Question

Who would you say had the greatest responsibility within the marketing research industry to raise the standards of ethics – market research suppliers, market research clients, or field services? Why?

Answer 1

ETHICS IN MARKETING RESEARCH

In an era of growing industrialization and exponential growth of technological innovation to do business, the importance of consumer/customer data is paramount. The parlance of “Customer is the king” presents a complex task of understanding customer needs as the most important problem for the organisations. With evolving consumer behaviours, the importance of techniques to understand the patterns in their behaviours is equivalent to gold. This makes the Marketing Research, an all important field for the success of businesses around the world. But, these researches being conducted in an unethical manner often results in monetary losses, loss of market shares and in some cases, even closure of an organisation.

Ethics are the governing principles generally directing the flow of actions/decisions by an individual/group or organisations. The different parties involved in a Market Research also have the obligation of being moral. Whether it is the market research suppliers, market research clients or the field services, the moral obligations bind them all. But, in reality there are various types of immoral behaviours which they undergo to meet the procedural requirements of the research. These are discussed below-

UNETHICAL PRACTICES BY MARKET RESERACH SUPPLIERS

• Low Ball Pricing-Quoting unethically to low price to close the deal with the client but intentionally raising it at a later stage by adding extra costs

• Abusing Respondents-Several ways like taking long duration surveys/questionnaires/interviews.

• Allowing subjectivity into the research-Intentionally doing biased data or creating flaud research designs.

• Selling Unnecessary research-Intentionally providing unnecessary research to enhance pricing.

• Violating respondents confidentiality-Using respondents personal data without consent

UNETHICAL PRACTICES BY MARKET RESEARCH CLIENTS

• Using free advice and methodology obtained through bids-Obtaining free research designs and methodology techniques from suppliers with intention of not giving contracts to them

• Making False Promises-Clients make false promises of proving monetary or in kind incentives without intention of giving them

• Unethically Inviting Bids without authority-Clients invite bids and wasting suppliers time and efforts without having authority to do research or not awarding research projects even after finalizing a supplier

• Gauging data without permissions-Clients often take data by providing or taking permissions in small fonts which are not even read by the respondents

UNETHICAL PRACTICES BY FIELD SERVICES

• Using Professional Respondents-The field services often use respondents who are paid for participating in the survey but who might not fit in the target segment of the research

• Unethical Ways in data collection-Various Rights of the respondents are broken during data collection process like their privacy right, safety rights etc.

RESPONSIBILITY

In a scenario, where the market researches both offline as well as online, is becoming a regular affair in the modern day organisations. The importance of conducting research in an ethical way is increasing at the same pace. With respondents becoming a part of these researches knowingly or unknowingly, the probabilities of mis utilization of these researches becomes even more prominent. All the parties hold an equal share in the responsibility burden of the conduct of unethical practices. The key reason is that all the 3 parties form a unique part of the puzzle, even without cooperation by one, the process is less conducive. If one single party is to be blamed for the overall process then in my opinion it would be the market research field services. According to my view, the maximum harm in the overall process is done by the number of responses which is highest at the business end or the consumers end. This does not only defeats the objective of research but also hampers the collection or utilization of the personal information of the respondents.