Scott J. Vitell

• University of Mississippi

Purpose This research looks at the main effect of individuals’ moral philosophies, idealism and relativism, and its impact on the four dimensions of the consumer ethics beliefs – active benefit, passive benefit, no harm and doing good. The moderating impact of two dominant personalities – Machiavellianism and narcissism – was also analyzed. Based o...

In pursuit of sustainable living, ethics researchers as well as consumers themselves have challenged the status quo of consumption as an institution. Fueled by global economic, environmental, and societal concerns, responsible consumption has become an integral part of the sustainability and consumption ethics literature. One movement toward sustai...

Purpose Since East Asian Confucian societies are relational societies that view harmonious relationships with others as important, the issue of consumer ethics has received considerable attention in the quest to improve the effectiveness of business transactions. This is especially true of China, a large developing country with many business inves...

Purpose Firm size has been identified as one of the most important correlates with corporate social performance (CSP). Both conceptual and empirical research has been done to try to explicate and determine this relationship; however, the results from both theoretical and empirical research have indicated a mixed and sometimes inconsistent relations...

Although various factors have been studied for their influence on consumers’ ethical judgments, the role of incidental emotions has received relatively less attention. Recent research in consumer behavior has focused on studying the effect of specific incidental emotions on various aspects of consumer decision making. This paper investigates the ef...

What causes adolescents to develop consumer’ ethical beliefs? Prior research has largely focused on the negative influence of peers and negative patterns of parent–child interactions to explain risky and unethical consumer behaviors. We take a different perspective by focusing on the positive support of parents and peers in adolescent social develo...

This article presents two studies that examine cause-related marketing (CRM) promotions that require consumers’ active participation. Requiring a follow-up behavior has very valuable implications for maximizing marketing expenditures and customer relationship management. Theories related to ethical behavior, like motivated reasoning and defensive d...

Most of the academic research in the field of consumer ethics has focused on the cognitive antecedents and processes of unethical consumer behavior. However, the specific roles of discrete emotions such as fear have not yet been investigated thoroughly. This research examines the role of the need for cognition (NFC), the three affective responses—f...

Purpose In this research, the authors aim to identify a situation when a consumer’s judgment of unethical behavior is not consistent with their intention to act ethically. Design/methodology/approach Across two studies, participants were asked to evaluate how ethical an actor’s behavior was when the actor knowingly kept surplus change from a distr...

This study examines the relative influences of two basic dimensions of moral philosophy, relativism and idealism, along with perceptions of an ethical problem, on the ethical judgments of sales professionals. The results from a mail survey of American Marketing Association members indicate no relationship between a salesperson’s relativism and his/...

The sales profession represents an area of particular ethical concern within marketing because sales offers the opportunity for a wide range of unethical behaviors. This study applies the techniques of neutralization (Sykes and Matza 1957), a framework borrowed from the social deviance literature, as a possible explanation regarding how otherwise “...

The concept of culture is very important for all fields of social and behavioral science. As firms expand globally, a greater understanding of the effects of culture becomes increasingly important. Countries throughout the world have different cultural standards and values. For example, what is acceptable in one culture may not be considered legal...

Marketing research on adolescents’ ethical predispositions (EP) and risky behaviors (RB) has focused primarily on individual difference variables. The present study, in contrast, examines the social network positions that an adolescent occupies within a group. A survey of 984 adolescents demonstrates that EP and RB stem from a balance between assim...

Most of the academic research in the field of consumer ethics has focused on the cognitive ante- cedents and processes of unethical consumer behavior. However, the specific roles of discrete emotions such as fear have not yet been investigated thoroughly. This research examines the role of the need for cognition (NFC), the three affective responses...

Marketing ethics theories generally recognize culture as an important influencing factor for ethical decisionmaking (e.g., Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Hunt and Vitell, 1986). The important role of culture in ethical decisions was further accentuated in the theoretical work of Vitell, Nwachukwu and Barnes (1993) where Hofstede's (1983) cultural typol...

