in an interna-
tional context. Quantitative cross-cultural investigations
were the preferred choice of study design. Specifically, dif-
ferences in values, norms, perceptions of ethical issues, and
decision making are well researched in a plentitude of cross-
cultural studies.
Articles pertaining to the teaching of marketing ethics
were the second most researched subdiscipline and the
fourth most investigated topic overall, with thirty-seven arti-
cles. While the early research in this area was dominated by
normative work, such as advising educators about how to
instill ethical value in marketing students, later contributions
focused more on values and the ethical decision-making
process of students.
Not surprisingly, the interest in Internet-related issues
was growing fairly fast starting from the early nineties with
its peak in 2000—about the same time the new economy
bubble burst. Since then, the number of contributions
declined in marketing journals. However, at the same time,
journals from other disciplines showed increasing interest in
this area.
Finally, while ethics issues in marketing research
sparked a fair amount of interest in the 1980s and early
1990s, it was less researched over the last decade. Sales and
consumer–related issues gained relative weight over the last
five years, while law and social marketing–related issues
were of low interest.

Specific ethic- related topics. Over the time span of this
review, the two most researched topics were ethical values,
with ninety articles, and ethical decision making, with
eighty-nine articles.
Ethical values–related issues, the basic question of which
values marketers are (or should be) heeding, has been a main-
stay area of marketing ethics research. Most of this research has
been predominantly positive since the early 1990s. That is, the
measuring and describing of marketers’ values stood in the
forefront, while relatively little research has been done con-
cerning the normative questions of which values marketers
should have. Of the ninety ethics value–related articles, only
twenty-six were characterized as normative.
The issue ethical decision making—the essential question
about how marketers arrive at ethically relevant decisions—
started to take off in the eighties under the influence of posi-
tive decision-making models such as the Hunt-Vitell model
(Hunt and Vitell 1986). The model assumes that the ethical
decision-making process depends, among other things, on
the role of individual moral philosophies. For example, Hunt
and Vitell (1986) suggest that individuals follow a teleolog-
ical or deontological evaluation of situations that are per-
ceived as ethically relevant. This is an example of positive
research about normative issues. Much of the research that
followed was based on this model or tested and verified
parts of it empirically. Hunt (forthcoming) concluded that
“the empirical tests conducted so far provide strong support
for the H-V theory”.
While the primary focus of the majority of these studies
was to achieve a better understanding of the ethical decision-
making process, this vastly expanding knowledge base is
also very useful in giving normative recommendations. For
illustration, Badaracco and Webb (1995), and Nill and
Schibrowsky (2005) report in their studies, which focus on
the ethical decision-making process of employees and stu-
dents, that a corporate culture emphasizing the bottom line
and short-term results is positively correlated with the inten-
tion to act unethically. The normative implication of these
studies is to change a corporate culture that seemingly
encourages unethical behavior.
Norm generation and definition–related issues—the
basic questions of how ethics is (or should be) defined and
how ethical values that are relevant for marketers should be
generated—were of moderate interest in the eighties but
represent only a very small part of the marketing ethics
articles over the last ten years. This is surprising since
there still is no generally accepted definition of ethics in
marketing. What does it really mean to act ethically in a
marketing context? This essential question remains mainly
unanswered. The early attempts to import concepts such
as deontological and teleological theories from moral phi-
losophy are wrought with difficulties and have been criti-
cized heavily. Still, only few researchers were looking for
alternatives.
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JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING 269
Murphy (1999) developed a framework for marketing
ethics based on virtue ethics as introduced by the classic
Greek philosophers. “The focus in virtue ethics is on the
person and his/her character traits” (Murphy 1999, 109),
which can be formed and developed by practicing and imi-
tating the behavior of others.
The integrative social contract theory (Dunfee, Smith,
and Ross 1999; Donaldson and Dunfee 1995, 1994;
Donaldson 1996, 1989) derives ethical norms through the
assumption of “rational humans seeking to design a binding,
though unwritten, agreement that establishes the parameters
for ethics in economic relationships” (Dunfee, Smith, and
Ross 1999, 18). Differing norms are considered moral free
space. Accordingly, marketers should identify and accept
the authentic norms of the communities they do business in,
as long as these norms are compatible with hypernorms—
the norms by which all other norms are to be judged
(Murphy et al. 2005)—and “are based upon informed con-
sent buttressed by the rights of voice and exit” (Donaldson
and Dunfee 1995, 109). If marketers operate in multiple
communities with differing authentic norms, as is the case in
most international business relationships, the suggested eth-
ical framework provides priority rules that follow “the spirit
of the overall macrosocial contract”(Dunfee, Smith, and
Ross 1999, 20). The concept of hypernorms has been criti-
cized for its difficulty in justifying and interpreting these
norms and providing practical guidance (Nill 2003).
