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The Role of Normative Marketing Ethics

Gene R. Laczniak
Marquette University, [email protected]

Patrick E. Murphy
University of Notre Dame

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Laczniak, Gene R. and Murphy, Patrick E., "The Role of Normative Marketing Ethics" (2019). Marketing
Faculty Research and Publications. 289.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/market_fac/289
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The Role of Normative Marketing Ethics

Gene R. Laczniak
Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Patrick E. Murphy
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN

Abstract
This essay highlights the importance of normative thinking in marketing ethics and proposes avenues for future
research. It begins with contrasting positive and normative ethics. Then, a brief discussion of the literature in the
field is included. Arguments offered by those who tend to avoid normative analysis are examined. Four types of
normative ethical theories are presented: consequentialism, duty-based ethics, contract-based morality, and
virtue ethics. The essay concludes with seven future research directions for normative marketing ethics and
customer-brand relationships.

Keywords
Ethics, Marketing, Normative, Theories
1. Introduction
Some of the world's best known and historically respected brands have suffered serious ethical (and legal)
lapses in just the past three years. Among the long list with their transgression in parentheses are: Apple (supply
chain), Best Buy (data breach), Chipotle (tainted food), CVS (ad photo doctoring), Facebook (privacy and data
protection), FIFA (bribery), Teva (price gouging), Uber (fares and corporate culture), United Airlines (customer
abuse), Volkswagen (engine tampering), and Wells Fargo (consumer deception). This list could go on but the
reason for beginning this essay with the designated issues is that these companies and others have not followed
the accepted norms for business in dealing with their stakeholders. One problem common to all these cases
appears to be a lack of strong moral grounding.

In the paragraphs below, normative perspectives are offered for both scholars and practitioners who desire
higher standards that will raise, rather than lower, consumer and societal expectations for brand marketers
throughout the world. In this essay, we unapologetically advocate the importance of normative ethical
viewpoints because the fundamental purpose of normative frameworks in moral philosophy is to espouse
moral ideals. During this commentary, we also intentionally draw heavily on our own writings since we have
been proponents of a greater focus on normative ethical marketing for nearly 45 years.

Marketing ethics as a field of study is nested into a larger context that begins with applied ethics which
encompasses engineering, law and medicine. Within applied ethics, the marketing domain is a subset of
business ethics that deals with human resources, accounting, finance and analytics questions. We in marketing
have long dealt with ethical issues in selling, advertising and product safety but in this century the other
business disciplines, especially accounting and finance, have discovered that there are a host of ethical concerns
facing them after the Enron/Arthur Andersen fiasco and the financial meltdown of a decade ago. The focus here,
however, is exclusively on marketing ethics and the challenges faced by its practitioners and scholars.

We begin with a definition of marketing ethics (ME): ME is defined as the systematic study of how moral
standards are applied to marketing decisions, behaviors and institutions (Laczniak & Murphy, 1993). It draws on
two distinct fields: (a) Philosophy which is normative and values focused, and, (b) Social Science, which is
positive/descriptive and, often empirical. Both dimensions—normative philosophy and positive social science–
are necessary to the understanding and improvement of ethical marketing practice—an end-goal presumably all
academics and managers share.

The normative/descriptive distinction goes back to classical Greek philosophy. Positive ethics describes what
actually seems to occur in morally charged situations [often] based on observation or data. Normative
ethics concerns justifying why a particular ethical standard might apply to a given practice and articulating the
reasons for upholding such an ideal. Normative ethics (like the methods of positivism), when applied to
marketing issues, is part of a scripted analytical process. It is not about pithy aphorisms such as “the customer is
always right” or “good corporate citizens obey the law.” Such simplifications are illustrative of 1950s era
business/marketing ethics and the caricatures perpetrated by misguided critics of ethical relevance (Gaski,
1999; Smith, 2001).

