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Big Brother or Big Bully?

Ethical dilemmas may arise due to the strong desire of marketing research firms to become suppliers to large organisations that invest heavily in marketing research projects. Many companies in financial services, airlines, beverages and automobiles, for example, have enormous marketing budgets and regularly employ external marketing research firms. Large clients can manipulate the price for a current project or demand unreasonable concessions in the research design (e.g. the examination of additional variables, more focus groups, a larger or more targeted sample for the survey, or additional data analyses) by implying that there is the potential for the marketing research firms to become a regular supplier. This may be considered just business, but it becomes unethical when there is no intention to follow up with a larger study or to use the research firm in the future.