Following the Kantian tradition, Bowie (1999) introduces
a deontological approach toward business ethics. Kant’s
three formulations of the categorical imperative can be used
as “a test to see if any proposed action, including actions in
business, is moral” (Bowie 2002, 62). That is, any morally
acceptable action has to be logically and pragmatically con-
sistent with the spirit of the categorical imperative. The first
formulation of the categorical imperative, which resembles
the golden rule—“Act according to that maxim only, which
you can wish, at the same time to become a universal law”
(Kant [1783] 1965, 42)—implies that reciprocity and fair-
ness among rational beings constitute universal moral stan-
dards. Accordingly, for any decisions to be made one should
ask whether “the principle on which the decision is based
pass the test of the categorical imperative, that is can it be
willed without contradiction” (Bowie 2002, 63). The second
formulation of the categorical imperative—“Act in such a
way that you treat the humanity whether in your own or any
other person as an end, and never as a means only” (Kant
[1783] 1965, 52)—expresses the duty to respect and treat
every stakeholder as a person. That is, all people, including
customers, employees and all other stakeholders, should never
be treated as means to an end. The third formulation of the
categorical imperative—“Act as if you were a member of an
ideal kingdom of ends in which you are both commoner and
monarch at the same time” (Kant [1783] 1965, 64)—views
the organization and its business environment, including all
270 SEPTEMBER 2007
stakeholders, as a moral community. A moral community of all
business constituencies implies the commitment to strive for
common goals and shared ends. Deontological approaches
have mainly been criticized for being either too abstract or
elusive to provide practical guidance or for being to strict to
take the complex condition of a multicultural business envi-
ronment into consideration. The exclusion of consequences is
another potential shortcoming in a world where not everyone
is willing to heed these universal principles. Furthermore,
decisions based on moral duties depend on the on the (some-
times flawed) moral reasoning of the person formulating the
principles and do not always offer a clear mechanism for
resolving conflicting duties (Murphy et al. 2005).
Other scholars (Nill and Shultz 1997; Nill 2003; Bowen
and Power 1993) suggest a communicative approach, such
as the dialogic idealism, as a conceptual tool to generate
normative values that offer practical guidance for marketers.
This approach suggests a procedural process for a construc-
tive dialogue between interested parties, with the goal of
achieving a true consensus among all stakeholders. The out-
come of the dialogue may differ depending on the situa-
tional context and the individuals who participate. It is
suggested that the process of the dialogue—the rules that
stipulate an open and fair communication process (the ideal
dialogue), where every interested party has a right to partic-
ipate and honest argumentation is the only force allowed to
achieve an agreement—is an incontestable prerequisite for
any rational argumentation. The difficulty in implementing
a communicative approach, which is idealistic in nature,
time consuming, expensive, and unfamiliar to most mar-
keters, places severe limitations on its practical adoption.
Laczniak and Murphy (forthcoming) developed a norma-
tive framework, “grounded in the centrality of exchange to
marketing and the inherent role of societal interactions with
the marketing system,” to help marketers elevating the prac-
tice of marketing ethics. The approach is based on seven
integrated basic perspectives that reflect the extant ethics lit-
erature. These basic ethical perspectives—people first; stan-
dards in excess of the law; responsibility for intentions,
means, and consequences; moral imagination of managers and
employees; core set of ethical principles; stakeholder orienta-
tion; delineation of an ethical decision making protocol—
provide a possible road map for managers to consider ethical
aspects in their decisions. This would also increase trust—a
necessary prerequisite for the efficiency and effectiveness of
the market system—among market participants. The high
complexity of this truly integrated approach, which goes
much beyond simple decision-making rules, might be a
potential deterrent for some marketers.
Ethics and society–related issues, as well as the ethical
responsibility toward marketers’ stakeholders related issues—
large, systemic questions such as: What is (or should be) the
role of marketing ethics in the society? Which ethical respon-
sibilities do marketers have (or which should they have)
toward their stakeholders?—received little attention over the
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whole period under investigation, with approximately 5
percent of all identified topics.
In summary, three topical areas—ethical decision mak-
ing, values, and international— account for approximately
half of all marketing ethics research published between 1995
and 2005. Topical areas that have received increased attention
from ethics scholars over the past five years include sales,
Internet, and product. On the other end of the spectrum, man-
aging resources, the law, distribution, and norm generation
and definition–related issues have commanded less attention
over the past decade.
Publication Outlets for Marketing Ethics
Of the 551 marketing ethics articles revealed by the elec-
tronic database, 421 (78 percent) were published in the jour-
nals on our list. It should be noted that the remaining 130
marketing ethics articles were published in a wide range of
journals from other disciplines, such as management infor-
mation systems, economics, and social studies. While about
15 percent of marketing ethics articles published in the
1980s were not included in our list, this percentage
increased to more than 30 percent in the1990s. Specifically,
over the last ten years there has been a heightened interest in
ethical challenges germane to the advances of the modern
telecommunication technology, the Internet, and privacy
issues. The majority of contributions in this field have been
published in journals other than marketing.
