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Taste (profits) or image (ethics)?

A marketing research firm was hired by a soft drinks company to conduct taste tests to determine why its newly introduced soft drink brand had not captured the expected market share. The researcher, after following the process outlined in this chapter, determined that the problem was not one of taste but of image and product positioning. The client, however, had already defined the problem as a taste problem and not as the broader, market-share problem. The researcher had to weigh the relatively high profit margin of taste test research against the less lucrative survey research needed to answer questions pertaining to soft drink image. What should the research firm have done? Should it have simply conducted the research the client wanted, rather than the research it felt the client needed?