CASE 1-3: Ethical Dilemmas in Marketing Research 1 The following scenarios present a set of ethical dilemmas that might arise in marketing research. Your assignment is to decide what action to take in each instance. You should be prepared to justify your decision. Bear in mind that there are no uniquely right answers: Reasonable people may choose different courses of action.
1. You are the market research director of a pharmaceutical company, and the executive director suggests to you that company interviewers telephone physicians under the name of a fictitious market research agency. The purpose of the survey is to help assess the perceived quality of the company's products, and it is felt that the suggested procedure will result in more objective responses. What action would you take?
2. You are employed by a marketing research firm and have conducted an attitude study for a client. Your findings indicate that the product's marketing efforts are not effective. This finding is badly received by the client's product management team. They request that you omit that data from your formal report, which you know will be widely distributed, on the grounds that the oral presentation was adequate for their needs. What do you do?
3. You are a study director for a research company undertaking a project for a regular client of your company. A study you are working on is about to go into the field when the questionnaire you sent to the client for final approval comes back drastically modified. The client has rewritten it, introducing leading questions and biased scales. An accompanying letter indicates that the questionnaire must be sent out as revised. You do not believe that valid information can be gathered using the revised instrument. What action would you take?