Table of Contents Background for the research paper.

1 Task 01 – The Assessment of Research Paper2 1. 0 The Practical Area of the research2 2. 0 Examples Of Other Studies Conducted Along The Researchers’ Guidelines. 2 3. 0 Explanation of How The Researcher Uses Relevant Literature To Build His Arguments While Comparing And Contrasting Other Researchers Work. 3 4. 0 Explanation of the Research Design4 5.

0 Recommendation of the Study5 6. 0 Limitation of The Study6 7. 0 Research topics we have developed according to the guidelines of the paper7Task 02 -The Selected Research Area7 1. 0 Importance of the research topic7 2. 0 Required Information Types For Study8 3. 0 Literature Review8 4. 0 Importance & Usage of Literature8 5.

0 Research design9 6. 0 Validity of the identified recommendation for selected research topic9 References9 Research paper – Marketing Ethics, systematic Review of the literature. by Alexander Nill, and John Schibrowsky. Task 01 – The Assessment of Research Paper 1. 0 The Practical Area of the research Marketing Ethics: A Systematic Review of the Literature.In here the researchers did not focused on a specific problem they focused on wide area of marketing ethics. This research paper is about the growing field of marketing ethics researches, which are going to investigate many aspects of marketing that have an ethical dimension.

Regarding this practical area the researcher evaluate the systematic review of the literature by (1) developing a categorization scheme for marketing research and (2) by analyzing via content analysis-all journal articles , which have een revealed by a major search engine for the time span 1981 to 2005 , in terms of quantity, nature &scope, topical areas, and publication outlets. Under this research, researchers tried to analyses practical area through various criteria. * How many systematic literature reviews was developed within 25 years? * Did it show a growth or recession? * In which area did it happen? 1. 1 Importance of Understanding the Practical Issues For Marketers Provide recipe like guidance for marketers facing ethical questions * Marketers can understand and address very well with different stakeholders Because there is a problem that marketers often have to face when trying adhere to different values of different stakeholders * Marketers can expand the list with ethics specific topics relevant for marketing * Through referring & identifying the literature the marketers can build good reputation in their business field also they can secure or avoid legal problems arising when violating marketing ethics. For Marketing Academics They can get deepest knowledge about the most important part in marketing ethics. * They can focus on certain area in marketing ethics which got less attention or importance in literature, for their future studies and academic purposes.

2. 0 Examples Of Other Studies Conducted Along The Researchers’ Guidelines. We have selected five studies conducted along the guidelines given by the researcher in the article.

They are, 1. A general theory of marketing ethics (Shelby D. Hunt and Scott Vitell) 2. Normative perspective for ethical and socially responsible marketing(Gene R. Laczniak and Patrick E. Murphy) 3.

Global marketing ethics(Alexander Nill) 4. Marketing ethics : factor influencing perceptions of ethical problems and alternatives. (Anusorn Singhapakdi and Scott J. Vitell) 5.

A General theory of marketing ethics : A revision & three question. (Shelby D. Hunt and Scott J. Vitell) 2. 1 Relationship and differences among above related articles and discussing article. I. A general theory of marketing ethics. This research by Hunt and Vitell has been a major foundation for our discussing article, because * They have divided literature into broad categories such as normative and positive or a combination of both.

They have developed a conceptual model of the scope of marketing. * They were the developers of marketing ethical decision making model which is called “ Hunt & Vitell model”. On the other hand Hunt & Vitell have revised “The general theory of marketing ethics” research in 1993. Therefore they have done a research to evaluate usage of their models mentioned above by raising three questions. II. Marketing ethics: factor influencing perceptions of ethical problems and alternatives.

From this article also researchers were discussing about area of marketers’ ethical decision making and they have supported to build researchers’ argument.III. Normative perspective for ethical and socially responsible marketing In this article the researchers mainly focused on seven essential perspectives in ethical marketing and they have discussed the importance of social responsibility for marketers. When we consider about our discussing article the researchers have referred mostly above article in the area of social responsibility. IV. Global marketing ethics: a communicative approach.

