Business

Social Innovation Centre

Marketing Ethics: A Review of the Field

_______________
N. Craig SMITH
Patrick E. MURPHY
2013/08/AL/ISIC

Marketing Ethics: A Review of the Field

N. Craig Smith*

Patrick E. Murphy**

This paper is published in the book: Marketing Ethics, N. Craig Smith and Patrick E. Murphy,
(London: Sage, 2012).

*

The INSEAD Chaired Professor of Ethics and Social Responsibility at INSEAD, Boulevard de
Constance 77305 Fontainebleau cedex, France. Email: [e-mail]

**

Professor of Business and Marketing at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of
Notre Dame 394 Mendoza College of Business Notre Dame, Indiana 46556-5646, USA.
Email: [e-mail]

A Working Paper is the author’s intellectual property. It is intended as a means to promote research to interested readers. Its content should not be copied or hosted on any server without written permission from [e-mail]
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Simply put, marketing ethics refers to what is morally right and wrong, good and bad in marketing, and particularly the moral challenges of marketing practitioners as they engage in marketing practice.1 Ethical judgments might be made across the entire gamut of marketing activity, be it marketing research, market segmentation or in relation to marketing mix elements such as pricing or product policy. Thus, questions about the ethics of marketing practice commonly arise, for example, in regard to fairness in pricing, truth in advertising and other marketing communications, and product safety.

Increasingly, media attention

focuses on ethical issues in relation to marketing practices online (e.g., privacy in marketing through social networks) and marketing and sustainability (e.g., where marketing is seen to promote increased consumption and a disposable society).
More formally, marketing ethics

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