The 2017 Commission on Public Relations Education report found new professionals are not meeting employers’ expectations regarding ethics knowledge, skills and abilities. This mixed-method s...

Many consumers fail to identify online sponsored content as advertising. This is an ethical problem because consumers need to know when they are exposed to advertising so they can raise counterargu...

ABSTRACTResearch has found that ethics are most likely to be integrated throughout the curriculum rather than taught as a stand-alone course in public relations. However, this study identified substantial differences in the types of content taught in the two formats on the basis of survey research with 96 educators. Some of the topics that are less likely to be taught outside of an ethics course included other codes of ethics beyond those of the Public Relations Society of America, classical theories (...) by philosophers, decision-making models, the effect of organizational culture and values, and global perspectives on ethics. In addition, few educators reported that they discuss raising ethical concerns in their courses. (shrink)

Media coverage of influencer marketing abounds with ethical questions about this emerging industry. Much of this coverage assumes influencers operate without an ethical framework and many social me...

Gamification is an increasingly common marketing tool. Yet, to date, there has been little examination of its ethical implications. In light of the potential implications of this type of stealth marketing for consumer welfare, this paper discusses the ethical dilemmas raised by the use of gamified approaches to marketing. The paper draws on different schools of ethics to examine gamification as an overall system, as well as its constituent parts. This discussion leads to a rationale and suggestions for how gamification (...) could be regulated and/or controlled by more informal codes of conduct. The paper ends by outlining a practical framework which businesses can use to evaluate the potential ethical implications raised by their own gamified marketing techniques. (shrink)

Guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, one hundred and fifty-three public relations practitioners working in the United States participated in an online experiment that tested...

ABSTRACTNative advertising is among the most ethically charged strategies of digital communications. The ethical controversies are inherent in native advertising’s definition—paid advertising that is disguised to make readers think it is editorial content of digital publishers. Drawing on moral philosophy, the persuasion knowledge model, the social responsibility of the press theory, schema theory, and psychological reactance theory, this project demonstrated that consumers’ perceptions of native advertising’s deceptiveness increased advertising skepticism, irritation, and avoidance. In contrast, higher media trust resulted in lower (...) perceived deceptiveness, skepticism, irritation, and avoidance. Thus, advertisers and online publishers will benefit from explicit disclosure of sponsorship that is responsible and transparent. (shrink)

Consumers’ participation on sharing economy platforms is crucial for the success of the products, services, and companies on those platforms. The participation of consumers enables companies to not only exist, but also to create value for consumers. The sharing economy has witnessed enormous growth in recent years and consumers’ concerns regarding the ethics surrounding these platforms have also risen considerably. The vast majority of the previous research on this topic is either conceptual and focused on organizational aspects, or only discusses (...) privacy and security issues, thus providing a very limited scope of discussion. Therefore, drawing on the marketing and business ethics literature, the present study takes into account a multidimensional view of ethical issues surrounding consumers’ participation on sharing economy platforms. Findings reveal that privacy, security, shared value, fulfillment/reliability and service recovery are the strongest determinants of consumers’ ethical perceptions. These aspects strongly predict the consumers’ value co-creation intentions. Consumers’ participation also predicts their intention to engage in co-creating value, but this effect is stronger with the mediating role of the consumer’s ethical perceptions. The theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed. (shrink)

Moral reasoning among media professionals varies. Historically, advertising professionals score lower on the Defining Issues Test than their media colleagues in journalism and public relations. However, the extent to which professional identity impacts media professionals’ moral reasoning has yet to be examined. To understand how professional identity influences moral reasoning, if at all, and guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, 134 advertising practitioners working in the USA participated in an online experiment. While professional identity was not a (...) significant predictor of moral reasoning, an interaction effect between gender and identity priming occurred. This finding suggests that we reconsider moral psychology theory’s explanatory power for media practitioners and consider how the complexity of professional identities in concert with gender and professional training, among other variables, interact to affect moral reasoning. In addition, advertising practitioners participating in this experiment scored higher on the DIT than those tested previously. (shrink)