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ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR MARKETING PRACTICE:

A REPLY TO GASKI & SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ROLE OF

NORMATIVE MARKETING ETHICS

N. Craig Smith

Centre for Marketing Working Paper

No. 00-701

March 2000

Acknowledgement: The author thanks George G. Brenkert for helpful comments on anearlier version of this article.

London Business School, Regent's Park, London NW1 4SA, U.K.Tel: +44 (0)20 7262-5050 Fax: +44 (0)20 7724-1145

http://www.london.edu/Marketing

Copyright London Business School 2000


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ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR MARKETING PRACTICE:

A REPLY TO GASKI & SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ROLE OF

NORMATIVE MARKETING ETHICS

Abstract

Gaski (1999) is critical of marketing ethics and suggests that its ethical guidelines amount to

no more than ‘obey the law’ and ‘act in your self-interest’. This reply questions Gaski’s critique

and clarifies possible misconceptions about the field that might otherwise result. It identifies the

limitations and assumptions of Gaski’s argument and shows that there are exceptions to his central

proposition even when narrowly circumscribed. It is not disputed that there is merit to reminding

managers of their obligations to obey the law and to act in their enlightened self-interest. However,

although fulfilling these obligations is generally a necessary requirement for good conduct, it is not

sufficient. There are situations where ethics demands more of marketing managers than ‘obey the

law’ and ‘act in your self-interest’. In addition, managers may face situations where ethics, the law

and self-interest are inconsistent. The article incorporates observations on the role of normative

marketing ethics, including the requirement to develop ethical theory for marketing as well as

ethical guidelines.


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John Gaski has doubts about the contribution of the field of marketing ethics. In “Does

Marketing Ethics Really Have Anything to Say?” Gaski (1999, p. 330) refers to the “total

redundancy and superfluity of marketing ethics,” asserting: “What are almost universally

positioned as ethical issues in marketing are, in reality, nothing more than legal or economic

issues” (p. 330). He suggests that marketing ethics should “concede that it has nothing to say

beyond ‘obey the law’ and ‘act in your own commercial interest’” (p. 328). Gaski goes so far as

to suggest that “the subject of marketing ethics appears to be completely undistinguished,

feckless, jejune, and vacant operationally, offering not an iota of content distinct from other

established normative concepts” (pp. 328-330).

It is tempting to simply dismiss Gaski’s claims as bizarre or in jest. How could

marketing ethics possibly be ‘totally redundant’? But this would be too hasty. Gaski appears to

be serious in his critique (and reviewers and editors at the Journal of Business Ethics have

treated his essay as such). While Gaski’s argument is readily exposed as seriously flawed, it still

warrants a reply if only because of the credence given by its publication. Accordingly, a

primary purpose of this article is to provide a reply to Gaski that examines his argument and

addresses possible misconceptions that his essay might create. Gaski’s argument is somewhat

more narrowly circumscribed than his provocative title and the foregoing quotations might

suggest.i Nonetheless, after careful dissection, it is rejected and his criticisms of marketing

ethics refuted.

However, this article has a broader purpose beyond offering a reply to Gaski. It is not

unusual to come across students and managers who, naively perhaps, claim that ethical issues in

marketing may be resolved easily by reference to the law or self-interest. Gaski’s article

prompts an examination of such claims. Furthermore, it provides an opportunity to offer some

observations on the role and challenges of normative marketing ethics. This discussion

acknowledges the importance of basic ethical prescriptions—including obey the law and


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consider your enlightened self-interest—but also shows that marketing ethics has a more

extensive domain. Finally, Gaski’s article is a useful basis for reflections on the contribution of

marketing ethics to marketing practice.

In the next section, Gaski’s claims and their foundation are examined in more detail.

The circularity of his reasoning with regard to the asserted redundancy of marketing ethics

prescriptions is exposed. More important, however, is clarification of the explicit and implicit

limitations of his critique of marketing ethics and the argument regarding obey the law and

follow your self-interest as maxims for ethical marketing practice. Next, this article examines

the law and self-interest as guides to good conduct and concludes that they are not sufficient.

This is evident from ethical prescriptions within the extant literature and from identifying

situations where marketing managers are expected to do more or do something different than the

law or self-interest would appear to dictate. Finally, the article concludes with observations on

the contributions of marketing ethics to date and opportunities for further work to advance this

important area of research and practice.

GASKI’S CRITIQUE & THE SCOPE OF MARKETING ETHICS

Gaski (1999, abstract) asserts that “in terms of pragmatic behavioral guidance as well as

conceptual content, marketing ethics has nothing new or distinctive to offer.” His apparent

starting point was a suspicion that “all or most so-called ethical guidelines for marketers are

mere restatements of other established normative principles such as law and economic self-

interest” (p. 316). Hence his central proposition is as follows:

all the standard ethical prescriptions in the field of marketing can be reducedconceptually to either (a) obey the law or (b) act in your own self-interest, i.e., do what isright because if you do not, it will be damaging to your interests in the long run (p. 316).

To test this proposition, Gaski identifies an inventory of ethical prescriptions from the

marketing ethics literature and then attempts to show that they are redundant with his law and/or

self-interest prescription. There are a number of limitations that Gaski explicitly or implicitly


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imposes on this proposition. Nonetheless, by implication, were it to be supported, a marketing

manager faced with a decision that has ethical content need not give any thought to ethical

prescriptions in the literature, but rather can rely on obeying the law and acting in his or her

long-run commercial self-interest.

Gaski’s review identified seventeen ethical prescriptions and concluded that all 17

amount to “no more than advice to abide by existing principles of law and self-interest” (p. 324).

More specifically, 4 prescriptions are said to be consistent with both principles: do not market

harmful or dangerous products, deceive the customer, coerce other members of the distribution

channel, or disparage competitors. Three prescriptions are said to be consistent with act in your

self-interest only: customer is entitled to receive fair value for the money spent, provide easily

accessible channels for customer complaints, and do not over-recommend product quality level

to the customer. Finally, 10 prescriptions are said to be consistent with obey the law only;

including: do not engage in price fixing, predatory pricing, or bribery.

