Basic Marketing Research with Excel 3rd Edition by Alvin Burns,Ronald Bush

Exercise 6

Comment on each practice in the following list. Is it ethical? Indicate your reasoning in each case.
a. A research company conducts a telephone survey and gathers information that it uses later to send a salesperson to the home of potential buyers for the purpose of selling a product. It makes no attempt to sell the product over the telephone.
b. Would your answer to (a) change if you found out that the information gathered during the telephone survey was used as part of a "legitimate" marketing research report?
c. A door-to-door salesperson finds that by telling people that he is conducting a survey they are more likely to listen to his sales pitch.
d. Greenpeace sends out a direct-mail piece described as a survey and asks for donations as the last question.
e. In the appendix of the final report, the researcher lists the names of all respondents who took part in the survey and places an asterisk beside the names of those who indicated a willingness to be contacted by the client's sales personnel.
f. A list of randomly generated telephone numbers is drawn in order to conduct a telephone survey.
g. A list of randomly generated e-mail addresses is generated using a "Spambot" (an electronic "robot" that searches the Internet looking for and retaining e-mail addresses) in order to conduct a random online research project.
h. Students conducting a marketing research project randomly select e-mail addresses of other students from the student directory in order to conduct their term project.