This research has been done by one of the researcher of our discussing article.This research has based on cross cultural related issues and when discussing researchers were going to prove their arguments they have mentioned this article’s literature 3. 0 Explanation of How The Researcher Uses Relevant Literature To Build His Arguments While Comparing And Contrasting Other Researchers Work. I. Marketing ethics became less represented in the mainstream literature Over the last ten years there has been a heightened interest in ethical challenges germane to the advances of the modern telecommunication technology, the internet and privacy issues.The majority of contributions in this field have been published in journals other than marketing. Of the fifty-eight journals on their list, twelve had no marketing ethics articles over the time span under investigation.

Such as the Journal of Consumer Policy, the Journal of Direct Marketing (now Journal of Interactive Marketing), the journal of Global Marketing, the Journal of Non-profit and Public Sector Marketing, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management had no marketing ethics articles.According to documented by Wilkie Moore (2003) it is concerning that those scholars that focus on the traditional marketing journals are not being exposed to the majority of the marketing ethics literature. This finding is in line with the increasing research specialization of the marketing field, one could argue that this specialization is likely to impede the integration of marketing ethics into mainstream marketing research. According to Baumgartner and Pieters (2003, 136) this “small group of journals dominates the scientific discourse, and most other journals exert no noticeable structural influence in the marketing network. This suggests that the marketing ethics discussion is no longer part of the mainstream marketing discourse.

Furthermore according to Wilkie Moore (2003, 133), since ever more U. S. universities “adopted publish or perish career paths for their new faculty, which added pressures for increasingly sophisticated research”, these young scholars might be inclined to pursue more mainstream research projects to target the top journals in the field. II.

Societal issues and basic normative questions attracted substantially less interest from researches.According to the table 4, the normative marketing ethics articles were published less than positive marketing ethics within the time span of 25 years (1980-2005) At there, by amount of 72 articles, positive marketing ethics articles were published than normative marketing ethics articles in 1988. It was the largest difference between those to dichotomies within those 25 years.

Also majority of these 25 years, positive marketing ethics articles were published over than normative marketing ethics articles in significant differences.In some years (1993, 1992, 1990) these two types of dichotomy articles were published in same amount. But in some years, normative marketing ethics articles were published more than positive marketing ethics articles like 1999, 1987, 1986, and 1982. The potential reason for the lack of interest in societal issues discussed above might also be explanatory for the fading interest in marketing ethics by mainstream researches. Wilkie and Moore (2003, 132) claim that the preeminent position in the marketing field is “the belief that the major purpose of academic work is to enhance the effectiveness of managers` marketing decisions. Macro refers to the ethical perspective of aggregate marketing activities including macro marketing with a focus on “big, complex, and systematic issues, the interplay of marketing and society, and ultimately, improvements to life quality for large number of stakeholders affected by marketing systems.

” According to Shultz (2005,3) complex issues such as the general role of marketing ethics in a free enterprise, private-property system, the relationship between law and ethics, and marketers’ role in helping to solve societal problems are subsumed under macro dichotomy.III. Much Progress has been made in areas such as improving our understanding of marketers’ values, marketers’ ethical decision making process, and cross-cultural related issues. According to models from Hunt and Vitell (1986), Ferrel and Gresham (1985), Ferrel and Gresham and Fraedrich (1989) and Jones (1991), these models offer a better understanding of marketers’ decision making in ethically relevant situations.

The purpose of these models is “not to provide normative guidance for marketing decisions that are more ethical. (Hunt Forthcoming), but “to increase our understanding of the ethical decision making by means of a process theory”. According to Laczniak and Murphy (1993); Smith and Quelch (1993); Chonko (1995) normative marketing ethics generate ethical standards for marketers regarding the question of what is right and what is wrong. They are concerned with the justification of moral norms and ethical values can be seen as an instrument to criticize and assess differing value systems.The recent decision of Deutsche Bank CEO Joseph Ackermann to lay off 20,000 employees to improve the bank’s return on investment did not only have an immediate impact on the life of these employees, it also sparked a fierce political discussion with potentially regulatory consequences in Germany (Walker 2005). 3. 1 The Importance of Literature Review to Research Study. A systematic review of the marketing ethic literature would be helpful to the researchers to understand the current state of marketing ethic research.