Of course, consistency of an ethical principle with the law or self-interest does not mean

that its content is limited only to what the law or self-interest would dictate. From a Kantian

perspective, one could agree that “do not kill” is consistent with existing law and self-interest

and yet think that this prescription is not reducible or equivalent to obey the law and/or act in

your self-interest. However, Gaski’s interest lies specifically in whether the marketing ethics

literature offers guidelines for marketing management practice that cannot adequately be

substituted by the prescriptions of obey the law or act in your self-interest (Gaski 1999, p. 317).

In this reply, the emphasis will be on this narrower interpretation of Gaski’s central proposition,

ignoring the broader claim that the content of marketing ethics is reducible to or equivalent to

obey the law and act in your self-interest.

Although verbal logic alone should be sufficient for Gaski’s purposes, he also offers

empirical corroboration in the form of surveys of a business school faculty and of marketing


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practitioner members of the American Marketing Association. His respondents generally

agreed with his classification of the ethics principles as consistent with obey the law and/or act

in your self-interest, but the study has methodological problems.ii

Yet by logic alone we can swiftly dismiss Gaski’s claims as stated. He sets up a ‘straw

man’ argument that is readily apparent to any careful reader. Let us accept, for the moment, the

premises on which his argument is based and its many explicit and implicit limitations and

assumptions, as later discussed. On his terms, then, Gaski’s central proposition is easily

exposed as fallacious. Even without the limitations that Gaski himself imposes, it seems

inconceivable that he could have found support for his null hypothesis. Any possible ethical

prescription for marketing (or business in general) would be consistent with act in your self-

interest if, as Gaski appears to believe (pp. 324-325), ‘good ethics is good business’. As he

states: “As long as there is an expectation of economic loss from bad behavior, that should be a

deterrent…” (p. 318). He is not interested in whether, in fact, there is much likelihood of this

expectation being realised or whether managers can identify their self-interest (as later

discussed). If we allow for the prospect of boycotts, negative publicity and other harms to a

firm’s reputation and brand image, as well as possible litigation, as Gaski suggests (pp. 317-

318), any unethical conduct can be viewed as potentially subject to sanction in the marketplace

and elsewhere. Hence, Gaski may claim that any unethical activity could result in economic loss

and, thus, is not in the firm’s interest. If an activity is not in a firm’s interest, Gaski would

argue, any ethical prescription governing that activity is redundant.

There are other examples of this type of circular reasoning. For example, Gaski excludes

any ethical prescriptions that do not address activities widely considered unethical. More than

this, he establishes consensus by recourse to the law. So, he writes (p. 331, his emphasis): “To

the extent that bribery is not prohibited… there is apparent lack of consensus that it is wrong or

unethical.” There are a number of instances of Gaski mistaking ‘is’ for ‘ought’ (e.g., ethics of


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tobacco marketing) that are later discussed. For now, let us consider the argument made that the

legality of an act is indicative of whether it is ethical and note again that, thus, Gaski would

argue, any ethical prescription governing that activity becomes redundant. Indeed, he admits the

tautology, acknowledging that “if legality indicates a necessary consensus that the behavior in

question is also ethical, then, analytically, there is no empirical opportunity to identify

exceptions to the legal/ethical consistency” (p. 326, his emphasis).

Consider yet one more example of flawed logic. Gaski accepts the foundational role of

ethics in formulating the law and, however misguided, believes that we are “at a juncture,

possibly rare, in which law and prevailing ethics are in close alignment” (p. 326). He then

suggests (p. 330, his emphasis) that “normal commerce under democratic law reconciles so

closely with accepted ethics as to render contemporary marketing ethics, per se, practically

unnecessary.” Yet, by his own argument, ethics must play an important role in ensuring the

continuity of this claimed alignment.

There might well be little reason for a reply to Gaski to go much further. However, it is

both fair and useful to play out the various stated and implicit limitations to his proposition and

this will be done. Moreover, this paper has a more extensive purpose than replying to Gaski.

While Gaski’s central proposition has little merit, it is not unusual to hear managers and students

argue that obedience to the law and self-interest are key to analyzing many purported ethical

issues in marketing. Hence, this paper considers the relevance of these maxims and shows why

they are inadequate, notwithstanding limitations of the type that Gaski attempts to employ. In so

doing, the paper also examines the role of ethical prescriptions in marketing and, more broadly,

the contributions of the field of marketing ethics to marketing practice.

Acknowledged Limitations of Gaski’s Critique and Central Proposition

Gaski’s central proposition and his critique of marketing ethics are bounded, as he

directly or indirectly acknowledges, in the following ways.


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1. The distinction between normative and descriptive marketing ethics. The field of

marketing ethics is a subset of business ethics, which in turn is a subset of ethics. At each level,

there are contributions that might broadly be classified as normative ethics, descriptive ethics, or

metaethics. Smith (1995, p. 86) observes that a “key distinction in the literature is between

descriptive and normative approaches to marketing ethics… Normative approaches to ethics are

prescriptive, identifying moral principles and methods of moral reasoning that justify rules and

judgements of what is right and wrong.” Gaski (1999, p. 316) defines marketing ethics as

“standards of conduct and moral judgment applied to marketing practice.” Although it could be

more comprehensive, this is a reasonable definition of normative marketing ethics.

The majority of contributions to marketing ethics fall within the category of descriptive

(or positive) ethics (evident, for example, in the review by Tsalikis and Fritzsche 1989). These

contributions might use empirical research to identify ethical beliefs of marketers (e.g., Akaah

and Riordan 1989), or develop a model to describe how marketers are believed to make

decisions with ethical content (e.g., Hunt and Vitell 1993) and offer and perhaps test

explanations for these judgements (e.g., Sparks and Hunt 1998). Generally, they do not attempt

to prescribe how managers should act when faced with a marketing decision that has ethical

content.

