MARKETING RESEARCHER ETHICAL SENSITIVITY - CONCEPTUALIZATION, MEASUREMENT, AND EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION

Theoretical models of marketing ethics propose that people first must perceive the presence of an ethical issue before the process of ethica l decision making can begin. Through the concept of ethical sensitivit y, the authors explore why some marketing researchers and not others r ecognize and ascribe importance to the ethical content in their decisi on situations. The authors examine two rival definitions of ethical se nsitivity and develop a measurement procedure capable of discriminatin g between them. The procedure then is tested on two populations (marke ting students and marketing research practitioners), and several deter minants of ethical sensitivity are investigated. Results indicate that the two definitions of ethical sensitivity are empirically equivalent . Furthermore, results show that the ethical sensitivity of marketing researchers is a positive function of organizational socialization and perspective taking, but a negative function of relativism and formal training in ethics.