Personal and professional values underlying the ethical judgments of marketers

Abstract

The relative influences of 2 levels of value orientations, personal values and professional values, underlying the ethical judgments of marketing practitioners are examined. The proposition that these 2 value orientations influence the ethical decision making of marketers is well grounded in the marketing ethics theories. The data were obtained from a mail survey of the American Marketing Association's professional members. A total of 2,000 target respondents were sampled from a list of 14,739 members. Of the 1,997 delivered, 492 persons responded for a response rate of 24.6%. The results generally indicate that a marketer's ethical judgments can be partially explained by his personal and professional values.