Towards the end of his article, Gaski (1999, p. 326) acknowledges his “utmost respect

for the scientific contributions of the positive ethics subfield of marketing” (his emphasis).

Also, he admits, in a footnote to his (later) operational definition that “strictly, normative

marketing ethics is defined, as distinguished from the positive science of marketing ethics” (his

emphasis, p. 330). Unfortunately, this important clarification is not evident from the article’s

title or abstract and many of its more sweeping criticisms of the field.

As important, Gaski fails to acknowledge that positive marketing ethics does offer

‘pragmatic behavioral guidance’ for marketing managers. Positive marketing ethics does not


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speak to the ethics of particular practices, such as whether bribery is morally justifiable.

However, it can, for example, speak to the conditions under which bribery might arise and

measures that individuals and organizations might take to reduce its likelihood. This is evident

from the most cursory review of Chonko’s (1995, p. x) Ethical Decision Making in Marketing

and his examination of “how marketing professionals make decisions and the factors and

conflicts involved in those decisions.” By way of illustration, consider the research by one

major contributor to this area, O.C. Ferrell (and his colleagues).

Ferrell and Gresham’s (1985) model of ethical decision making identifies the potential

influence of significant others, opportunity, social and cultural factors, and the individual’s

makeup. It suggests, for example, that decisions about what type of behavior is appropriate in any

given situation are influenced by the opportunity for the individual to engage in ethical or unethical

behavior, where opportunity is a function of organizational culture, professional codes, corporate

policy and rewards and punishments. Ferrell and Weaver (1978) show that individuals differ in

their assessment of the extent to which a marketing decision has ethical content, while Weaver

and Ferrell (1977) highlight the influence of top management on ethical decision making in

organizations. Hence, all three of these papers provide guidance to marketing managers on

ethical issues in marketing and yet are included in the review by Tsalikis and Fritzsche (1989)

that was used by Gaski to develop his marketing ethics bibliography.

2. Normative marketing ethics as applied to marketing managers in their strictly

marketing decision making. Gaski limits his analysis to prescriptions intended to provide

guidance to marketing managers only. He states that it is “guidelines for marketing management

practice that are at issue” (his emphasis, p. 317), but it is the value of this guidance specifically

to marketing managers that is discussed (e.g., p. 328). The field of normative marketing ethics

has roles other than informing practice. However, in this capacity alone, it may provide


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guidance to other decision-makers in a corporation, to those affected by their decisions, to policy

makers and to researchers, as well as to marketing managers.

Moreover, Gaski excludes the “disjunct, stand-alone body of literature on marketing

research ethics” (his emphasis, p. 317). Hence, guidelines for marketing researchers and,

indeed, guidelines for marketing managers about marketing research are ignored. Yet this area

of marketing activity has received the most attention in the marketing ethics literature and, for

various reasons, has the most ethical prescriptions (Laczniak and Murphy 1993; Malhotra 1996;

Smith and Quelch 1993). Most of the professional marketing research associations have quite

extensive codes of conduct that are now available on the Web (e.g., www.aapor.org;

www.casro.org; www.esomar.nl). A cursory review of these codes readily reveals that they

contain prescriptions that reflect law and self-interest. However, they also include prescriptions

that reflect essentially ethical obligations, for example, to respondents. Indeed, one reason these

professional associations are keen to promote their codes is because the researcher’s self-interest

is an inadequate constraint on unethical practices involving respondents that might harm the

industry as a whole or result in legislation that the industry would prefer to avoid (e.g., regarding

data privacy).

Gaski also excludes marketing managers’ decisions about “the ethics of

intraorganizational behavior (e.g., accurate representation of education, confidentiality, etc.)”

(his emphasis, footnote on p. 331) and ethical guidelines on these decisions in the AMA code

and elsewhere. This exclusion is notwithstanding the significance of these issues to marketing

managers themselves, as confirmed in survey research by Chonko and Hunt (1985).

Apparently, Gaski also largely limits his proposition to U.S. marketing managers that are

engaged in domestic marketing, notwithstanding the ever-increasing globalisation of business,

including U.S. business. This is not explicitly stated, but he does refer only to specific U.S. laws

as a basis for claiming the redundancy of ethical prescriptions. His rejection of “ethical


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imperialism by imposing domestic ethics abroad” (p. 317) presumably also excludes the

application of guidelines evident in U.S. laws to marketing practices overseas. In a footnote,

Gaski observes that “most examples, and surrounding discussion relate to the context of U.S.

law and, therefore, would apply similarly to other market economies with similar commercial

and legal environments” (p. 331). However, in another footnote, Gaski further explains that

“detailed examination of the ethics-law/self-interest relation for every individual nation would

require as many different papers as there are countries” (p. 331). There may be less divergence

than Gaski imagines. Nonetheless, this is acknowledgement of another important limitation to

his proposition.

3. Ethical prescriptions for marketing practice evident in the extant (largely pre-1990)

marketing ethics literature. Gaski makes it unambiguous that his paper “deals with what is

actually found in the marketing literature… not hypothetical findings or literatures” (p. 327) and

only “definite, explicit prescriptions” (p. 317) within that literature. Clearly, testing his

proposition against a hypothetical literature or set of ethical propositions would be difficult,

even if it were worth attempting. However, there are inevitably limitations associated with the

content and extensiveness of the literature reviewed and the prescriptions derived.