It has given an understanding about the quantity of articles published, the scope of researches, how marketing ethics researches have evolved in terms of content & where the ethics literature is published. It further gives an idea to identify the most important trends in the marketing ethics literature & provides direction to researcher’s study particularly in terms of research gaps & expected topical areas of interest. 4. 0 Explanation of the Research Design In this research, researchers have formulated an exploratory research design through following method.Started out with comprehensive set of marketing & marketing related journals, that has been analyzed overall & sub area influence on the marketing discipline. Secondly, electronic database had selected. After considering of various data base business source premier was selected as the primary data base.

Then appropriate search terms had to be identified. Forth, each abstract had to be evaluated to determine whether it was a marketing ethics article or just ethic related. Fifth, a content analysis was performed on the abstract of all selected journal articles.Finally those articles were classified according to the categorization scheme discussed earlier. Arguments base on that prediction.

* The researchers are going to provide an understanding on marketing ethics to the readers and they were not going to build up hypothesis and test them from this research. * When doing this research the researchers have used flexible and unstructured process. It means there is no any structured and systematic manner of doing the stages of the process. * In this research, the researchers have used secondary data to prove their arguments.Here there are so many published journals and articles which have done on the area of marketing ethics and the have used articles related to this topic from those journals. * The researchers have analyzed data by using Content Analysis Technique. Content analysis means that “the way of converting text to numerical variables”. The researchers also have used qualitative data by referring journals and they have converted those information into numerical.

Like, * Percentage of journals describe Positive/Normative * Percentage of journals describe Micro/Macro Main purpose of Exploratory Research is gaining insights for developing an approach to the discussing area. Here the researchers have tried to get deep idea and broadly discuss about all the related literature on the topic of marketing ethics during the time span of 1981-2005. * Another purpose of exploratory design is establishing priorities for further researches. The conclusion of this research has divided into four criteria and the researchers have tried to provide a basic foundation for future researches.

4. 1 Objectives of the researchersThere are four main objectives that researchers try to achieve I. Developing a Categorization Scheme for Marketing Ethics research. According to this type of research design we are trying to define our discussing area more precisely and when we hope to provide deep understand about the topic normally we have to categorize our main area into sub areas for ease of explaining. So in this article also the researchers have tried to achieve their first objective through exploratory design.

II. Presenting journals explored from electronic database and business source premier.When the researchers tried to achieve this objective, in some extend the exploratory design was utilized as the required data for exploratory research is secondary data and to collect secondary data the researcher necessarily refer all related journals and articles. So, the researchers could present journals explored for gathering secondary data.

III. Another purpose of this article is to give a rough knowledge about quantity of marketing ethics published, the scope of research, how they have involved with and from what journals they can find those literatures to journal of macro marketing readers.As it has been designed exploratory the researchers have been able to cover the required area. IV.

Identifying most important trends in the marketing ethics literature and to provide future direction. This objective is more similar to one of the goal has been set in exploratory research. It is established priorities for further research. Therefore when the researchers are going to achieve exploratory design’s objective automatically the researchers could have been achieved the objective of research. 6. Recommendation of the Study In this researchers offer many observations for the future researchers who are willing to do researcher regarding the marketing ethics.

* Knowledge about the marketing ethics which has been increased last 25 years the marketers was able to get better understand about the marketing ethics . their values, decision making process, international and cross cultural issues. So marketers were able to better understand about the nature about the marketing ethics, marketing ethical theories of this study. The most research study was based on the and their values, decision making process, international and cross cultural issues, but basic normative questions and social issues were not highly concerned ,the analysis of fundamentally normative questions in the marketing ethics is underrepresented in the literature review of this study, that may help explain why the micro/positive work is much more prevalent in the discipline ,because the creating a logic chain for the ethical standard might be so difficult so the literature review of this study is helpful for the investigate marketing ethics regarding the social issues and normative questions * In the marketing ethics which were limited amount of macro research field. the researcher pointed out that is truth in macro/normative pieces . so given that marketing is an important aspect of the society the marketers depend on the social approval on their their actions .

