Abstract
The purpose of this research was to test and extend a multidimensional ethics scale developed by Reidenbach and Robin to selected marketing groups. Different marketing practices and groups were used in order to give these measures a wide variety of exposures. These measures performed well in all settings and for all practices. Factor structures in fifteen different trials identified the same three dimensions with one exception. In that exception, two dimensions merged together in five of those fifteen trials.
While these dimensions captured much of the variance in the global concept of “ethical/unethical”, they did a better job of predicting the respondents’ intention to behave than the global measure. These measures also provide the researcher with a partial explanation of why the respondents answered in the manner that they did. The shifting relative importance of the three dimensions in accounting for the variance in the behavioral intention measure provides this explanation.
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Reidenbach, R.E., Robin, D.P. & Dawson, L. An application and extension of a multidimensional ethics scale to selected marketing practices and marketing groups. JAMS 19, 83–92 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02726000
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02726000