Submitted to Prof. S.P.

Ketkar

Assignment 4

Submitted By: FT-10-959 FT-10-961 FT-10-964 FT-10-965 FT-10-975 FT-10-976 Suparag Mishra Swatantra Sood Tarun Gupta Trideep Kumar Goswami Vipul Mittal Vishal Goyal

[ETHICS IN BUSINESS RESEARCH]

The ethical issues involved in research, covering the Rights & Obligations of (1) Respondents (2) Researchers and (3) Sponsoring clients.

Introduction Ethical research questions are sometimes raised due to unclear behavioral expectations and moral responsibilities of marketing researchers who interact with respondents to collect and analyze marketing data, and report findings to their clients. Certain ethical behavior is normally expected from researchers when they deal with respondents In research three parties are involved Respondent Researcher Sponsoring client All parties have certain right and obligation towards other which as follows Right and obligation of respondent The obligation to be truthful: When a respondent is willingly participating it is expected that he/she will provide truthful answer. Honest co-operation is required from the respondent side. Example: - If we are carrying a survey regarding the average salary of peoples in a particular region. In this case it is duty of respondent to give true data regarding salary and age so that true picture can come after analyzing data. Privacy: Privacy is an area of ethical concern in marketing research. Individual's right to privacy is an ethical value in itself. It means that an individual has the right to choose whether to participate in a survey, or even respond to certain questions on whatever ground he/she feels is justified. Example: - recording private behavior with hidden devices (i.e. a camera and/or microphone) is considered a gross violation of an individual's right to privacy (like Sony TV program emotional attayachar is one of the examples of violation of privacy) Deception: Deception and harm represent another area of ethical concern in marketing research. Deception occurs when a field interviewer misrepresents the true purpose of research. In some cases, a researcher tries to create a false impression by disguising the real objective of the survey in order to obtain important information. Example: - For example, in a study of small businesses by Holliday, the researcher pretended that she was a student, interested in the subject of small firms, in order to obtain critical information about a competitor's product Right to be informed: Research participants have the right to be informed of all aspects of a research task. Knowing what is involved, how long it will take, and what will be done with the data, a person can make an intelligent choice to whether to participate in the project. Often, it is necessary to disguise the name of the research sponsor to avoid biasing the respondent.
2|P ag e

RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS OF THE SPONSORING CLIENTS Ethics between buyer and seller: - In business research the basic business ethics should compulsorily be apply between the sales person and the buyer who is purchasing the product. For example if the buyer has decided to purchase a product from the selling agent than the buyer should not put any condition in between the process which makes purchasing the same product impossible. Once the promise has taken it should be fulfill with ethics. An open Relationship with Research Suppliers- The sponsoring client has the obligation to encourage the research supplier to seek out the truth objectively. The efforts should also be made by the sponsoring client to reduce the bias and to listen the voice raised by the public. An open relationship with interested parties: - An open relationship with the parties which are interested in the project which we intend to sale should be made so that they remain aware of all the essentials regarding the same project. Interested parties should never be cheating or this obligation should never be violated. The obligation to honestly represent the research findings: - Sponsoring client should always be honest. He should represent all the research findings with complete honesty without any fake documents. The obligation to respect the privacy of respondents: - It means the information involved in the research will not be shared with others. The client will maintain as confidential all information obtained under or in connection with parties and will not divulge such information to any person (except to their own employees or subcontractors and then only to those employees or subcontractors who need to know same) without client prior written consent. For example the client has the expectation that the consultant and all other involved in delivery of the assignment will maintain confidentiality prior to, during and after the assignment. The obligation to avoid baiting researcher with pseudo-pilot studies: - In this the researcher is told that the study is the first of many in a more comprehensive study.

3|P ag e

Conclusion In view of the discussion of marketing research ethics relating to researcher's ethical responsibilities toward human subjects in research, it seems likely that there are unethical researchers who, intentionally or unintentionally, ignore well established research ethics toward respondents in surveys. Marketing researchers are no different from other people in business for that matter. Even good researchers may sometimes choose to take shortcuts under certain circumstances, some of which are ethically unclear.

4|P ag e