THE ETHICAL FRAMEWORK OF ADVERTISING AND MARKETING-RESEARCH PRACTITIONERS - A MORAL DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to explore the level of moral reasoning c haracterized by members of the research chain. The study used a moral development scale developed from moral cognition research (Kohlberg 19 69) to investigate the moral reasoning process used by marketing/adver tising researchers. Findings from this study of 185 researchers indica te that marketing/advertising researchers reason at least at the same levels of moral development as does the general population. Further, t here is very little difference in the moral reasoning skills between g roups in the research chain. One implication of these findings is that a uniform code of marketing ethics might be a useful way to address p erceptions of research misconduct.