The literature relied upon, for the most part, is dated. The primary sources were

literature reviews conducted at least ten years ago (Murphy and Laczniak 1981; Murphy and

Pridgen 1991; Tsalikis and Fritzsche 1989). Although supplemented by an additional review by

Gaski, there is only one cite in the list of references later than 1993 and only 10 cites of a total of

70 published in the 1990s. This lack of attention to the more recent marketing ethics literature

may in part explain Gaski’s failure to recognize the contributions of positive marketing ethics to

ethical decision-making, many of which have appeared in the last decade. Nonetheless—and

regardless of any weaknesses of the extant literature—Gaski (p. 330) also implies doubts about


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the prospective normative marketing ethics literature, suggesting that the law “reconciles so

closely” with contemporary marketing ethics that the latter is unnecessary.

In addition to the above limitations, Gaski also identifies some specific exceptions on the

basis that they do not constitute definite and explicit prescriptions or because of a perceived

absence of consensus about the prescription or because they are a special case (e.g., deception in

political promotion). Also, judging from his comments about special cases, it should be noted

that Gaski appears to believe that ethics is a matter of public opinion. For example, he states

that “the general public does not consider deception of a political audience to be unethical

marketing” (p. 319). He also appears to conclude that tobacco marketing is ethical on the basis

of majority opinion expressed through representative democracy (and not withstanding special

interests that for many years have prevented effective legislation curtailing tobacco marketing in

the U.S.).

Finally, Gaski is not interested in motives for good conduct: “Ethics may offer an

additional underlying motive for a particular behavior (beyond law or self-interest), but covers

the same material ground” (p. 320). Moreover, in a footnote, he observes that the “issue is not

one of enforcement or successful prosecution… obedience to law and self-interest should

promote behavior indistinguishably different from self-consciously ethical behavior” (p. 331).

However, obedience to the law may be colored by beliefs about whether others obey the law and

the possibility of being caught, which raises one of a number of possible effectiveness

limitations (discussed further below), even if motives for good conduct are treated as

unimportant.

Further Limitations of Gaski’s Critique and Central Proposition

It is not suggested that Gaski’s proposition is unreasonably circumscribed. Indeed, it

would be completely untenable without some of the above limitations. However, the following

largely unacknowledged limitations and assumptions also bound Gaski’s critique and central


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proposition. They suggest compelling grounds for rejection of the idea that it would be

sufficient for a marketing manager faced with a decision that has ethical content to rely on

obeying the law and acting in his or her long-run commercial self-interest, without regard to

marketing ethics.

1. Moral judgement and ethical prescriptions. Normative marketing ethics is far more

than ethical prescriptions. Moral reasoning may identify ethical prescriptions but this is only

one role of the normative marketing ethics field among a number. For example, consistent with

Gaski’s definition of marketing ethics, moral judgement may be applied to marketing practice

using theories of moral philosophy. Indeed, many of the more complex issues of marketing

ethics cannot adequately be addressed by recourse to simple ethical prescriptions and require

these theories. Nonetheless, Gaski ignores prescriptions that might be developed through moral

judgement and the use of ethical theory that is widely discussed in the marketing ethics literature

(e.g., Duke et al. 1993; Ferrell, Gresham and Fraedrich 1989; Fritzsche 1985; Laczniak 1983;

Laczniak and Murphy 1993; Robin and Reidenbach 1986; Smith 1995; Smith and Quelch 1993;

Thompson 1995; Williams and Murphy 1990).

A key assumption, apparently, is that it is the principal role of normative marketing

ethics to develop prescriptions for marketing managers and that, indeed, this is possible to any

great extent and sufficient for marketing decision-making. Consider an ethical dilemma that

might present a manager with a choice between two alternative courses of action, both of which

would be consistent with the law and self-interest, but one alternative might be more ethical than

the other. However, this determination may not be the outcome of some formulaic application

of simple and extant ethical prescriptions, it is possible that it could only be reached through

moral judgement.

Ethical prescriptions are a small part of the nature and scope of marketing ethics overall.

A positive marketing ethicist might well argue that developing understanding of organizational


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ethical decision-making from a behavioral and social viewpoint is as important as trying to

determine normative prescriptions.

2. Self-Interest and Duties. Although Gaski may be able to point to moral duties evident

in the law, he can not so easily make this claim with respect to self-interest. Appeals to self-

interest are inevitably consequentialist. To suggest a marketing manager should not engage in

an act, such as not providing fair value for money spent, because it is contrary to his or her

economic self-interest, is an argument relying upon the adverse consequences of this behavior.

It ignores the deontological position that there may be duties independent of consequences.

From a deontological perspective, it could be claimed that a marketing manager has the moral

obligation of concern for the welfare of customers and others affected by his or her decisions.

Meeting this obligation may or may not be in the marketer’s self-interest. Regardless, there is a

moral duty to be fulfilled.

3. Where the law ends: assumptions made about the scope of the law. If the law is to

serve as a substitute for ethics, there must be assumptions made about its adequacy. Generally,

the law provides minimal standards, often prescribing negative injunctions, specifying what

should not be done that might otherwise lead to harm to others, rather than positive mandates

about what and how much should be done to improve human welfare. There are limits to what

the law can, has yet to, and should prescribe (Stone 1975). In most areas of public and private

life we expect individuals to go beyond the dictates of the law.

Gaski argues that many of the ethical prescriptions he identified are redundant with

specific U.S. laws. However, marketing managers are notoriously ill-informed about the law, in

part, as Petty (1999) notes, because of the relative scarcity of marketing law courses. Moreover,

in terms of parsimony, communicating its prescriptions may be a lengthier task than providing

simple ethical prescriptions that do not require legal details. The spirit of the law is often easier

to communicate than the letter of the law.


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Gaski largely avoids discussion about the effectiveness of managerial reliance on his

obey the law and/or act in your self-interest prescription. (Although at one point he does refer to

marketing managers making “more correct and efficient” decisions [p. 328].) However, if the

law is to serve as a substitute for ethical prescriptions, we might question its potential

effectiveness in promoting good conduct and doubt the supposed parsimony that Gaski claims.

This may also hold if reliance is placed on self-interest.