so the macro articles provide development of marketing ethics in the field this esearcher pointed out the macro articles may helpful for the develop of the marketing ethics * In the regarding the marketing ethics there is potentially concerning lack of ethics research in internet marketing but last years it was grown up dramatically, but it my created many issues ,identify the theft phishing ,privacy, online actions and hacking ,furthermore there is a paucity of a research concerning discriminations but most research was based on the demographics ,product development advertisement and selling ,price discriminations such as ethics on line versus offline pricing terms of its fairness to populations that don’t have computer access is warranted 5. 1 Recommendations provide to the future researchers * In the marketing ethics which were developed last few years it may help many those e concerned many aspect of marketing ethics those journals and articles helpful for the change the behavior of the business . so marketing ethics is no longer an integral part of the general marketing discourse and it evolved in to the specific sub discipline so those researcher able to encourage the other researchers. This articles try to create spark academic debate and inquisitiveness to the future researchers * in the marketing ethics literature and provide future directions ,particularly in terms of research gaps and expected topical areas * this articles provides categorizing scheme for marketing ethics that allows to compare and analysis other marketing articles to the others * Systematic selection of journal articles employing an electronic database presented. * There was only one research has done regarding pricing issues. Pricing is more important function in marketing.

So it is better if future researchers conduct their researches focused on pricing issues. 5. 2 Are those recommendations valid in Sri Lankan context?The researcher hope to spark academic debate and inquisitiveness ,the articles seek to identify the most important trends in the marketing ethics literature and provide future directions ,particularly in terms of research gaps and expected topical res of the interest which were social issues and basic normative questions which were not revealed in the last 25 years in the articles so he give future directions to the futures researchers to investigate those aspect of marketing ethics.

In the Sri Lankan context those recommendations may helpful, the researchers in Sri Lanka those are able to use this research as guideline. When they hope to do a research. 6. 0 Limitation of the Study I.The number of marketing ethics pieces appearing in traditional marketing journals has remained relatively flat for the past fifteen years. It is concerning that those scholars that focus on the traditional marketing journals are not being exposed to the majority of the marketing ethics literature.

II. The researchers investigated the amount of marketing ethics research that was published in the top ten most influential marketing journals as ranked by Baumgartner and Pieters (2003). Over the past twenty five years, a total of fifty marketing ethics pieces were published in the top ten journals. These fifty articles represent about 12 percent of all marketing distributions. III.Marketing ethics research does not and cannot always deliver managerial relevance. This is not to say that the results of many marketing ethics studies are not relevant for managers, but it might suggest that the dictum of managerial relevance is making the field less enticing too many marketing researchers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that marketing ethics manuscripts are likely to be rejected by the top tier journals.

IV. 15% of marketing ethics articles published in 1980s were not included in their list. This percentage increased to more than 30% in the 1990s.

Of the fifty-eight journals on their list , twelve had no marketing ethics articles over the time span under investigation. V.One of huge barrier of this article is the “Business Source Premier” the used search algorithm did not necessarily reveal all articles focusing on marketing ethics. VI. Another limitation of the search algorithm was the overlap between ethics and social responsibility, since both expressions are sometime used interchangeably. VII. Marketing is a field that varying day by day, with adding new features and removing old theory.

Marketing Ethics also highly dependable upon the core of the marketing. The article is done since 1985 to 2005. So the applicability of those results in today is somewhat difficult and unfavorable. VIII.

The one of main target of every research is generalization of its findings.For that purpose it should include common factors. But in here the used literature are only taken from the western culture. 6. 1 Suggestion For Avoid the Limitations * Marketing ethics journals should be published in general business journals as well as marketing journals.

Marketing ethics articles should appeared in traditional journals sufficiently and also those articles must be focused on global scholars. * The researchers should give their attention for all kind of important journals regarding their topic; Marketing Ethics. * And also they should be careful about their selected journals to prevent including unnecessary journals ;amp; leaving necessary journals.

We can improve the awareness about the importance of marketing ethics ;amp; ethics articles among the various kinds of professions and parties. * The used search algorithm did not reveal all articles focusing on marketing ethics. Therefore it must be developed further to get optimum output. * For overlap between ethics and social responsibility is caused to mislead research findings. For that reason it will be very valuable if expertise can create two definitions, which can be clearly distinguish from each other.