This paper argues that (a) marketing is indeed a catalyst of economic development in developing countries; (b) developing countries, in general, exhibit unique marketing, economic, and cultural characteristics that are different from those experienced in more developed Western countries; and (c) even though marketing plays an important role in the...

The literature is replete with articles emphasizing the importance of corporate social responsibility. However, few, if any, of these articles discuss the role of the consumer in achieving corporate social responsibility. It is the premise of the current paper that it may be difficult for corporate social responsibility to succeed without the assis...

This study examines the relative influences of corporate ethics codes, Machiavellianism, and gender on various components of sales professionals' decision making in ethical situations. The results from a mail survey of American Marketing Association members suggest that the ethical climate of an organization influences a salesperson's perceptions o...

An overwhelming preponderance of the literature in marketing and consumer ethics assumes that decision makers follow cognitive, rational processes. While this is certainly a logical and valid approach to this topic, it tends to overlook an important aspect of ethical decision making, namely the decision maker’s emotions or emotional state. Recently...

The impact of “love of money” on different aspects of consumers’ ethical beliefs has been investigated by previous research. In this study we investigate the potential impact of “love of money” on a manager’s ethical decision-making in marketing. Another objective of the current study is to investigate the potential impacts of extrinsic and intrins...

Business and especially marketing ethics have come to the forefront in recent years. While consumers have been surveyed regarding their perceptions of ethical business and marketing practices, research has been minimal with regard to their perceptions of ethical consumer practices. In addition, few studies have examined the ethical beliefs of elder...

Business and marketing ethics have come to the forefront in recent years. While consumers have been surveyed regarding their perceptions of ethical business and marketing practices, research has been minimal with regard to their ethical beliefs and ideologies. This research investigates general attitudes of consumers relative to business, governmen...

This paper addresses a significant gap in the conceptualization of business ethics within different cultural influences. Though theoretical models of business ethics have recognized the importance of culture in ethical decision-making, few have examined how this influences ethical decision-making. Therefore, this paper develops propositions concern...

Growth of the Hispanic consumer population in America is changing the marketplace landscape. Due to their considerable buying power, a better understanding of Hispanic consumer behavior has become a necessity. The marketing literature has examined issues regarding religiosity and attitude toward business in regards to consumer ethical beliefs as we...

As more and more multi-national companies expand their operations globally, their responsibilities extend beyond not only the economic motive of profitability but also other social and environmental factors. The objective of this article is to examine the impact of national culture and geographic environment on firms’ corporate social performance (...

As customer return rates increase, retailer bottom lines suffer from customers’ misuse of the policies and to the ethics of such practice. The purpose of this study is to explore customers’ orientation toward return behaviors, and to develop a return orientation assessing these dimensions. This research identified three dimensions relevant to consu...

This study compared independent retail pharmacists and drug wholesaler representatives preceptions of the importance of and satisfaction with customer services. MANOVA indicated that drug wholesalers perceived customer services as both more important and more satisfactory than independent retail pharmacists. Service relevancy matrices were construc...

This study investigates the role that moral identity, religiosity, and the institutionalization of ethics play in determining the extent of justification of norm violating behavior among business practitioners. Moral justification is where a person, rather than assuming responsibility for an outcome, attempts to legitimize ethically questionable be...

Because of increasing ethical problems in business during the last two decades, many organizations have implicitly and/or explicitly institutionalized ethics. Implicit ethics institutionalization refers to a work climate where ethical behavior is either implied or understood to be crucial to the functioning of the firm (e.g., informal expectations...

Ethics has assumed a dominant position in the current economic debate, and this study focuses on ethics as a legitimate underpinning to good business decision making. Using a self-response survey of marketing managers in Spain, the current theory on ethical decision making is extended. Results support the mediating influence of the PRESOR construct...

