Investigating the Effectiveness of the Consumers’ Ethical Philosophies (Idealism, Egoism, and Materialism) on their Perceived Unethical Marketing

Objective Some ethically controversial behaviors within the companies have faced today marketing with the hallmarks of lying, deception, exaggeration, fraud, privacy violation and similar accusations. Therefore, creating and maintaining good relationships with the customers on one hand, and drastic lack of studies concerning the customers’ perception of ethical and unethical marketing have made it important to create such perception by studying ethical philosophies as a framework to explain the perception process, decision-making and the customers’ responding to ethical situation. The present research investigates the effect of ethical philosophies on perceived unethical marketing. In so doing, three ethical philosophies have been analyzed including realism – as the extent of someone’s desire to seek absolute true or false regardless of the conditions and the consequences of their decision-; egoism – provided that ethical standards are only acceptable if the they are approved by the individuals and therefore any ethical analysis is highly reliant on their own personal beliefs-; and materialism – claiming that material properties can be the biggest source of life satisfaction.

Methodology The present study is descriptive-survey research. The statistical population includes all the students of Management Department of Azad University of Tehran, the Central Branch and, according to Morgan’s table, a sample size of 375 students from among around 10000 were selected based on random stratified sampling. Finally, 400 questionnaires were distributed and 375 were collected. SPSS was run for confirmatory
factor analysis and AMOS18 was used to conduct structural equation modeling to analyze the relationship between the research constructs. Findings The results showed that customers’ idealism had no effects on their perceived unethical marketing, while egoism had a negative effect on their perceived unethical marketing related to P4. In addition, the more materialistic the customers are, the higher their perceived unethical marketing i.e. the materialistic customers are more sensitive to the ethicality of the activities and behaviors of the company.

Conclusion Provided that the ethical philosophy of egoism is proved to have no effects on Iranian customers’ perceived ethical marketing, it s noteworthy that there are many ethical philosophies capable of affecting individuals’ ethical judgments and their effectiveness is highly in line with the cultural and social contexts in the society. Considering egoism indexes, one can analyze that the egoistic individuals and societies only care for their own personal benefits and show less sensitivity to observing ethics by the companies. Hence, it is necessary to emphasize more on mixed strategies of marketing and to encourage the individuals to participate in social activities to maximize their personal benefits. The more materialistic people have shown higher sensitivity to the effects of the activities of the companies on their properties; so, they showed higher unethical perceptions because of the threat regarding their loss of their properties. Therefore, in such marketing environment, the companies should provide services to ensure protecting their customers’ properties and the safety of the transactions. In addition, materialistic consumers have an unethical perception of the companies’ marketing because they consider their efforts and behaviors as a means of their own benefits. As a result, the companies should propose the idea that the customers will gain more happiness and satisfaction if the materialistic customers get in touch with that company