Since our views on this topic are articulated throughout this essay, we briefly supplement them here by drawing
on two pragmatic conclusions of Smith (2001, p. 16) that advocate the advantage of taking normative
perspectives in addition to purely positive ones. First, normative marketing ethics informs the practice of
marketing by helping decision makers to make more socially responsible judgments. Second, marketing
practices are easier to justify to social critics when grounded in ethical theory. Below we briefly elaborate
normative marketing frameworks after first examining some relevant marketing ethics literature.
2. Marketing ethics literature
There is a rich history of scholarship in marketing ethics going back over fifty years. As documented in our
earliest review article (Murphy & Laczniak, 1981), the marketing ethics literature prior to about 1970 was
characterized as largely descriptive and anecdotal. Since then, several updated review articles have appeared in
the Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Macromarketing (discussed below). Currently, research and analysis
of marketing ethics issues remains moderately robust. In 2012, a five-volume set of ninety (previously published)
journal articles in marketing ethics was assembled (Smith & Murphy, 2012). A recent anthology of analysis of
marketing ethics featured eighteen novel contributions (Nill, 2015).

Most published academic research in marketing ethics today is ‘positive’ and empirical— it charts statistical
tendencies and uncovers empirical regularities among variables of concern. This approach is essential. The
assorted ‘empirical tests’ of dimensions postulated in the Hunt and Vitell (1986) or Ferrell and Gresham
(1985) models of ethical decision-making would be examples. To be sure, marketing academics concerned with
improving ethics require robust empirical information such as the percentage of contented customers in various
industry sectors, the violation rate of assorted regulations that protect consumers and competition, and
the intensity of negative externalities borne by society resulting from marketing actions.

Without question, the dedicated work of various marketing scholars (Ferrell, Ferrell, & Sawayda, 2015; Fritzsche,
2005; Singhapakdi, Vitell, & Kraft, 1996) has also provided considerable empirical support for assorted (social-
science derived) ethical generalities such as: (a) marketing managers select their ethical decision-making rules
depending upon the situation they encounter; (b) moral decision-making varies substantially across cultures; (c)
female marketing managers typically espouse higher ethical dispositions than their male counter-parts; (d) the
strict enforcement of institutional norms helps shape a pro-active ethical climate in an organization, and so
forth.

Comprehensive inventories of the marketing ethics literature published in the Journal of Macromarketing (Nill &
Schibrowsky, 2007) and Journal of Business Ethics (Schlegelmich & Oberseder, 2009) have been collected. These
dyads of authors each catalogued over 500 publications (many in common) concerning marketing ethics. One
conclusion from these reviews is that positive ethics dominates the published research. All in all, we should be
pleased about this growing corpus of work. Yet an apprehension of this essay is that the decline of normative
ethical analysis is detrimental to informed marketing practice, a viewpoint we explore below.

To an extent, the current state-of-affairs is understandable. Most marketing academics are trained as social
scientists not philosophers and strive to determine the facts independent of value judgments. Reputable social
science academics ‘sift and winnow’ for truth, whatever it is and wherever it can be found. In social-science
world, moral judgments about outcomes are often seen as best left to others (e.g., “Don't discuss issues that
extend beyond your immediate data set”—our academic mentors often advise).

3. Why normative marketing is avoided

We see problems with this restricted perspective. It derives from beliefs about social science research that are
not sufficiently nuanced. Some contend that studying normative ethics is not a fruitful use of time because
people's ethical beliefs are set before adulthood. We know differently as numerous case studies in business
illustrate that managers and organizations can change their ethical behaviors for better or for worse (Klein,
Laczniak, & Murphy, 2006). If we disarm these notions, we can better appreciate the critical role of
the normative ethics for marketing. So, let's briefly examine three arguments offered by those who cleave to
normative avoidance.
 1. Some marketing academics argue that the content and process of marketing science is objective and
value-neutral

Leaving aside the question of whether marketing is a science (it likely does not fit most technical definitions),
researchers (i.e., social scientists) routinely make a myriad of value choices that are neither objective nor neutral
in their influence. For example, deciding ‘what to study’ and/or ‘what not to investigate’ is an important value
choice. To illustrate: Marketing academics in public policy spend substantial assessing of the
communication efficiency of various product-labeling schemes, but far less effort identifying how prevalent
industry practices (requiring warning labels) impose negative costs upon society. Such decisions
reflect value determinations–and they influence the nature and scope of knowledge available to learning
communities. As a result, we know a great deal about the nature of the “black-box warnings” that might be
placed on prescription opiates but far less about the unethical and sometimes illegal supply channels used to
fuel the current drug addiction epidemic.