Of the fifty-eight journals on our list, twelve had no mar-
keting ethics articles over the time span under investigation.
Such journals as the Journal of Consumer Policy, the
Journal of Direct Marketing (now Journal of Interactive
Marketing), the Journal of Global Marketing, the Journal of
Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketing, and the Journal of
Product Innovation Management had no marketing ethics
articles. This is somewhat alarming, given the editorial foci
of some of these journals. Conversely, about 40 percent of
all marketing ethics articles, a total of 163, appeared in the
Journal of Business Ethics (JBE), which is published by
Springer Netherlands. It should be noted that JBE has accel-
erated its publication rate to about seven volumes with four
issues per volume and seven articles per issue, with a total
of close to two hundred articles per year, compared to one
hundred in 1995 and fifty in 1985. Of those two hundred
articles, fourteen were marketing ethics pieces. Compare
this to 1995, when only three of the one hundred articles
were marketing ethics articles.
The second largest number of marketing ethics articles
appeared in the European Journal of Marketing (EJM), with
5 percent of all articles and twenty-two articles in total. It is
interesting to note that historically—despite the current
trend in some countries such as Germany and Austria to
adopt the Anglo-Saxon academic system—academia in con-
tinental Europe puts less emphasis on managerial relevance.
Often, the practice of business education and research in

many European universities more resembles a liberal arts
approach than a science or trade school approach. While
virtually all marketing researchers in the United States have
been trained from a management and behavioral science
perspective (Wilkie and Moore 2003) and are familiar with
the quantitative methods of empirical investigation—the
methodological foundation of most positive studies—
European researchers are relatively more familiar with and
used to qualitative methods—the methodological founda-
tion of many normative studies. This might be one of the
reasons for the relatively high number of normative contri-
butions in the EJM. Together, JBE and EJM (both European
journals), account for about 44 percent of all marketing
ethics articles. The seemingly great interest in marketing
ethics by these journals could potentially be explained by
the historic differences between the academic system in the
United States and in continental Europe. This is not to say
that U.S. scholars don’t also publish in these journals. To the
contrary, the ratio of contributions by U.S researches has
been increasing steadily.
Another significant finding pertains to the audiences
reached by the marketing ethics literature. As table 8 shows,
throughout the 1980s, nearly 70 percent of all marketing
ethics articles were directed to traditional marketing journals.
Around 1995, this trend began to change significantly, with
over 50 percent of all marketing ethics articles being pub-
lished in business ethics journals, especially the Journal of
Business Ethics. In addition, during this ten year span,
approximately 7 percent of the articles were published in gen-
eral business journals (which tend to be read by more business
practitioners), leaving just over 40 percent of the articles in
marketing journals. It seems likely that the marketing ethics
literature is being read by more business ethics scholars
because of the increased publication rates in business ethics
journals. This may help the marketing ethics literature to be
more integrated into the general business ethics literature.
However, the majority of this literature goes unnoticed by
many general marketing scholars. The number of marketing
ethics pieces appearing in traditional marketing journals has
remained relatively flat for the past fifteen years. It is con-
cerning that those scholars that focus on the traditional mar-
keting journals are not being exposed to the majority of the
marketing ethics literature. This finding is in line with the
increasing research specialization of the marketing field as
documented by Wilkie and Moore (2003). One could argue
that this specialization is likely to impede the integration of
marketing ethics into mainstream marketing research.
Finally, we investigated the amount of marketing ethics
research that was published in the top ten most influential
marketing journals as ranked by Baumgartner and Pieters
(2003). Over the past twenty-five years, a total of fifty mar-
keting ethics pieces were published in the top ten journals
(the top journal with the most marketing ethics articles was
the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, with
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JOURNAL OF MACROMARKETING 271
eighteen). These fifty articles represent about 12 percent of
all marketing ethics contributions. A closer examination
exposes a potentially alarming trend. During the 1980s,
nearly one-third of all ethics pieces were published in these
top journals, while in the last ten years this number has shrunk
to approximately 6 percent. Perhaps more disturbing are the
results for the top five journals (see table 7). While 22 percent
of all marketing ethics articles were published in these jour-
nals in the1980s, this number declined to less than 3 percent
for the last fifteen years. According to Baumgartner and
Pieters (2003, 136) this “small group of journals dominates
the scientific discourse, and most other journals exert no
noticeable structural influence in the marketing network.”
This suggests that the marketing ethics discussion is no longer
part of the mainstream marketing discourse.