The children’s market has become significantly more important to marketers in recent years. They have been spending increasing amounts on advertising, particularly of food and beverages, to reach this segment. At the same time, there is a critical debate among parents, government agencies, and industry experts as to the ethics of food advertising p...

In 1949 Culliton noted that “… religion has something to offer business” (Culliton, 1949, p. 265). While religion definitely does have something to offer business, especially business ethics, it is only recently that empirical research linking religiosity and business ethics has been conducted. Indeed, religiosity affords a background, against whic...

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and...

The present study uses cross-cultural samples of marketing practitioners from two European Union (EU) nations (the United Kingdom and Spain) and China to examine the relationships between moral intensity, personal moral philosophies and ethical decision making. Additionally, cross-cultural comparisons were made regarding intentions, personal moral...

This research explores the relationship between culture, measured by the four dimensions of Hofstede's theoretical framework (i.e., collectivism, masculinity, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance), and the two dimensions of personal moral philosophies (i.e., idealism and relativism). A sample of 243 African-American consumers was used to test...

Given increasing ethical problems in business, many organizations have tried to control these problems by institutionalizing ethics such as by creating new ethics positions and formulating and enforcing codes of ethics. In this study, the impact of implicit and explicit forms of institutionalization of ethics on job satisfaction, esprit de corps, a...

Because of increasing ethical problems in business, organizations have tried to control these problems by institutionalizing ethics, such as by creating new ethics positions and formulating codes of ethics. In this study, the authors develop a scale for measuring the institutionalization of ethics in organizations and assess it for dimensionality,...

This study uses cross-cultural samples from the United States and China to replicate previous empirical findings regarding the relationship among moral philosophies, moral intensity, and ethical decision making. The authors use a two-step structural equations modeling approach to analyze the measurement and structural models. The findings partially...

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the roles that one’s money ethic, religiosity and attitude toward business play in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. Two dimensions of religiosity – intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness – were studied. A global scale...

The general theory of marketing ethics, first published in the Journal of Macromarketing by Hunt and Vitell (1986), has been the focus of much discussion and empirical testing. As a result, the theory was revised in 1993. This article overviews the 1993 revision of the model and addresses three questions that are often asked by those who use the mo...

This study employs an experimental design to investigate the efficacy of a new approach to ethics training- "interactive" ethics education. After random assignment to groups of 135 real estate licensees from four different firms, the treatment group received specialized, interactive ethics instruction, while the control group did not. The two group...

This two country study examines the effect of corporate ethical values and enforcement of a code of ethics on perceptions of the role of ethics in the overall success of the firm. Additionally, the impact of organizational commitment and of individual variables such as ethical idealism and relativism was examined. The rationale for examining the pe...

This study examines the role of acculturation in shaping consumers’ views of ethics. Specifically, it examines the relationships between the desire to keep one’s original culture, the desire to adopt the host culture, and the four dimensions of the Muncy and Vitell (Journal of Business Research Ethics 24(4), 297, 1992) consumer ethics scale. Using...

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the roles that religiosity and ones money ethic play in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. One dimension of religiosity – intrinsic religiousness – was studied. Four separate dimensions of a money ethic scale were init...

Recent geopolitical events have placed the Arab world at the center of attention of the global stage. Nevertheless, there are many potentially profitable opportunities in the region for interested Western firms. Today global firms and public policymakers consider the task of understanding the Arabs' mindset a major priority and a must for successfu...

This article presents the results of an exploratory study that investigated the role that religiosity plays in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. Two dimensions of religiosity – intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness – were studied. Results indicated that an intrinsic religiousness...

This study compares college students with other adults in terms of the Muncy–Vitell (1992) consumer ethics scale. Further, the study updates the Muncy–Vitell consumer ethics scale with modifications that include rewording and the addition of new items. These new items can be grouped into three distinct categories–(1) downloading/buying counterfeit...

