Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Ethical Issues

Ethical question #1

The researcher should present the results that, showed ALL respondents, 89% feel McDonald’s offer healthy meal options. The researcher is showing the truthful results to the V.P. even though the other results would be more helpful. By choosing these results to present you still are being ethical. The researcher is not lying to the V.P. and is giving him information based on fact.


Ethical question # 2
As the marketing research associate I would include my father as the tenth person in the focus group. He is the prefect candidate and only missed the age requirements by two weeks. Any other researcher could easily select my father as a candidate. I feel that the fact him being my father is completely irrelevant as long as he answered the questions honestly.

3 comments:

  1. Brittany, I too would choose to display the same information in the McDonalds issue. However, in the second issue, I would not include my father because the survey calls for persons aged 45-55, and my father being 56, would not be valid. The results would not be completely accurate.

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  2. Brittany,
    I agree that you should show the vice-president the actual information. Just because he's the boss and we want to please him doesn't mean we can violate the ethical standards of the researcher.
    On the issue, I agree with Cody however, that we should not include our dad because that would risk making all of the results skewed. Once again, we can't violate the ethics of the researcher.

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  3. Brittany,
    I would have to disagree with you on both topics. Not showing the V.P. of McDonalds could cause them to spend millions more on pointless marketing and could come back on the researcher.
    As for hiring your father, it is not as big of a deal because chances are no one would ever know, but you still want your research to be accurate.

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