Comparing Marketing Students with Practitioners on Some Key Variables of Ethical Decisions

Abstract

This study compares marketing students from two major U.S. universities with a sample of U.S. practitioner members of the American Marketing Association on their personal moral philosophies (idealism and relativism), perceived importance of ethics, perceived moral intensity, and ethical intention. As hypothesized, the results reveal that marketing students are more relativistic, less likely to perceive the intensity of moral issues, and less likely to have an ethical intention than practitioners. However, the results reveal that marketing students are more idealistic than practitioners. The results reveal no significant differences between marketing students and practitioners regarding their perceived importance of ethics.