* Marketing ethics are varying day by day according to the changes of the society. But this study has been done in the time span of 1981 – 2005. So, the applicability of this article finding, in the year 2012 is somewhat questionable.Thus newest changes in marketing ethics have to be included. * We could not find any literature taken from Asia countries.

So generalization of this article is limited to the western countries only. On the other hand ethics are highly dependable objects relevant to specific culture. so avoid these limits researchers should refer different cultures and countries’ literature. 7.

0 Research topics we have developed according to the guidelines of the paper The researcher uses the categorizations scheme of marketing ethics as guidelines for his study. Under the categorization of marketing ethics has been divided in to positive /normative dichotomy and micro/Macro dichotomy.They have further developed sub guidelines under the functional areas of marketing ethics for the systematic review of literature. Base on the researches guidance we have developed following research topics, Normative/Macro * What should be the Marketers’ ethical responsibility toward promotional practices in Sri Lanka. (Functional Area-prom) * what should be marketing ethics concept practices in the E-Marketing (subdisciplines of Marketing- inter) * what should be Practices of Marketing Ethics in Environmental Marketing( Specific Ethics- Green) Normative/Micro * How should Pharmaceuticals product distribution firms implement Marketing ethics in pricing? (Functional Area- pric) How Marketing ethics should effects towards consumer satisfaction with special reference to Sri Lankan privet banking sector? (sub disciplines of marketing- cons) * What should be the ethical responsibility of Tobacco Sri Lanka towards stakeholders? ( Specific Ethics- stake) Positive/Macro * What is the role of alcohol producers’ promotional practices in ethical marketing.

* What is the impact of rules and regulation on ethical marketing for marketers? (sub disciplines of marketing- law) * what is the Practices of Marketing Ethics in Environmental Marketing( Specific Ethics- Green ) Positive /micro * How do firms Practices unethical advertising in Sri Lanka? Functional Area-prom) * What is the Ethical Role in infant Milk Powder sales in Sri Lanka? (sub disciplines of marketing- sales) * Critical evaluation of relationship between ethics and religion related issues in apparel firms (Specific Ethics- relig) Task 02 -The Selected Research Area “HOW DO FIRMS PRACTICE UNETHICAL ADVERTISING IN SRI LANKA? ” (Positive/Micro – prom) 1. 0 Importance of the research topic. Even though each and every topic we have developed using the researchers’ guidelines are impotent, we are going to further identifying the importance of selected research area. In here we have narrowed down the selected research area in to Sri Lankan context for accomplish the objectives of study appropriately.The ethical practices of marketers in past, present and future business world is questionable.

The infringement of ethics is the main reason for development the concept of ethics in marketing. When paying the attention of the unethical behavior of marketers, advertising is the one of major area can be violated the marketing ethics. “Advertising ethics affect the practice of our lives and also the practice of business in subtle and prominent way; indeed advertising ethics concern us all academies, ad agencies personals, advertisers’ attorneys’ consumers’ media personals, and regulators in one way of others” According to those facts studying about unethical issues in advertising is more critical.Advertising issues has been developed as growing field for researchers, because of that this research study can be used as secondary data for future researchers.

When considering the Sri Lankan context unethical advertizing issues are common today. Practical examples can be found in the area of unethical behavior of multinational companies. Ex: Diva TV commercial copied by Uniliever for their local brand Wonder light. Rin vs Tide advertisement. 2. 0 Required Information Types For Study When conducting the research study basically published external secondary sources information can be used, * Journal articles regarding unethical advertising. * Journal articles about advertising ethics. Sri Lankan rules and regulation regarding advertising.

* Sri Lankan publications concerning violation of ethics * Paper and e-articles about unethical advertising practices in Sri Lanka * Other researchers findings 3. 0 Literature Review One approach for understanding advertising ethics is to identify advertizing practices (eg; subliminal advertising, advertising to children) which have potentially harmful effects for society (or potentially harmful effects for some segment of society) actions which involve harmful effects certainly present a difficult set of moral choices and options, (Advertising Ethics: Emerging Methods and Trends George M. Zinkhan Journal of Advertising).Hyman, Tansey and Clark identify 33 prime topics for those researchers who plan to focus their efforts on advertising ethics. The seven most important topics out of this list include: 1) use of deception in ads, 2)advertising to children, 3) tobacco advertising, 4) alcoholic beverage ads, 5) negative political advertising, 6)racial stereotyping, and 7) sexual stereotyping.