4. Limits to the imperative of customer satisfaction: assumptions made about an

alignment of the marketer’s self-interest with customer interests. Gaski also makes certain

assumptions about marketing in practice and ignores or understates the possibility of what

economists refer to as “market failures” and “externalities”. In particular, he relies on the

imperative of customer satisfaction, which may only hold under certain conditions, particularly

competitive markets. So, for example, in relation to customer entitlement to receive fair value

for money spent, Gaski observes that “it is in the marketer’s self-interest to provide value

proportional to price… customer satisfaction, which grows out of a satisfactory value/price ratio,

is almost universally necessary for marketer success” (p. 319). Many markets today are very

competitive, but this is not true of all markets. Monopolistic industries or quasi-monopolistic

positions in certain markets are more common, say, in Europe or Latin America but are not so

rare in the U.S., particularly in the more specialised areas of business-to-business marketing.

There is also an assumption of firms attempting to maximize customer satisfaction. We

may agree that “intentionally dissatisfying customers is incompatible with the definition of

marketing” (p. 319), but intentionally dissatisfying is not the same as less completely satisfying.

Firms are always trading-off potential profit and customer value as a function of competitive

conditions and other factors.

Moreover, Gaski specifically excludes situations where the marketer is not interested in

repeat purchase or where there are difficulties for potential customers to learn from dissatisfied


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customers. These situations also may not be so rare (e.g., a company exiting a business may

exploit short-term opportunities) and limit self-interest as a constraint on unethical conduct. He

also acknowledges that “marketing managers can make mistakes” (p. 328). Again, an

assumption that this situation is also relatively rare may not be warranted, as illustrated by the

mistakes about customer preferences of even the best-managed companies (e.g., New Coke).

5. Stakeholders other than customers: assumptions made about an alignment of interests

among stakeholders. Another set of problems arises from the possibility of a poor alignment of

interests. Customer satisfaction is no guarantee of good conduct where there are adverse

consequences for others (“stakeholders”) who are not party to the exchange (e.g., environmental

impacts of products and packaging). Acting in your economic self-interest is less effective as a

guideline when effects on stakeholders other than customers are considered. Further, individual

marketing manager self-interest and company self-interest may not be consistent, so a marketing

manager may make decisions that are counter to the requirement for customer satisfaction but

are in his or her own best interest (a perennial problem with brand managers).

Assessment of Gaski’s Proposition and Critique

Identifying the above limitations clarifies the extent to which Gaski’s proposition may be

appropriately applied and the validity of his critique of marketing ethics overall. In short, after

careful dissection, we must reject his proposition that the standard ethical prescriptions in the

field of marketing can be replaced by ‘obey the law’ and ‘act in your own self-interest’ as advice

to marketing managers. Aside from Gaski’s circular reasoning and acknowledged limitations,

we would need to make unwarranted assumptions about the scope of the law and an alignment

of manager self-interest with the customers and other stakeholders’ interests. We would also

need to assume that managers never face ethical dilemmas calling for moral judgement and

ignore their moral duties that exist independent of possible consequences. Accordingly, many of

Gaski’s inferences about the field and related criticisms also seem unwarranted.


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It is not disputed that many of the standard ethical prescriptions in the field of marketing

have substantial overlap with the law and enlightened self-interest and that the guidelines ‘obey

the law’ and ‘act in your own self-interest’ have some merit as advice to marketing managers.

Hence, Gaski’s proposition should not be entirely dismissed to the extent that it recognizes a

role for law and enlightened self-interest. The law and self-interest as guides to good conduct

are discussed further in the next section.

THE LAW AND SELF-INTEREST AS GUIDES TO GOOD CONDUCT

Ethics, the Law and Self-Interest Often Do Coincide

Marketing managers often are well advised to obey the law and act in their own long-

term commercial self-interest; indeed, they are more likely to engage in good conduct if they

heed this advice. Marketing would be less frequently associated with unethical practices if these

guidelines were more commonly considered. In other words, ethics, the law and economic self-

interest often do coincide.

The general consistency of the law with ethics should not be surprising, as Gundlach and

Murphy (1993, p. 39) observe: “much of the law addressing exchange is drawn from and

formalizes moral principles.” Indeed, Gaski writes that “ethics may frequently pre-exist and

ground law” (p. 331). Given this role of ethics in forming a basis for the law, it seems

remarkable that Gaski should so summarily dismiss it.

That ethics may be consistent with self-interest is also not too surprising a claim. This

consistency is also well established and may be seen to pre-date the field of business ethics. The

first business ethics texts appeared in the late 1970s. Prior to business ethics courses, most

discussion in business schools of the moral problems of business was in business and society

courses. In vogue between the late 1960s and early 1980s, in both these courses and in business

itself, was the concept of corporate social responsibility.


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Concern about the moral problems of business is as old as business itself: Adam Smith's

The Wealth of Nations is a moral, as well as economic, treatise; Roman philosopher Cicero's De

Officiis discusses the moral duties of merchants. Not surprisingly, then, the notion that business

has social responsibilities was familiar to business leaders of the early 20 th century, if not earlier.

Frederick (1994, p. 151) writes:

By the mid-1920s, business representatives and executives were beginning to speak of theneed for corporate directors to act as trustees for the interests, not just of stockholders, butother social claimants as well… Corporate philanthropy, the history of which stretchedback into the 19th century, was accompanied by a growing belief that business andsociety were linked together in organic, if not yet well understood, ways.

What differentiates the modern-day concept of corporate social responsibility from

earlier notions of social responsibility in business, is the recognition that business has an

obligation to society that goes beyond obedience to the law and the production and distribution

of goods and services at a profit. Further, it amounts to more than acts of philanthropy. This

distinction is evident from the summary of the central ideas of the CSR concept by Buchholz

(1991, p. 19):

While various definitions of social responsibility have been advocated, there seem to befive key elements in most, if not all, of these definitions: 1) corporations haveresponsibilities that go beyond the production of goods and services at a profit; 2) theseresponsibilities involve helping to solve important social problems, especially those theyhave helped create; 3) corporations have a broader constituency than stockholders alone;4) corporations have impacts that go beyond simple marketplace transactions; and 5)corporations serve a wider range of human values than can be captured by a sole focuson economic values.