The potential reasons for the lack of interest in societal
issues discussed above might also be explanatory for the fad-
ing interest in marketing ethics by mainstream researchers.
Wilkie and Moore (2003, 132) claim that the preeminent posi-
tion in the marketing field is “the belief that the major purpose
of academic work is to enhance the effectiveness of man-
agers’ marketing decisions.” By its very nature, marketing
ethics research does not and cannot always deliver manage-
rial relevance. This is not to say that the results of many mar-
keting ethics studies are not relevant for managers, but it might
suggest that the dictum of managerial relevance is making the
field less enticing to many marketing researchers. Anecdotal
evidence suggests that marketing ethics manuscripts are
likely to be rejected by the top tier journals. Furthermore,
since ever more U.S. universities “adopted ‘publish-or-perish’
career paths for their new faculty, which added pressures for
increasingly sophisticated research” (Wilkie and Moore
2003, 133), these young scholars might be inclined to pur-
sue more mainstream research projects to target the top jour-
nals in the field.
CONCLUSION
After analyzing the data presented above, we offer the fol-
lowing thought-provoking observations for future research in
marketing ethics:
First, the field of marketing ethics experienced a vast
increase of knowledge over the last twenty-five years. Much
progress has been made in achieving a better understanding of
marketers’ main ethical problems, their values, their decision-
making processes, and international and cross-cultural issues.
Nonetheless, more research is needed to shed further light on
the nature of marketing ethics and to increase our under-
standing of ethical theory. The call for more work on ethical
theory is not only warranted from an academic point of view but
also from a practitioner’s perspective. While most marketers that
have to make real ethical decisions every day are not looking for
idealism, but for strategies and decision-making systems that
272 SEPTEMBER 2007
work, an understanding of ethical theories is helpful to better
structure ethical questions.
Second, the analysis of fundamentally normative ques-
tions in marketing ethics is underrepresented in the litera-
ture. It seems like the hard work of articulating and
justifying professional standards—the ultimate point of hav-
ing practitioner ethics—is often neglected in marketing
ethics studies. This may help explain why micro/positive
work is much more prevalent in the discipline, because cre-
ating the logic chain for what the “proper ethical standard
might be” (normative ethics) is so difficult.
Third, there is a limited amount of macro research in
marketing ethics. This is especially true with regard to
macro/normative pieces. Given that marketing is an impor-
tant aspect of our society and considering that marketers
depend on the societal approval of their actions, we believe
that macro articles provide an integral part in the develop-
ment of the marketing ethics field. Journals like the Journal
of Macromarketing are likely outlets for such work.
Forth, in terms of ethics specific topics, there is a void of eth-
ical research pertaining to pricing, such as price gouging, pres-
tige pricing, rebates, and price advertising. Perhaps some of this
literature finds its way into economics journals; however, many
of the ethical pricing issues are in fact marketing related. Also,
there is a potentially concerning lack of ethics research in
Internet marketing. We found only five articles in this subdisci-
pline ranging back to 1999. While the amount of Internet
research has grown dramatically, little interest has been gener-
ated in the area of ethics, despite a number of troubling issues
such as identity theft, phishing, privacy, online auctions, and
hacking. Furthermore, there is a paucity of research concerning
discrimination. Perhaps more research in the area of discrimi-
nation based on demographics, product development, advertis-
ing and selling, and price discrimination, such as the ethics of
online versus offline pricing in terms of its fairness to popula-
tions that do not have computer access, is warranted.
Finally, there is an apparent trend to publish fewer arti-
cles in the top marketing journals. In the eighties, there were
nine articles published in the field’s top three journals,
(Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and
Journal of Consumer Research). However, in the last ten
years (1996 to 2005), four articles were published in these
journals. This is particularly curious, since the issue of ethi-
cal behaviors in business is so apparent in the popular press.
Apparently, marketing ethics is no longer an integral part of
the general marketing discourse and it evolved into a spe-
cific subdiscipline. We encourage marketing ethics scholars
to target these journals, and challenge editors from these
journals to look for (or invite) ethics manuscripts.
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Alexander Nill is an associate professor of marketing at the
School of Business at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Among
other journals, he has published in the Journal of Macromarketing,
European Journal of Marketing, Business Horizons, Marketing
Education Review, and Journal of Marketing Education in the area
of marketing and business ethics. Dr. Nill received an MBA from
the American School of International Management and a PhD from
the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
John A. Schibrowsky is a professor of marketing at the School
of Business at University of Nevada Las Vegas. Among other jour-
nals, he has published in the Journal of Advertising Research, the
Journal of Marketing Education, the Journal of Interactive
Marketing, the Journal of Services Marketing and the Journal of
Consumer Marketing. Dr. Schibrowsky received a PhD in
Marketing from the University of Wisconsin.