Business Research Methods 9e

Zikmund
Babin
5
Carr The Human Side of
Griffin
Business Research:
Organizational and
Chapter 5
Ethical Issues
The Human Side of Business Research:
Organizational and Ethical Issues

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a
publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
LEARNING
OUTCOMES

1. Define decision making and understand

the role research plays in making decisions
2. Classify business research as either
exploratory research, descriptive research,
or causal research
3. List the major phases of the research
process and the steps within each
4. Explain the difference between a research
project and a research program

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LEARNING
OUTCOMES

5. Know and appreciate the rights and

obligations of a) research respondents—
particularly children, b) business
researchers, and c) research clients or
sponsors
6. Know how to avoid situations involving a
conflict of interest in performing business
research

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 I Can’t Share This Report!

•What should a researcher

do if the results of a study
do not support what
management wants?

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 Who Does the Research?
• Outside Agency
• An independent research firm contracted by the company that
actually will benefit from the research.
◗ Can provide a fresh perspective
◗ Often can be more objective
◗ May have special skills
◗ Often has local expertise
• In-house Research
• Research performed by employees of the company that will
benefit from the research.
◗ Use if research needs to be completed quickly
◗ Use if project requires close collaboration among employees
◗ Usually cheaper
◗ Use if secrecy is a concern

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 EXHIBIT 5.1 Should Research Be Done In-House or
by an Outside Agency?

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 Organizational Structure of Business Research

•Small firms
• < 100 employees
• VP of marketing may be in charge of all
significant internal research.
• Use outside agencies for large projects.
•Mid-sized firms
• 100-500 employees
•Large firms
• > 500 employees

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 EXHIBIT 5.3 Organization of the Marketing Research
Department in a Large Firm

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 Organizational Structure of Business Research

•Director of marketing research

• Provides leadership in research efforts and
integrates all staff-level research activities into
one effort.
• Plans, executes, and controls the firm’s
research function.
•Research analyst
• Responsible for client contact, project design,
preparation of proposals, selection of research
suppliers, and supervision of data collection,
analysis, and reporting activities.

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 Organizational Structure of Business Research
•Research assistants (or associates)
• Provide technical assistance with questionnaire design,
data analyses, and similar activities.
• Also called junior analyst.
•Manager of decision support systems
• Supervises the collection and analysis of sales,
inventory, and other periodic customer relationship
management (CRM) data.
•Forecast analyst
• Provides technical assistance, such as running
computer programs and manipulating data to forecast
sales.

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 The Director of Research as a Manager
•Problems in directing research:
• Skilled research professionals like
conducting research better than managing
people.
• The research management role often is not
formally recognized.
• Outstanding research professionals often
have trouble delegating responsibility.
• Research is often seen as a hodgepodge of
techniques available to answer individual,
unrelated questions.

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 The True Power of Research
•J.D. Power rates
competing products
and services in many
industries.
•Michelin ranks
highest based on
good wear and
fewest problems.
•Pirelli tires look the
best!

5-12
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 Sources of Conflict Between Senior
Management and Research

•Research that implies criticism

•Money
•Time
•Intuitive decision making
•Future decisions based on past experience

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 When Your Brain “Trips Up”
•An Wang, CEO of Wang
Laboratories, dominated
the computer word
processing market and
insisted on using a
proprietary operating
system, despite the IBM
PC’s dominance.
•Decision makers can be
victims of their own
mental biases and
stereotypes.
5-14
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 Reducing the Conflict between Management
and Researchers
•Ways to reduce conflict
• Early in projects and working closely together
• Formal job description
• Better planning and an annual statement of the
research program
• Communication of research findings and designs
•Research generalist
• Serves as a link between management and
research specialists in acting as a problem definer,
an educator, a liaison, a communicator, and a
friendly ear.

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 EXHIBIT 5.5 Improving Two-Way Communication to
Reduce Conflict

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 Cross-Functional Teams
•Cross-functional teams
• Composed of individuals from various functional
areas such as engineering, production, finance,
and marketing who share a common purpose.
•Benefits:
• Help organizations focus on a core business
process, such as new-product development.
• Reduce the tendency for employees to focus single-
mindedly on an isolated functional activity.
• Help to better communicate customers’ desires
and opinions across the firm.

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 Research Suppliers and Contractors
•Research Suppliers
• Commercial providers of research services.
•Syndicated Service
• A research supplier that provides standardized
information for many clients in return for a fee.
•Standardized Research Service
• Companies that develop a unique methodology
for investigating a business specialty area.

