Monitoring the Ethical Use of Sales Technology: An Exploratory Field Investigation

The use of technology in marketing has become an increasingly important competitive tool in developing and maintaining efficient and productive customer relationships. However, the ethics of using this technology has received little attention. This study investigates how and if marketing organizatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bush, Victoria (Author)
Contributors: Bush, Alan J. ; Orr, Linda
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2010
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2010, Volume: 95, Issue: 2, Pages: 239-257
Further subjects:B codes of ethics
B sales technology
B Ethical Climate
B monitoring systems
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Description
Summary:The use of technology in marketing has become an increasingly important competitive tool in developing and maintaining efficient and productive customer relationships. However, the ethics of using this technology has received little attention. This study investigates how and if marketing organizations are adapting their ethics policies to incorporate use of sales technology (ST). Based on in-depth interviews with executives from a variety of highly regulated to nonregulated business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries, our results show that, although most organizations indeed have codes of ethics, there appears to be a gray area of how these codes address ST. Further, it appears that monitoring the ethical use of ST varies and can be a frustrating and time-consuming issue for marketing and sales executives. Implications of our findings are discussed for the benefit of marketing practitioners, ethics managers, and researchers.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-009-0357-9