Moral intensity and ethical decision-making of marketing professionals

Abstract

Ethical decisions are often situational or issue-related. This study represents an initial attempt to investigate the impact of the intensity of a moral issue on two important components of marketing ethics decisions: perceptions of an ethical problem and intentions. The aspects of moral intensity investigated are the magnitude of consequences, social consensus, the probability of effect, temproal immediacy, proximity, and the concentration of effect. The research hypotheses regarding the influences of each of these aspects of moral intensity on the marketers' ethical perceptions and intentions were formulated and tested. It was hypothesized that the influences of the different aspects of moral intensity on a marketer's ethical perceptions and intentions would be positive. Four marketing ethics scenarios were utilized as situations for measuring moral intensity, ethical perceptions, and ethical intentions. This study utilized a mail survey of 453 U.S. members of the American Marketing Association. The findings, based on regression analyses, support nearly all of the hypotheses relating the six aspects of moral intensity to ethical perceptions and intentions of marketers. Generally consistent with previous ethical theories, a marketer's decision-making process appears to be influenced by situation-specific issues such as the moral intensity of the situation.