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 Finding Haagen-Dazs in China
•There are dozens of
Haagen-Dazs ice
cream shops in
China.
•How to decide
where to locate?
•Standardized
research companies
have resources
deployed around
the world.

5-19
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 Limited Research Service Companies and
Custom Research
•Limited-Service Research Suppliers
• Specialize in particular research activities, such
as syndicated service, field interviewing, data
warehousing, or data processing.
◗ Full-service research suppliers sometimes contract
these companies for ad hoc (custom) marketing
research projects.
•Custom research
• Projects that are tailored specifically to a
client’s unique needs.

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 Ethical Issues in Business Research
•Business ethics
• The application of morals to behavior related
to the exchange environment.
•Moral standards
• Principles that reflect beliefs about what is
ethical and what is unethical.
•Ethical dilemma
• A situation in which one chooses from
alternative courses of actions, each with
different ethical implications.

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 Ethical Issues in Business Research
(cont’d)
•Relativism
• A term that reflects the degree to which one
rejects moral standards in favor of the
acceptability of some action.
• This way of thinking rejects absolute principles
in favor of situation-based evaluations.
•Idealism
• A term that reflects the degree to which one
bases one’s morality on moral standards.
◗ example: the Golden Rule

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 General Rights and Obligations of
Concerned Parties
•Everyone involved in research can face an
ethical dilemma:
• The people actually performing the research—
the “doers.”
• The research client, sponsor, or the
management team requesting the research—
the “users.”
• The research participants—the actual research
respondents or subjects.
•Each party has certain rights and
obligations toward the other parties.
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 EXHIBIT 5.7 Interaction of Rights and Obligations
Between Parties

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 Rights and Obligations: Research Participant

• Rights: • Informed Consent

• To be informed • The individual understands
• To privacy what the researcher wants
• Protected from harm him/her to do and consents
to the research study.
• Obligations:
• Confidentiality
• To be truthful
• The information involved in
the research will not be
shared with others.

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 Deception in Research Designs And the Right
To Be Informed
•Experimental Designs
• Placebo
◗ A false experimental effect used to create the
perception of a true effect.
• Debriefing
◗ Research subjects are fully informed and provided
with a chance to ask any questions they may have
about the experiment.

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 Crazy Good! Have Fun, Play Games (and Buy
Pop-Tarts)!
• Online marketing of
products to children has
expanded exponentially.
• PopTartsWorld.com lets
kids play games online and
even put their photo on a
PopTarts box.
• Children may not recognize
that they are being
marketed to.

5-27
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 Protection from Harm
•Questions to ask to help avoid harming a
research participant:
• Has the research subject provided consent to
participate in an experiment?
• Is the research subject subjected to substantial
physical or psychological trauma?
• Can the research subject be easily returned to his
or her initial state?
•Human subjects review committee
• Reviews proposed research designs to ensure that
no harm can come to any research participant.

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 Rights and Obligations of the Researcher
•The researcher should:
• Understand that the purpose of research is research
• Maintain objectivity
• Not misrepresent research
• Be honest in reporting errors
• Protect the confidentiality of both subjects and clients
• Do not disseminate conclusions that are inconsistent
with or not warranted by the data

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 Research That Isn’t Research
•Pseudo-research
• Conducted not to gather information for
decisions but to bolster a point of view and
satisfy other needs.
•Push poll
• Telemarketing under guise of research.
•Service monitoring
• Contacting customers about their experience
with a product, there is no selling attempt.

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 Is It Right, or Is It Wrong?

• While research may help

victims, is it ethical to
survey them under
conditions of high personal
trauma and stress?
• Any research supported by
U.S. federal funds must be
subject to a peer review,
and many corporate human
subjects committees are
also becoming common.

5-31
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 The Researcher and Conflicts of Interest
•Conflict of interest
• Occurs when one researcher works for two
competing companies.

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 Rights and Obligations of the Client Sponsor
(User)
•Issues in the client-researcher relationship
• Ethical behavior between buyer and seller
• An open relationship with research suppliers
• An open relationship with interested parties
◗ Advocacy research—research undertaken to
support a specific claim in a legal action or
represent some advocacy group.
• Privacy rights of research participants

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 Privacy on the Internet
•Controversial issue
•Many researchers argue that they don’t
need to know who the user is, but they do
want to know certain things (e.g.,
demographics, product usage) associated
with an anonymous profile.
•Researchers should not disclose private
information without permission from
consumers who provided that information.

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