Hence, analysis of social responsibility in business was largely concerned with identifying

the obligations of business to society. Enlightened self-interest was the rationale to which its

proponents appealed, including business leaders. Firms were encouraged to practice corporate

social responsibility, even where it could not be clearly justified on the basis of cost and revenue

projections, because it was believed to be in their best long-term interest. Accordingly, some

proponents of corporate social responsibility have advanced a very broad conception of enlightened


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self-interest. It has been suggested, for example, that firms should try and solve social problems

completely unrelated to their business activities, such as providing jobs to the hard-core

unemployed, because these problems might otherwise become detrimental to the overall business

climate (Simon, Powers and Gunnemann 1972).

CSR and the related concepts of corporate social responsiveness and corporate social

performance remain central considerations within the business and society field. Moreover, in

the late 1990s, many businesses have exhibited a renewed interest in CSR under the rubric of

“corporate citizenship”, with a focus on giving back to the societies of which they are part

through efforts to help solve pressing social problems, such as unemployment and inner-city

decay. Meanwhile, many issues of corporate social responsibility have become subsumed

within the broader topic of business ethics. The rationale of enlightened self-interest is recognized

within the field of business ethics and in practice, with many managers subscribing to the maxim

‘good ethics is good business’.

Limitations of a Reliance on the Law and Enlightened Self-Interest

While obey the law and act in your own long-term economic self-interest are, under most

circumstances, necessary, they are not sufficient as guidelines for good conduct in marketing. It

matters little whether few if any of the actual ethical prescriptions to be found in the extant

marketing ethics literature do reveal the inadequacy of reliance on Gaski’s law and self-interest

prescription. Without doubt, if marketing practice were to be solely guided by law and self-

interest, as Gaski appears to suggest, the likelihood of good conduct would be substantially

reduced. Marketing managers must also be guided by ethics.

In part, this is evident from the limitations to Gaski’s central proposition identified

above, particularly the unacknowledged assumptions about the adequacy of the law (its scope as

well as enforcement), the imperative of customer satisfaction, and effects on stakeholders other

than the customer. It is also evident from ethical prescriptions that can be found in the


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marketing ethics literature that go beyond the law and self-interest, as discussed below. Further,

in some circumstances, the guidelines ‘obey the law’ and ‘act in your own self-interest’ may

even conflict with sound ethical prescriptions, extant or otherwise, and reduce the likelihood of

good conduct.

NORMATIVE MARKETING ETHICS AND GOOD CONDUCT

Ethical Prescriptions that Go Beyond the Law and Self-Interest

We might agree with Gaski were he to suggest that the ethical prescriptions he identifies

are largely consistent with the law and/or self-interest. The question then arises as to whether

there are ethical prescriptions that go substantially beyond the law and self-interest. Below are

some candidates from the extant marketing ethics literature that Gaski may have overlooked.

The purpose here is not to offer another inventory of the literature, but merely to offer examples

of ethical guidelines that can be found in the marketing ethics literature that clearly reflect

something more than the law or self-interest and, more important, explain in the following

section why that should be.

The American Marketing Association has a Code of Ethics for Marketing on the internet,

in addition to the general code that Gaski cites. This code, consistent with Goodwin (1991) and

others, refers to a consumer right to privacy. More specifically, it states: “Information collected

from customers should be confidential and used only for expressed purposes” (see

www.ama.org). This provision would appear to preclude undisclosed secondary use of data

collected from consumers, yet it is not a legal requirement nor is it necessarily consistent with

the individual marketer’s self-interest.

Robin and Reidenbach (1987) propose an approach whereby social responsibility and

ethics become part of the strategic marketing planning process through developing or

reformulating the corporate culture. Although their purpose is to identify a process for

introducing ethical and socially responsible core values into an organizational culture, they do


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offer some normative guidelines, including the following: “by using the culturally established

values of an average family as a guide in determining what its reaction to society ought to be, an

organization can develop reasonable standards” (1987; emphasis in the original).

In line with this broad guideline of consistency with family values, Robin and

Reidenbach (1987) offer the following more specific guideline: “make and market products you

would feel comfortable and safe having your own family use.” This guideline is substantively

different from the guideline on product safety (“do not market harmful or dangerous products”)

that Gaski considers equivalent to a requirement to obey the law and/or act in your self-interest.

He writes in relation to this guideline: “As long as there is an expectation of economic loss from

bad behavior, that should be a deterrent augmenting the legal inhibition” (p. 318). Consider, for

example, a marketer who decides on ethical grounds not to market violent or sexually explicit

videogames. This decision may well be consistent with Robin and Reidenbach’s prescription

(and conceivably a result of the marketer attempting to reconcile his business life with his family

values). However, it is not necessarily consistent with the ethical prescription that Gaski

examines (the marketer may not believe that the videogames are harmful) or legal and/or self-

interest considerations.

Williams and Murphy (1990) suggest that ethical analysis in marketing could be

improved with a focus on the theory of virtue. Central concerns of such a theory are “what sort

of person am I shaping?” and “what sort of organization am I shaping?” (Williams and Murphy

1990, p. 24). Accordingly, Williams and Murphy (1990, p. 26) write: “The theory of virtue thus

highlights the need for marketers to consider how consumers are being affected by each product.

We suggest that marketers should not sell products that retard character or virtue development.”

Again, with the videogames example in mind, we might envisage how this guideline might go

beyond the requirements of the law and self-interest.


