The Marketing Ethics Course: Current State and Future Directions

As the field of business ethics has evolved, the marketing domain has been a natural context for and recipient of much ethical consideration. One reason for this might be that many of the critical issues facing modern businesses, such as sustainability and social responsibility, can be considered marketing ethics issues (Murphy, 2010). Marketing has been a significant contributor to applied ethics from the early days of business ethics research. Several of the original ethical decision making models emerged from marketing scholarship, such as the Ferrell-Gresham (1985) and the Hunt-Vitell (1986) frameworks, and they remain among the most highly-cited studies in the marketing ethics literature. Recent literature reviews confirm that issues of marketing ethics continue to grow in importance to the marketing profession (Schlegelmilch & Öberseder, 2010).