Similarly, “defining” the variables that marketing academics study also has implications because it shapes social
science outcomes. For instance, how do we operationalize brand loyalty? Is it a willingness to pay a premium for
a comparable product? Is it stated intention to repurchase one's most recent choice? Is it holding an
articulated preference for a particular brand? Is it buying the same product in successive purchase cycles? Such
choices matter; different definitions may yield dissimilar research outcomes—each, possibly, with its own
normative implications.

2. Some academics contend that interjecting ethical judgments into the dissection of research outcomes
becomes inherently relative and arbitrary

Therefore [they aver], normative discussions are best avoided or minimized. Yet, AACSB accreditation standards
for B-schools require that ethics and social responsibility be sufficiently covered in the management curriculum.
The Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) are one response to this necessity
(see https://www.unprme.org). Presumably, some articulation of normative moral values must be embedded in
the educational requirements for business professionals. And, indeed, most disciplines of business (Accounting,
IT, HR) have defined codes of professional conduct comprised of specific ethical values. For example,
the American Marketing Association statement of ethics
(see https://www.ama.org/AboutAMA/Pages/Statement-of-Ethics.aspx) includes the ethical norms of “not
inflicting harm” via marketing practice and always “avoiding deception” so that trust in the marketing system is
fostered. (incidentally, the AMA statement also embraces six ethical virtues—including
detailed marketing examples of what those virtues imply)

While global cultural values are truly diverse, (as anyone who has taught executive education knows full well),
multinational corporations have espoused remarkably consistent business ideals in their mission statements,
(typically) endorsing virtues like integrity, fairness and good citizenship. Analyses of global codes for business
conduct promulgated by diverse parties (executives, regulators, academics, activists) seem to uncover
universal hyper-norms for socially responsible business practice (Laczniak & Kennedy, 2011). These moral
obligations include a pro-active adherence to the law, the recognition of stakeholders (along with a process for
giving them voice concerning corporate effects), and a commitment to socially and environmentally sustainable
practices.

3. Some marketing professors, since they are trainers of future managers, conceive their primary role as
fostering competence in “accepted” micro-economic doctrine, such as maximizing shareholder returns

Again, this view is itself a value-laden choice. It represents a subscription to a certain ideology regarding what
best motivates the effectiveness of business practice. Of course, in numerous industry sectors, the profit-
motivated ‘free market’ is an amazing and seldom questioned wealth creator. But we should admit that the
components of this ideology—an unfettered market, transparent information, rational-person calculations,
equilibrium seeking, ROI-maximization—are each built on its own debatable assumptions, each with enormous
ethical implications. The brilliant economic philosopher Kenneth Boulding, co-founder of systems theory, once
characterized neo-classical micro economics as “the celestial mechanics of a non-existent universe” (quoted
in Mittlestaedt, Kilbourne, & Mittlestaedt, 2006). For academics, when we refuse to think more expansively (and
normatively) about the impact of conventional business doctrine on society, that itself, is an assertion of values,
one that degrades the exercise of a key academic role—professors serving as a moral checkpoint for their
disciplines.

Our essential message here is twofold: First, that positive and normative ethics, while purposefully distinct, are
necessarily and symbiotically entangled. The normative perspective requires positive, empirical information in
order to properly take stock of where deficiencies in professional ethical behavior stand. One conceptual
example: The eminent 20th century philosopher John Rawls (1971), in formulating his famous justice as
fairness' normative theory, drew on the positive (i.e., empirically validated) moral-development scales of (his
Harvard colleague) psychologist Kohlberg (1984). Second, positive ethics requires the normative because, by the
very nature of ethical inquiry, moral claims are being assessed about presumptively practiced marketing ideals—
like honesty, trust and transparency. A clear illustration of this normative/positive “entanglement”
is stakeholder theory, which descriptively specifies organizational constituencies influenced by business, but also
has normative dimensions, rooted in the moral “rights claims” of affected parties (Laczniak & Murphy, 2012).
Another example of normative/positive entanglement is the variable of Quality-of-Life (QoL). Often QoL,
typically a complex, index-type variable, is used to (descriptively) measure societal development, but at other
times, QoL becomes a normative standard to which societies and communities can aspire.

