itly assumes that people from
various backgrounds are exposed to their unique traditions,
heritages, rituals, and customs, which provide them with different
learning environments and histories, which in turn
lead to variations in moral standards, beliefs, and behaviors
across cultures. Therefore, culture not only influences learning
but also affects what is perceived as right or wrong,
acceptable or unacceptable, and ethical or unethical (Lu,
Rose, and Blodgett 1999). As we noted previously, what
defines a culture is the way that a person pursues his or her
objectives in a given direction. A possible way of understanding
this is to consider the perspective of a system of
accepted rules and standards of behavior, or “a code of ethical
values” of culture. In other words, in many ways, ethics
overlaps with culture because it represents the moral dimension
of how people should behave in the world. Values are
inextricably related when confronting an ethical dilemma.
Subsequently, most models of ethical decision making either
explicitly or implicitly incorporate the effects of culture. As
Bartels (1967, p. 23) concludes, “Contrasting cultures of different
societies produce different expectations and become
expressed in the dissimilar ethical standards of those
societies.” Hunt and Vitell (1986) embed cultural norms in
their theory of marketing ethics, as do Ferrell and Gresham
(1985), who incorporate the influence of cultural and group
norms on individual b英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】ehavior in their framework for understanding
ethical decision making.
Business ethics is an extensive domain that encompasses
many domains (e.g., professions, such as marketing, accounting,
and finance; specific sectors, such as health care and
information technology; see Jakubowski et al. 2002; Miller,
Bersoff, and Harwood 1990; Singhapakdi, Vitell, and Franke
1999). We focus exclusively on marketing ethics, though our
study participants were not limited to marketing professionals.
This is to acknowledge the dispersion of marketing
activities throughout all employees in a firm (Moorman and
Rust 1999; Webster, Malter, and Ganesan 2005). Note also
Marketing Ethical Norms
Cultural Values on Marketing Ethical Norms 33
that different constituents (e.g., marketers, consumers, different
ethnic groups) may have different perceptions of marketing
ethics (Christie et al. 2003; Cui and Choudhury 2003;
Keenan 2002; Pires and Stanton 2002).
Although there are several definitions of marketing ethics,
Hunt and Vitell’s (1986, p. 7) definition stands out as the
most robust definition: “an inquiry into the nature and
grounds of moral judgments, standards, and rules of conduct
relating to marketing decisions and marketing situations.”
On the basis of an investigation of the code of ethics of the
American Marketing Association, Vitell, Rallapalli, and
Singhapakdi (1993) identify four specific marketing-related
norms—price and distribution, information and contracts,
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