A Contextualist Proposal for the Conceptualization and Study of Marketing Ethics

Abstract

As the study of marketing ethics continues to expand and develop, marketing researchers are increasingly confronted by conceptual and empirical dilemmas long debated by moral philosophers and researchers in other disciplines. These debates offer a rich legacy of insights that can facilitate efforts in developing more robust theoretical models of marketing ethics. The author draws on the widely noted debate between Kohlberg and Gilligan concerning the development of moral reasoning during the course of life and presents an analysis of the philosophical assumptions that underlie their competing theoretical accounts. The author also notes the relevance of these assumptions to several important models of marketing ethics and incorporates key implications deriving from the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate into a contextualist model of marketing ethics. He then describes the components of this model and notes their respective implications for the conceptualization of marketing ethics. The author proposes that naturalistic research approaches are particularly well-suited for exploring these conceptual issues. In a closing discussion, the author addresses the common criticism that a contextualist orientation equates to cultural moral relativism and explores some of the normative implications that derive from the contextual model.