Relationships with one’s employees, co-workers, or superiors create ethical dilemmas. Employees’ judgments and ethical perceptions have been extensively studied in Western cultures, but not in developing countries. The purpose of this investigation is to examine employees’ self-reported work-related ethics and compare them to their perceptions of c...

No abstract available.

Chinese as well as American business colleges are attempting to improve morality of their students due to recent scandals in both countries. This study investigates several beliefs and values, opportunism, and certain demographic variables that might contribute to the academic dishonesty of American and Chinese marketing students. The findings sugg...

This study analyzes the marketing ethics decision-making process of Middle-Eastern marketers. In particular, it examines the relative influences of ethical perceptions, perceived importance of ethics, and age on ethical intentions of marketers in the Middle East. A self-administered questionnaire was used as the data collection technique for this s...

This study explored the effects of professional training on the moral development and performance of salespeople. A sample of real estate sales agents and brokers from three states was used. Surveys were distributed at regional and local sales meetings. Results indicate that professional education impacts both cognitive moral development and indust...

This study explores the ethical ideol-ogies and ethical beliefs of African American consumers using the Forsyth ethical position questionnaire (EPQ) and the Muncy-Vitell consumer ethics questionnaire (MVQ). The two dimensions of the EPQ (i.e., idealism and relativism) were the independent constructs and the four dimensions of the MVQ (i.e., illegal...

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the role that religiosity plays in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs regarding various questionable consumer practices. Additionally, other personal factors were examined including idealism, relativism, consumer alienation and selected demographics such as income and age. All of th...

A multinational study of marketing professionals was conducted in the US, England, Spain and Turkey. Respondents from these countries were compared on various ethics-related constructs such as idealism, relativism, moral intensity and corporate ethical values. Analyses of variance indicated that moral intensity had a signi ?cant impact on both ethi...

This manuscript reviews and synthesizes most of the major research studies in the area of consumer ethics that have appeared since 1990. It examines both conceptual and empirical works with an objective of encouraging researchers to pursue research in the consumer ethics area. Toward this end, the paper also suggests directions for future research.

This study examined the effect of various antecedent variables on marketers' perceptions of the role of ethics and social responsibility in the overall success of the firm. Variables examined included Hofstede's cultural dimensions (i.e., power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, and Confucian dynamism), as well as corporat...

This study examines the effects of ethical and unethical cues on customers’ evaluations of the ethics of a service provider and their subsequent satisfaction with the service. The results of a disguised, laboratory experiment are used to suggest that customers respond to unethical cues in the environment through lower ethical assessments and satisf...

In the last two decades, business ethics has drawn increased interest from business practitioners as well as from academicians. While some of this interest has resulted in research that focuses on employees' perceptions of the ethical appropriateness of business practices, research investigating employees' ethical beliefs, ideologies and orientatio...

This exploratory study of ethical decision making by individuals in organizations found moral intensity, as defined by Jones (1991), to significantly influence ethical decision making intentions of managers. Moral intensity explained 37% and 53% of the variance in ethical decision making in two decision-making scenarios. In part, the results of thi...

Analyzes how consumers make decisions involving ethical issues. In particular, investigates the extent to which consumers rely on ethical norms (deontology) versus the perceived consequences of behaviors (teleology) in forming their ethical judgments and in determining behavioral intentions in situations involving ethical issues. The results based...

This study applied Hofstede’s typology to examine the effect of culture on ethical sensitivity toward various stakeholders. It was found that uncertainty avoidance had a positive effect and that power distance and individualism/masculinity had negative effects on ethical sensitivity. The results also indicated that ethical sensitivity to stakeholde...

States that in the present era of global marketing, as more companies enter international markets, ethical problems are likely to increase. As companies and their managers deal with their counterparts in different countries, there is a need to understand the latter’s ethical decision-making processes. Divergence in ethical behavior and attitudes of...

