Exploring the Factors Involved in Questioning Ads Ethical Standpoint according to Egyptian Consumers’ Perspectives

Abstract

The use of unethical practices in marketing has been happening for decades although mostpeople agree that a set of moral principles, values and ethics should govern the actions of marketingdecision makers, even as most marketers would also agree that their decisions should be made inaccordance with accepted principles of right and wrong (Ferrell and Gresham, 1985). What isconsidered as ethical or unethical comes down to personal judgments and only a fine thin line can bedrawn to distinguish between ethical and not ethical. This study explored that factors involved inquestioning ads ethical standpoints according to Egyptian consumers’ perspectives. This research isexploratory in nature. It adopts a mono qualitative method (focus group discussions) to explore andexplain the research problem. Themed analysis was used to analyze the focus group descriptive data.Findings are clearly provided and summarized to indicate the current state of ethical advertising inEgypt and whether ethics matter to consumers in Egypt in TV advertising. Finally, the criteria whichconsumers judge upon the ethical nature of the TV commercial was introduced in order to be able toconduct and develop a conceptual framework to measure the ethicality of TV ads in Egypt.