4. Normative marketing ethics

Since the essay focuses on normative ethics, we begin this section with a normative definition of ethical
marketing that involves the ideal to which marketers should aspire.

Ethical marketing refers to the practices that emphasize transparent, trustworthy, and responsible personal
and/or organizational marketing policies and actions that exhibit integrity as well as fairness to consumers and
other stakeholders. (Murphy, Laczniak, & Harris, 2017, p. 5)

Although this definition provides general guidance for marketing practitioners, at a deeper level, the
specification contains difficult to operationalize terms such as trust, integrity transparency and fairness. Thus,
particular instances of questionable marketing practice, in their unique complexity, can undermine the
straightforwardness of ethical marketing. For example, if airlines adjust their prices hourly depending on shifting
customer demand, is this fair? If a large bank brands its sub-prime (and ultra-high interest rate) lending arm
under a different name and logo, but the corporate relationship is publicly registered, is that transparent? If the
“terms of use” by an internet seller disclose “in the fine print” that user personal information may be sold, is
that responsible? Questions such as these show some of the intricacy of establishing the true nature of ethical
marketing.

As noted above, the foundation of normative marketing ethics draws primarily from philosophy but sometimes
from law and religion. Four types of normative ethical theories are briefly presented: consequentialism, duty-
based ethics, contract-based morality, and virtue ethics. They are highlighted to remind marketing analysts that
these normative frameworks have very different formulations and ethical implications. These theories are
briefly recounted below to remind readers of the scope of normative ideals. However, like all complex
treatments, there are many nuances in the application of moral standards; thus, other more comprehensive
descriptions of the theories should be consulted.

All of them have benefits and drawbacks but only the advantages and comparisons are discussed here. (For a
more complete view on these matters, see Murphy et al., 2017). The four theories have a common focus—
making better ethical decisions—yet they arrive at their conclusions from different assumptions and premises as
discussed below. Some observers logically argue that applying different normative theories will lead to divergent
“ethical” decisions. This is sometimes so, but our experience in studying problematic marketing practices is that
the similarities of ethical conclusions deriving from the approaches far outweigh the differences.

Consequences based ethical theories state that a marketing decision is ethical or unethical based exclusively on
its outcome. That is, if a decision results in more good consequences than bad ones, it is ethical. The major
consequences-based ethical paradigm is utilitarianism which stipulates that the greatest good should be done
for the greatest number of individuals. The “fathers” of utilitarianism are two nineteenth century British
philosophers—Jeremy Bentham (1984) and John Stuart Mill (1979). There are two types of utilitarianism—act
and rule. A good example of act utilitarianism is Facebook's response to criticisms of its privacy policy, where the
company changes its policies only when significant pushback occurs. The firm has revised its privacy policy
several times in recent years based on criticism and is currently under fire for even more egregious lack of
privacy protection based on information misuse by its client, Cambridge Analytica (Bump, 2018). Rule
utilitarianism follows a principle such as ‘never discriminate in hiring before examining the consequences.’ Many
companies are presently reviewing hiring policies based on such a principle to give greater consideration to
female and minority candidates.

The aforementioned comprehensive models of marketing ethics (Ferrell & Gresham, 1985; Hunt & Vitell, 1986)
use utilitarian thinking as one of their central foundations. In an attempt to synthesize these models, Ferrell,
Gresham, and Fraedrich (1989) concluded their analysis with four major propositions. One spoke directly to the
impact of consequence-based thinking in marketing: Consequences and intentions related to
expected outcomes will affect the cognitive processes in selecting moral philosophies in ethical decision making.
Another set of writers (Robin & Reidenbach, 1987) used deontology (discussed next) and utilitarianism as major
philosophical traditions influencing the creation of ethical marketing strategy. The example they used to
illustrate specific utilitarian thinking was the famous Nestle infant formula case where the company felt that the
benefits of its brand to third world mothers and children outweighed the negative consequences. (This later
proved to be a very inaccurate assessment.)

