If you’re new to the Market Research and Insights profession you may be surprised to learn that we have specific ethical and legal guidelines to which we must adhere. While as market research project managers, we certainly don’t need to be legal experts, we should all know certain professional conventions. The following is an example that illustrates an unethical request some researchers run into when working with a new client/stakeholder, especially those who may not be very familiar with professional quality market research.
Example: You’ve been asked to do a market segmentation study for an up-and-coming cell phone service provider. This company sells mobile services and is specifically targeting young adults. Now imagine they’ve asked you to do a market segmentation to divide the young adult target population into logical segments based on product usage behaviors. Sounds great, right? But then imagine that they also tell you they want the names of the people who responded to the survey by their assigned segment. The client wants to use that to send highly targeted email and direct mail campaigns to those research participants.
Why This is an Unethical Request
Divulging research participant contact information is unethical and usually illegal (unless the survey is of the customer’s customer database, the survey did not promise anonymity, and the customer database has already opted in to receive direct marketing material). The client may be frustrated because they don’t understand that segmentation aims to identify the variables that should be used to assign people to the different segments and not necessarily as a lead-generation mechanism in and of itself. As researchers, we’re more confident explaining these issues to clients when we know that we’re coming from the basis of established professional ethical and legal standards. Our recommendation: get familiar by reading the Insights Association’s Code of Conduct & Ethics, and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Code of Professional Ethics. Between these two sources, market research professionals get a great breadth and depth of our professional standards.
Next Steps
The work we do in market research intersects with various ethical and legal considerations that require our awareness, and sometimes our attention. Some of the most common issues related to data falsification are data security, intellectual property, privacy, and respondent coercion. Suppose you are interested in expanding your knowledge of ethical and legal issues related to market research. In that case, we invite you to explore our eLearning course, Ethical and Legal Topics for Market Research Professionals. This comprehensive course features exclusive interviews with Attorney Stuart Pardau, a prominent expert in market research legal matters.
Are you a current Research Rockstar member? The course and all of its video lessons and job aids are available to you in your Research Rockstar dashboard.
Staying well-informed about ethical and legal issues will help all research professionals navigate potential risks, and ultimately supports the integrity and credibility of the market research profession as a whole.