This paper presents the results of a national study of the beliefs and perceptions of small business professionals concerning ethics within their company and business in general. The study examined their views on the relationship between success and ethical conduct as well as the extent and nature of ethical conflicts experienced by the respondents...

The research question for this study is how does the environment affect the internal working and outcomes of marketing channel relationships in a developing country using Saudi Arabia as a case study? Viewing the environment as a stock of resources diverts attention to environmental munificence and the channel member's responses to pressure generat...

This article examines the research productivity of marketing scholars and departments by examining published articles in six major marketing journals (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Retailing, and Marketing Science) from 1991 to 1998. Both th...

This study explores the relationships among marketers' deontological norms and their personal values. Based on the review of theoretical works in the area of marketing, hypotheses concerning the relationships among marketers' norms and their personal values were developed and tested. Data were collected from 249 marketing professionals. Results fro...

This study uses responses from a survey of marketing professionals in a structural equation model linking antecedents and consequences of two dimensions of personal moral philosophies (idealism and relativism) and perceived moral intensity (PMI). Mixed support is found for hypothesized effects of gender, religiosity, education, experience, salary,...

Studies in marketing ethics often revealed that ethical gaps do exist between marketers and other groups in society. The existence of these ethical gaps could be extremely counterproductive for marketing management. In order to effectively narrow these gaps, a marketing manager must first have a better understanding of causes of these gaps. To this...

Corporations in the United States have been starting ethics programs for a variety of reasons both active and passive. Ethics officers are being charged with improving both company image and the level of ethical decision-making by employees. Thirty ethics officers from Fortune 500 firms were surveyed to develop a database of their duties and the co...

Despite the widespread agreement that the ontology of the marketing discipline is exchange, marketing ethics researchers have largely adopted a monadic viewpoint of ethical decision making. In this research, an interactionist approach is adopted in order to introduce a dyadic perspective of un/ethical decision making. The dyadic model includes each...

Past research has examined the ethical judgments of consumers in the U.S., but few studies have investigated such attitudes in foreign-market settings. The current study compares ethical attitudes of consumers in two countries (Ireland and Lebanon) which share a cultural similarity of ongoing war and terrorism. The findings reveal that both culture...

In recent years, business ethics has drawn increased interest from business and marketing practitioners as well as from academicians. Despite the repeated call in the literature for cross-cultural research in this age of globalization, virtually no studies have examined the ethical beliefs and ideologies of foreign consumers and compared them to th...

The contention that organizational culture influences ethical decision making is not disputable. However, the extent to which it influences ethical decision making in the workplace is a topic for scholarly debate and investigation. There are scholars who argue that, though corporate values are a powerful force in explaining the behavior of individu...

The authors present a comprehensive synthesis and evaluation of the published scales measuring the components of the decision making process in ethical situations using the Hunt-Vitell (1993) theory of ethics as a framework to guide the research. Suggestions for future scale development are also provided.

Researchers in marketing ethics have identified the importance of cognitive moral development (CMD) in marketing ethics models. This study looks at selected correlates of role conflict and role ambiguity in marketing, especially the mediating role of CMD. Of the correlates examined, the results seem to support the existence of statistically signifi...

This study examines the processes of managing conflict in channels of distribution by utilizing opportunistic, reward, coercive, referent, expert, and legitimate individual power sources. By judiciously utilizing these individual power sources to manage conflict, channel members can produce high quality solutions to their problems. For example, the...

Marketers must first perceive ethics and social responsibility to be important before their behaviors are likely to become more ethical and reflect greater social responsibility. However, little research has been conducted concerning marketers' perceptions regarding the importance of ethics and social responsibility as components of business decisi...

Given the lack of unequivocal findings on person-career fit, this investigation aims to gain insight into the role of cognitive styles in understanding students’ career preferences by two complementary studies. In study 1, we examined whether students (n = 84) with different cognitive styles differ in their entrepreneurial attitudes. Results showed...