The second major philosophical foundation for normative marketing ethics is deontology or duty-based
ethics. This theory stipulates that intentions and motivations, not consequences, are what should drive ethical
decision making. The philosopher most closely associated with this theory is Immanuel Kant (1981) and its best
known contemporary proponent is business ethicist Norman Bowie (1999). Kant proposed three formulations of
his categorical imperative. The first is the universality principle which advocates that there are universal laws
that should apply to all people in all situations (e.g., never bribe). The second variant of the categorical
imperative is to ‘treat people always as ends and never as means merely’ (e.g., the dignity of all persons). The
third is the “moral community” formulation which argues for fairness in a society—adopting rules as if an
individual does not know his/her role in any dispute. (For marketing examples, see: Murphy et al., 2017, 32–33).

Several scholars have advanced duty-based theoretical premises in their marketing writings. For instance,
decades ago, Laczniak (1983) applied Ross' (1930) prima facie (at first sight/self-evident) duties to marketing
questions. Therein, six major duties from Ross with implications for marketing are discussed. Rallapalli
(1999) proposed a “global code of marketing ethics” which is a marketing application of Kant's first formulation.
An extensive application of duty-based thinking in marketing scholarship is Laczniak and Murphy (2006), which
formulates seven normative basic perspectives for ethical and socially responsible marketing. They are: ethical
marketing puts people first; ethical responsibility exceeds legal requirements; ethical marketing considers
intent, means and ends; ethical marketers try to inspire moral imagination; ethical marketers embrace core
values; ethical marketers accept the stakeholder concept; and, ethical marketers embrace a process of moral
reasoning (Laczniak & Murphy, 2011).

The third major theoretical foundation for normative marketing ethics is contract-based morality. Such
approaches have both philosophical and legal underpinnings. The best-known proponent of contract-based
ethical thinking was the late Harvard philosopher, John Rawls (1971). He advocated two principles—the liberty
and justice principles that are never to be violated. He also introduced the veil of ignorance, a thought
experiment that fair-minded individuals would use to create the rules of morality to be formulated as if they did
not know their position in society. Two contemporary scholars, one a philosopher and one a lawyer, (Donaldson
& Dunfee, 1999) developed a more business-centric social contract theory that proposed basic ethical rules to
govern marketplace transactions. Two important principles that are central to the understanding of their theory
are “moral free space” (which allows for a degree of relativity in developing the rules) and “hypernorms”
(fundamental religious, cultural, philosophical and legal norms that are universal).

Within the marketing literature, Rawlsian justice theory was first addressed by Laczniak (1983) and then
expanded upon more recently (Laczniak & Murphy, 2008). Although Rawls did not conceive of his theory being
applied to marketing or even business, his two principles do have implications for marketing. The liberty
principle implies that consumers have the right to be equitably treated by all other stakeholders while
the difference principle suggests that disadvantaged parties be granted pathways to improve their position in
society when public policies about markets are formulated (Laczniak, 1983). In applying a Rawlsian analysis to
distributive justice questions, Laczniak and Murphy (2008) conclude with a “call to action” that focuses on
normative ideals such as justice in market exchange, fairness within the supply channel and more emphasis on
vulnerable consumer segments. And, perhaps the best-known work on social contracts in marketing ethics was
written by Thomas Dunfee and two coauthors (Dunfee, Smith, & Ross Jr., 1999). They outlined the applicability
of Dunfee's co-formulated theory to ethical questions in marketing, including an extensive example featuring
bribery and ending with a number of implications for the field of marketing.

The fourth foundation of normative marketing ethics is the ethics of virtue. This theory is different from
utilitarianism and duty-based ethics in that it focuses on the decider (manager) not the decision. That is, the
person and the quality of his/her character are most important in ethics, not simply an analysis of the decision
to be made. Aristotle, 1962, Aristotle, 1976, the ancient Greek philosopher, is credited with originating this
theory; it was re-popularized in the late 20th century by Alasdair MacIntyre (1984). According to these writers,
virtues are good habits that must be practiced and are learned by witnessing and imitating the behavior of
admirable mentors and role models. Aristotle further argued that balance, not perfection, was the mark of a
virtuous life as embodied by the ethic of the mean. He said, for example, that the excess of truth is boastfulness
and the deficiency of truth is lying; in this, and in all actions, a person of good character will normally strive for
the mean or middle ground.