For this particular study, we have decided to focus on four areas which consist of use of deception in ads, cultural stereotyping, sexual stereotyping and emotional exploitation. Based on the empirical evidence, advertising ethics has been and continues to be a very fertile research topic.Previous research articles examine the ethicality of advertisements with persuasive appeals (Crisp, 1987; Hyman and Tansey, 1990), exploitative appeals (LaTour and Zahra, 1989, Tansey, Hayman and Brown). Others examine the ethicality of advertisements with stereotyped actors (Peterson, 1992; Green, 1993), questionable products such as cigarettes, alcoholic beverages (Pomeroy, Castellano, Becker, Johnson, and Brown 1992; Zinkhan et al. 1989), professional services (Bullard and Snizek 1988; Mangold 1987; Stafford 1988). Some other articles focus on the ethicality of targeting advertisements to children Kinsey, 1987) and to other subgroups such as the elderly (Peterson, 1992).

A Conceptual Review Of Advertising Regulation And Standards: Case Studies In The Indian Scenario , Panchali Das) 4. 0 Importance ;amp; Usage of Literature Literature review is most important to identify the concept of advertising ethics and unethical issues clearly. It also helps to avoid the mistakes, which already done by another one. So we can improve the research design and instrumentation, which was not successful at the last time. We can get the benefit of past arguments and knowledge which previous researchers developed. Literature review discloses appropriate theoretical structure of the study that helps to understand easily. The articles ;amp; researches which we referred provide the base and prove arguments of research area.

As “Advertising Ethics: Emerging Methods and Trends,George M. Zinkhan ‘” used Hyman, Tansey and Clark’s evaluation of advertising ethics for his research, we can also develop the guidelines for our study through those area of topics. According the facts provided in the research on Advertising Ethics: Emerging Methods and Trends George M.

Zinkhan Journal of Advertising) we would be able to identify the unethical practices of advertising. By referring those articles we can develop appropriate analytical tools to evaluate our research area. 5. 0 Research design We recommended an exploratory design for this research topic.

5. 1 Reasons for selecting the research designThrough this topic we hope to do a depth analysis regarding the unethical issues in advertising which have practiced within past ten years. There are several secondary data which can be used for this research as so many researchers already have done research on this topic. When we study on this type of topic we can collect only qualitative data and difficulty to gather quantitative data. So we have to convert those data into numerical data.

Therefore we can use Content Analysis to evaluate data. So we think exploratory research design would support for that. We have to focused on many areas regarding, unethical practices in Sri Lanka. Such as price, quality, package, content, etc. Therefore exploratory research design would be more useful to evaluate those facts appropriately.As unethical practices in advertising can be happened in the future, there is a possibility to do further researches regarding this area. This research will be providing a basic foundation for future researchers. 6.

0 Validity of the identified recommendation, for selected research topic Research paper provide a base to understand ethical dimensions ;amp; it influences as a guidance for future researches who are willing to do researches regarding unethical advertising practices. There are many researches can be found under the functional areas of marketing ethics. It also provide an approach for researches regarding unethical issues in marketing References * George M.Zinkhan .

Advertising Ethics: Emerging Methods and Trends. Journal of Advertising * Panchali Das . A Conceptual Review Of Advertising Regulation And Standards: Case Studies In The Indian Scenario * Michael R.

Hyman, Richard Tansey and James W. Clark . Research on Advertising Ethics: Past, Present, and Future . , Journal of Advertising * Malhothra,N. K, (2010) Marketing Research:An Applied orientation, prentice Hall Electronic Sources * Jmk. sagpub. com ——————————————– [ 1 ]. Research on Advertising Ethics: Past, Present, and Future .

Michael R. Hyman, Richard Tansey and James W. Clark , Journal of Advertising