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Thompson (1995) proposes a contextualist approach to marketing ethics. He rejects out

of hand the entire premise on which Gaski’s (1999) argument is based. He writes (1995, p. 187)

that “ethics is an orientation, that is, a way of thinking about and acting on ethical dilemmas…

moral reasoning cannot be reduced to a formulaic process of applying abstract principles that

guarantee moral outcomes.” Nonetheless, in identifying normative implications of his analysis,

Thompson (1995, p. 187) writes of “the need to foster a caring orientation in the conduct of

marketing ethics” (his emphasis), consistent with the work of Carol Gilligan. He writes (1995,

p. 187) of “a desire to be responsive to the interests of those likely to be affected.” This desire

will not necessarily be consistent with self-interest and the law.

Smith (1995) has proposed the consumer sovereignty test (CST) as a guideline that

managers can use to evaluate the ethics of many marketing decisions. In essence, the CST claims

that marketers have an obligation to consider whether consumers are capable of exercising

informed choice. Its domain is limited to corporate impacts on customers; therefore, the framework

does not directly address marketing impacts on other stakeholders. Moreover, it is not claimed that

the CST alone is a sufficient basis for evaluating the ethics of a marketing decision (see Smith 1995

for further limitations as well as the rationale for the CST).

Smith (1995, p. 92) writes that “the CST requires marketing managers to fulfill the promise

of marketing ideology; i.e., promoting the consumer’s interests… even without market pressure to

do so.” More specifically, the CST creates an obligation for marketers to examine whether

consumers whom their marketing programs target have capability, information, and choice. The

consumer capability dimension of the CST requires the manager to examine whether consumers are

vulnerable, perhaps due to age, education, or income. Hence, the manager would establish, for

example, whether a target market was fully capable of understanding the risks associated with a

product, going beyond legal requirements and perhaps to the firm's economic disadvantage by

excluding some potential consumers. The information dimension generally requires the manager to


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determine whether the quality and availability of information to consumers is sufficient for them to

judge whether their expectations at purchase will be fulfilled. The choice dimension requires

managers to consider whether consumers have the option of going elsewhere, a function mainly of

the level of competition in the market and of any switching costs.

Consider the ethics of tobacco marketing. It is ethically problematic under two if not all

three dimensions of the CST. Most people start smoking in their early teens and thus there is

diminished consumer capability. Further, the addictive nature of tobacco diminishes consumer

choice. Finally, although there is generally abundant information about the adverse health effects

of smoking in developed countries, this is not so true of lesser-developed countries where many

tobacco companies are now focusing their marketing efforts.

Brenkert (1998) is also interested in consumer capability and the marketer’s obligations.

He has offered a particularly thoughtful analysis of the ethical issues raised by the unfairness

that can result from targeting vulnerable consumers. He advances the following guideline:

“marketers may not target those who are specially vulnerable in ways such that their marketing

campaign depends upon the vulnerabilities of that specially vulnerable group” (1998, p. 15). So,

in relation to marketing to children, he writes (1998, p. 16): “because children are cognitively

vulnerable due to their undeveloped abilities, any marketing done to children must be done in

ways that do not presuppose those vulnerabilities.” He argues that legal restrictions on

advertising to children are inadequate in the following way: “the FCC’s limit on the amount of

advertising on children’s television programming does not directly address this issue… the

content of those advertisements must be monitored” (p. 16).

The Need for Ethics

There is a need for ethics regardless of whether ethical prescriptions for marketing that

go beyond the law and self-interest can be identified (and regardless of whether ethics serves as

a foundation for the law). Another way of illustrating this need is to consider situations where


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ethics, the law and self-interest are inconsistent, including situations where the law and self-

interest are not enough and ethics demands more of the marketing practitioner. This can be

illustrated very simply with a 2X2 matrix (see Figure 1). As shown in Cell A, decisions that are

inconsistent with ethics, and inconsistent with the law and/or self-interest are unlikely (though

marketing managers may be unsure of the law or their self-interest, managers’ decisions may

serve their interests but not those of the firm, and they do make mistakes). Decisions consistent

with ethics and consistent with the law and/or self-interest are unproblematic, as shown in Cell

D. However, more difficult are decisions that are consistent with the law and self-interest, but

might be unethical (Cell B). Also difficult are decisions that are consistent with ethics, but may

not be in one’s self-interest and/or may be inconsistent with the law (Cell C).

(See Figure 1 at the end of the document)

For examples of Cell B decisions consider advertising to children and testing products on

animals. Although there are legal restrictions on advertising to children, it is not generally

illegal. Nonetheless, as Paine (1993) shows, there are good ethical reasons for the criticism of

child-oriented television advertising. Paine questions whether young children (under the age of

eight) are appropriate targets for advertisers because they lack the conceptual abilities required

for making consumer decisions. Their immature conceptions of self, time, and money, mean

that children know little about their wants and preferences and how to use their economic

resources to satisfy them. Testing products on animals is not illegal and is often carried out even

when there is good knowledge about the product ingredient in question. However, there are

moral duties associated with the treatment of animals, not least because of their capacity for

suffering (Regan 1992). Other examples of Cell B decisions might include price gouging,

marketing of tobacco and firearms, and environmentally harmful products and packaging.iii

For examples of Cell C decisions consider the well-known recall of Tylenol by Johnson

and Johnson. At the time of the recall, it appeared to be a costly decision ($100 million) that


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would kill the brand and was contrary to the advice of the FBI (Tedlow 1990). The recall was

not legally prescribed (though certainly it was not illegal) and did not appear to be in the firm’s

self-interest. It is only with hindsight that we know of the economic benefits to Johnson and

Johnson of the recall and can refer to this as a celebrated example of the maxim ‘good ethics is

good business’. As Ciulla (1991, p. 218) writes in relation to this example: “Doing the morally

right thing may be difficult and costly, but in the end, you win back the kingdom.”