Virtue ethics also has been examined in the marketing literature. Williams and Murphy (1990), early to the
debate, were the first to indicate that the ethics of virtue holds promise for guiding behavior of marketers. In a
further extension, Murphy (1999) proposed five virtues as being central to marketing—integrity, trust, fairness,
respect and empathy—and discussed how these applied to managers from several countries and companies.
Another refinement of virtue ethics in marketing focused on applying this normative theory to “relationship
marketing” (Murphy, Laczniak, & Wood, 2007). Herein, the three stages of relationship marketing—establishing,
sustaining and reinforcing—were paired with three corresponding virtues of trust, commitment and diligence.
Similarly, Abela and Murphy (2008) used the virtue of integrity as synonymous with ethical behavior and
described how it might guide service-dominant logic perspective on marketing.

These four foundations for normative marketing ethics cover a swath of the normative literature but it is far
from comprehensive. Several other scholars have offered additional theories for normative marketing ethics
including a contextual approach (Thompson, 1995), communicative ethics, based on Habermas (Nill,
2003), Goolsby and Hunt's (1992) cognitive moral development from Kohlberg, and Smith's (1995) consumer
sovereignty test. This discussion also leaves aside the knotty question of religious values in guiding ethical
decisions (see, for example, Klein & Laczniak, 2009). This omission (of a substantial normative body of work) is
intentional as many moral philosophers feel that religious values are different from ethics because the
derivation of religious doctrine is not rooted in logic but rather comes from Faith traditions. (For a discussion of
major world religions and their ethical norms related marketing, see Murphy et al., 2017, pp. 39–41 and 51–54).
Our own view is that such foundations are both helpful and are relied upon by many managers in making ethical
judgments; we encourage readers to also explore religion-based normative frameworks if they are so inclined.

To summarize, the purpose of this section has been to briefly highlight the many and varied theories that can
serve as the underpinning for the scholarly examination of brand marketing from a normative marketing ethics
standpoint. The complexity and diversity of normative ethical viewpoints has hopefully been emphasized. The
normative analysis of ethical behavior in marketing can focus on outcomes, intentions, agreed to conventions,
the character of the manager or any combination thereof. When several ethical perspectives are applied to
complicated marketing situations, the investigation becomes deep and multifarious. Typically, however, it is
enlightening.

5. Future research directions for normative marketing ethics and customer-

brand relationships
Several emerging and ongoing ethical challenges for researchers to investigate are discussed in this section. The
areas discussed are merely illustrative of the mega-topics that seem to beg for additional marketing analysis.
The position taken here is that normative questions should be considered and integrated into future conceptual
and empirical research, including discussions that address or involve aspects of brand marketing and ethics.

5.1. Relationship marketing

Since our commentary over a decade ago regarding relationship marketing and virtue ethics (Murphy et al.,
2007), consumers now have fewer interactions with brick and mortar stores. Online marketing has greatly
influenced buyer-seller relationships. The virtue of trust is still central to moving consumers from a transaction-
oriented mindset to a more relational one. The Edelman Trust Barometer recently revealed that trust in
institutions has declined broadly in the US. Over 80% of consumers say that trust is important but only 28%
believe that companies are more trustworthy today than in the past (Stephens, 2018). With this backdrop, we
advocate that firms and scholars return to the virtue of trust—a promise that has been bedrock of relationship
marketing for some time (Gundlach & Murphy, 1993; Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Garbarino & Johnson, 1999).
Besides building trust, other virtues, like transparency and integrity, need further clarification so that their
benefits to brand success are more fully understood.

5.2. Sustainable consumption and marketing

Although environmental issues in marketing were studied in the 1970s and 1980s, the term “sustainability” as it
relates to ecology was not coined until the late 1980s (Bruntland Commission, 1987). Research on these topics
did not ‘take off’ until early this century with investigations of energy consumption, climate change and green
product attributes. Marketing guru, Philip Kotler (2011), proposed ‘reinventing’ marketing to respond to the
environmental imperative. In taking a more normative stance, Murphy (2005) advanced several existing ethical
bases for sustainable marketing including the precautionary principle, power-responsibility equilibrium, ethic of
the mean, the environment as stakeholder and planetary ethics. For an even broader, macro
perspective regarding sustainability in marketing, we refer readers to a special issue on this topic published in
the Journal of Macromarketing (September 2014). Regarding future research, we advocate that scholars
apply normative theories to environmental questions as well as examining companies like Unilever that appear
to be taking more of a duty-based than strictly utilitarian stance on environmental questions (Murphy &
Murphy, 2018).