This study investigates the relative influences of professional values and selected demographic variables on the ethical perceptions of services marketing professionals. The relationship between ethical perceptions and ethical judgments of service marketers is also examined. The data were obtained from a mail survey of the American Marketing Associ...

Theoretical and empirical works generally suggest that variations in ethical judgments exist between different cultures. This study analyzes the ethical decisions of Thai marketing professionals. In particular, it examines the relative influences of professional values and ethical perceptions on the ethical judgments of Thai marketers. The results...

A necessary but insufficient condition for marketers to act ethically and be socially responsible is that they must perceive ethics and social responsibility to be important. However, little is known about marketers’ perceptions regarding the importance of ethics and social responsibility components of business decisions. The objectives of this stu...

Cultural differences in moral judgments are generally recognized by marketing ethicists (e.g., Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Hunt and Vitell, 1986). Based on their review of marketing ethics, Murphy and Laczniak ( 1981, p. 258) pointed out that, "as more firms move into multinational marketing, ethical issues tend to increase." While numerous studies...

Operating within a global competitive environment poses many problems for American firms. One question receiving only passing attention is how the ethical perceptions of consumers can impact the global operations of the firm. The conflict between domestic and non-domestic ethical norms as to the conduct of business operations has been the subject o...

Moral philosophers and marketing ethicists generally agree that variations in moral judgements exist between different cultures. Compares American marketers with Thai marketers with respect to their moral philoso-phies, ethical perceptions, and ethical judgements. The results based on a survey of members of the American Marketing Association and th...

Consumer-initiated fraud is an ongoing problem for marketers. The ability of marketers to combat the problem is undermined by the fact that otherwise principled individuals often selectively engage in consumer fraud. The techniques of neutralization (Sykes and Matza, 1957) are investigated as a possible explanation for how consumers may diminish th...

This study analyzes the relative influences of Machiavellianism and gender on the two basic dimensions of marketing students' moral philosophies, idealism and relativism. Results from a mail survey of student members of the American Marketing Association show a negative relationship between Machiavellianism and idealism and a positive relationship...

This study represents the responses of 377 pharmacists to a mail survey examining their beliefs concerning various business situations involving ethical issues. Several short vignettes involving ethical issues are presented and respondents were asked whether they agreed or not with the actions described in each. Conclusions and implications are out...

The present study examines the relationships between consumers'' ethical beliefs and personality traits. Based on a survey of 295 undergraduate business students, the authors found that individuals with high needs for autonomy, innovation, and aggression, as well as individuals with a high propensity for taking risks tend to have less ethical belie...

Research investigating the consumer's ethical beliefs, ideologies and orientation has been limited. Additionally, despite the repeated call in the literature for cross cultural research, virtually no studies have examined the ethical beliefs and ideologies of consumers from cultures other than those in North America. This study partially fills this...

This paper addresses a significant gap in the conceptualization of business ethics within different cultural influences. Though theoretical models of business ethics have recognized the importance of culture in ethical decision-making, few have examinedhow this influences ethical decision-making. Therefore, this paper develops propositions concerni...

This article examines, from a conceptual perspective, the establishment, evolution and impact of boundaries and definitions on research in marketing. A conceptual model highlighting the key issues and constructs involved in the development and evolution of marketing thought and the boundaries of marketing is presented. Particular attention is given...

This study develops a scale, using the American Marketing Association’s code of ethics, to measure the marketing-related norms of marketing practitioners. The scale has five dimensions: 1) price and distribution, 2) information and contracts, 3) product and promotion, 4) obligation and disclosure, and 5) general honesty and integrity. The relative...

This study explores the relative influences of two levels of value orientations, personal values and professional values, underlying the ethical judgments of marketing practitioners. The data were obtained from a mail survey of the American Marketing Association's professional members. The results generally indicate that a marketer's ethical judgme...