As an alternative, consider the lesser-known example of Merck’s development and

distribution of an ‘orphan drug’ for river blindness (Business Enterprise Trust 1996). River

blindness, or onchocerciasis, is caused by a parasitic worm found by fast-flowing rivers in

certain parts of lesser-developed countries. In 1978, the World Health Organization estimated

that 340,000 people were blind because of onchocerciasis and 18 million or more were infected

with the parasite. There were no safe treatments and no financial incentives to develop drugs for

some of the world’s poorest populations. Merck’s discovery of ivermectin as a possible

treatment for river blindness, posed a dilemma. If development of the drug was successful, it

would generate little if any revenues and yet it could substantially improve the lives of many

people. Merck successfully developed the drug, known as Mectizan and then, unable to find

funding for its distribution, organized this as well. Again, the company’s actions in this instance

were not a result of following what the law or self-interest might appear to dictate.

Clearly, there is scope for content in marketing ethics that goes beyond the law and self-

interest. However, this content may not be most evident in the form of ethical prescriptions.

Ethical prescriptions may be useful as a starting point and in certain, relatively straightforward

situations. The complexity of many ethical issues in business often demands ethical theory,

from which, after all, the prescriptions were likely developed in the first place. Consider the

issue of bribery. Gaski observes, correctly, that “do not commit bribery” is an ethical

prescription that can be found in the marketing ethics literature and that bribery is generally


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illegal.iv Nonetheless, there are occasions where bribery is morally defensible, as only the

application of ethical theory can reveal.

Deontological, consequentialist and social contract approaches have been used to show

that bribery is generally unethical. However, these ethical theories also reveal when bribery may

be morally permissible (Dunfee, Smith, and Ross 1999). From a deontological perspective, we

can identify a prima facie duty not to engage in bribery, but this duty might be overridden by

other more compelling duties (Pastin and Hooker 1980; Philips 1984). From a consequentialist

perspective, it has been argued that engaging in bribery may be morally justifiable for smaller

firms that would otherwise be subject to large harms (Green 1991). Dunfee, Smith and Ross

(1999) claim that bribery is much less likely to be morally permissible when analyzed using

Integrative Social Contracts Theory (than, say, deontological or consequentialist theories).

However, they allow that the payment of bribes under duress (extortion) may still be morally

permissible where corruption is widespread, weakly prosecuted and often associated with threats

of physical harm.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite his provocative critique of marketing ethics, Gaski explains that “it is not

asserted here that marketing ethics is universally coextensive with the law. Nor is it held that

marketing ethics is the same as self-interest. The conclusion is that the normative ethical rules

found in the existing marketing literature are sufficiently accounted for by the guidelines of law

and self-interest combined or aggregated” (his emphasis, p. 327). He does not dismiss ethics

out-of-hand either, suggesting that the “applicability of ethics… to other realms of human

activity is not being contested” (p. 327). Yet if his purpose is really to highlight the failings to

date of marketing ethics as a field, Gaski is still not convincing.

Nonetheless, and more important perhaps, Gaski’s critique may lead to serious

misconceptions about a field that is still not well understood by the broader field of marketing.


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First, while obey the law and act in your enlightened self-interest have some merit as guidelines

to marketing managers, they merely point to a moral minimum—and even thus treated, have

exceptions, where ethics might point to decisions inconsistent with the law or self-interest.

Second, most societies expect their members to make decisions that go beyond the law and self-

interest and to include ethical considerations. Third, marketing managers are mature adult

members of society and sophisticated decision-makers who are surely capable of some moral

deliberation and this is often called for in marketing. Fourth, in terms of informing practice, it is

more important for normative marketing ethics to enable decision-makers to make better moral

judgements applicable to the specific and often complex situation they face than to offer an

inevitably limited list of general ethical prescriptions. Fifth, practice will be better informed

through ethical theory. To view the content of normative marketing ethics as ultimately

reducible to a series of ethical prescriptions fundamentally mistakes its role. Ethical

prescriptions are only one way of many by which both normative and positive marketing ethics

may inform marketing practice.

To be sure, there is much work to be done in normative marketing ethics. The emphasis

on positive ethics in the marketing ethics literature may well reflect the empirical orientation of

the marketing ethics field (particularly given the scope for empirical research of positive

theories), but the imbalance could usefully be redressed. These efforts could include the

development of ethical prescriptions that might offer some general advice to marketers, perhaps

along the lines of the examples identified above. However, more important is the development

of theories of marketing ethics that provide a basis for moral deliberation by practitioners and

others of the many complex and often troubling ethical issues found in marketing.


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Figure 1: Ethics, the Law, and Self-Interest

Decision Consistent with the Lawand/or Self-interest

DecisionConsistentwith Ethics

No

Yes

No Yes

Unlikely

E.g., RiverBlindness drug,Tylenol recall

E.g., animal testing,advertising to

children

Unproblematic

A B

C D


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ENDNOTES

i This reply will not speculate on possible reasons for the tone of some of Gaski’s comments. Suffice to note thatwhile it can be useful to be provocative, overstating the case weakens the argument overall.ii The methodological problems include concerns about demand effects that Gaski refers to but does not adequatelyaddress. Respondents were asked to classify each ethical rule by indicating which of 4 categories best applies to it:(A) rule is essentially a matter of ‘obey the law’; (B) rule is essentially a matter of ‘act in your self-interest,’ i.e., if you don’t act ethically it will catch up with you; (C) both A and B; (D) neither A nor B. One concern is simply thatrespondents were not given an explicit opportunity to categorize an ethical prescription as essentially a matter of ethics; another is that, apparently, the categories were not rotated among respondents.iii For some of these examples it might be argued that firm self-interest is threatened by the possibility of consumerboycotts. However, this may not be a credible or serious threat under many circumstances (see Smith 1990, pp.257-266).iv Though as Noonan’s (1984) historical account shows, bribery was ethically proscribed long before legalrestrictions.

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