5.3. Digital marketing and privacy

The growth of big data and the corresponding privacy issues associated are hallmarks of the 21st Century.
Marketers risk being on the wrong side of [ethical] history with their unreflective exploitation of consumers'
information. Recent marketing ethics scholarship has examined controversial tactics such as online behavioral
targeting. This strategy “has the technological potential to violate consumers' privacy rights to an
unprecedented degree…and is often nontransparent and deceptive” (Nill & Alberts, 2014, 126). In a review
article on the current state of privacy scholarship in marketing and related disciplines, Martin and Murphy
(2017) propose transcending narrow disciplinary boundaries toward a more multidimensional approach to
studying privacy. And as we wrote (Laczniak & Murphy, 2015, p.10), the picture regarding consumer privacy
rights is deeply troubling:

…increasingly we learn that consumer data bases are poorly protected; that personal information is sold
and shared in networks far beyond consumer comprehension… Even more troubling is that these
consumer profiles are endlessly copied and resold such that any data inaccuracies will persist without
the possibility of correction.

In the future, we see the need for companies like Facebook and Google to go beyond the narrow utilitarian
calculus of monetizing consumer data to one highlighting greater transparency. Scholars should draw on
normative or behavioral decision theories to understand more fully the notion of “informed consumer choice”
and reasonable expectations for corporate use of personal information. Marketers seem to have done little
investigation into the question of to what extent consumers have the ethical right to control the use of their
personal information by sellers.

5.4. The interface between CSR and marketing ethics

One issue that has persisted in the marketing and society area for many years is the linkage between corporate
social responsibility (CSR) in marketing and marketing ethics. Are these distinct fields of research inquiry? The
easy answer is that the former (CSR-marketing) is more external (e.g., society-focused) and organization-
centered while the latter (marketing ethics) is more internal (e.g., customer-focused) and managerial. However,
there are elements of both that are ever-present and need to be better understood. We (Laczniak & Murphy,
2014) have previously taken a position on this question. Two concepts that pervade both of these areas
(marketing ethics and CSR in marketing) are stakeholders (discussed below) as well as the common good.
Regarding aspects of the common good, both CSR and marketing ethics take a long-term rather than a short-
term perspective. But the common good involves questions that exceed simply the firm and its immediate
stakeholders. The ethics-common good interface, at minimum, expects marketing organizations to provide a
social accounting that considers the role of the firm as a societal citizen rather than as a profit-maximizer.
Extending these ideas, Murphy, Oberseder, and Laczniak (2013) proposed
a corporate societal responsibility (new CSR) that goes beyond typical CSR. A detailed model
incorporating corporate societal responsibilities, including fundamental principles of marketing ethics, is
demarcated in that publication. Also concerning the common good, an anthology (Murphy & Sherry Jr., 2014)
has elaborated on many facets that might constitute “marketing and the common good.” Interestingly, the well-
known commentator, Robert Reich (2018), has recently noted the troubling diminution of the common good
principle in both business and politics. For the future, we would advocate a greater analysis by marketing
scholars of societally-centered normative models.

5.5. Stakeholder orientation

Since being introduced by Freeman (1984), stakeholders have been a central topic of research in both marketing
ethics and CSR in marketing. Such work focuses on “publics” that either affect or [more typically] are affected by
firm's actions. Relative to the management discipline, marketing has been relatively late to adopt a stakeholder
orientation with only sporadic treatment of it until this decade. An excellent effort to rectify this situation was
undertaken by the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing in 2010 when ten articles on stakeholder applications in
marketing were published. We (Laczniak & Murphy, 2012) built on and extended these helpful perspectives by
pointing out that much of the existing stakeholder literature in marketing is primarily pragmatic and company
centric. Our view of stakeholder theory is (unsurprisingly) a normative one; it is more collaborative,
macro/societal and network-focused than the stakeholder interpretations advocated in many marketing
writings. It embraces the “pro-society” and “pro-environment” viewpoints that are now more prevalent globally
in judging whether marketers have acted appropriately and ethically. We call this a ‘hard form’ of stakeholder
theory which “sometimes requires sacrificing maximum profits to mitigate outcomes that would inflict major
damage on other stakeholders, especially society” (284). In the future, we envision further development of such
normative approaches to stakeholders rather than the prevailing instrumental methods, which seem conditional
on placating stakeholders only when it benefits the bottom line.

5.6. Power and responsibility in the channel

Many years ago, Keith Davis (1960) originated the term iron law of responsibility which stipulated that the social
responsibility of a company should be proportional to its economic power. For example, multinational
corporations like Amazon, General Electric, Samsung and Volkswagen should be leaders in CSR. If they and other
similar companies do not accept ethical responsibility, they will lose economic and political power. Today's
global channels of distribution, with their far-flung operations, provide an apropos example. For instance, in the
garment and technology industries where most suppliers are based in developing countries, increased publicity
about production-worker abuse in the supply chain is regularly harming the reputation of the contracting (and
branding) company, typically located in a developed country. The following quote captures this situation: “Since
the 1990s, the debate on corporate responsibility has started to concentrate on human rights problems in global
supply chains and in particular on the violation of worker rights in mines, in the fields and in factories” (Smith,
Palazzo, & Bhattacharya, 2010, 621). In the future, a discernable normative ethical imperative should be for
corporations to consider the iron law of responsibility when formulating and implementing marketing strategies.
For researchers, investigations into whether the arc of history bends toward justice in various industries should
be examined; alternatively, has corporate cash and lobbying short-circuited the idealized “iron law of
responsibility.”

5.7. Base of the Pyramid (BOP) Issues

Global economic integration should produce billions of new consumers and tens of thousands of new market
segments. Most of that development will take place in developing countries with numerous poor people. Santos
and Laczniak (2009) outlined a novel conceptual approach to dealing with the impoverished market and
extended that thinking to consider transformative justice for BOP populations (Santos, Laczniak, & Facca-Miess,
2015). They advance specific cases, including brand-centric examples, illustrating ethical marketing to this
segment (Santos & Laczniak, 2012). In a similar vein, Vachani and Smith (2008) identify several precepts that
should exist in ‘socially responsible distribution’ such as improving the financial and educational position of BOP
consumers in order to enhance market effectiveness. The work of Viswanathan, Rosa, and Harris
(2005); Viswanathan, Rosa, and Ruth (2010) created an action-based method for serving the BOP in fair and life-
altering ways. Such collective research insights about dealing with BOP consumers in a just and ethical manner
are only beginning to be understood by global marketers. Given increasing inequality in many countries, along
with development opportunities across the vast sectors of global poverty, normative research opportunities for
marketers will abound in the near future.

In thinking normatively about these seven trends, two themes emerge. First, business practitioners seem to be
applying a utilitarian calculus to most of these issues while we argue for a virtue inspired or duty-based
approach in meeting the challenges associated with them (see AMA Statement on Ethics). Second, observers
may prioritize some of these emerging trends as being more important than others but the ranking appears to
be less important than addressing the normative questions emanating from them.

6. Conclusion
This essay has briefly touched on the vast literature of marketing ethics in general and normative marketing
ethics in particular. In addition, some areas that need further analysis in terms of their ethical implications are
underscored. In the future, we see a need for comprehensive frameworks that incorporate normative
theories of marketing ethics. Several promising proposals, which beg for greater refinement, have been
suggested including Robin and Reidenbach's (1993) ‘workable’ theory, Nill's (2003, p. 102) dialogic approach for
agreeing on ethical rules and our hard-form stakeholder theory (Laczniak & Murphy, 2012). One grand
conclusion should be also drawn: The evasion or neglect of normative content in the field of marketing ethics is
untenable, because ethics as a discipline, by definition, advances moral claims about the rightness of marketing
actions that have occurred or are being contemplated.

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