Speaker 1: Hey there, fellow marketers, Professor Wolters here, and today we're here on the coast of El Salvador. And today we're going to talk to you about is ethical marketing research. Because when you're doing marketing research, you really want to make sure you keep it on the up and up, you want to keep it very ethical, because when you start doing unethical marketing research, most of the times, you're not going to get the information that you need to hear, because you can manipulate data, I can get a study to tell me whatever I want. But do I really want the study to tell me whatever I want? Or do I actually want to learn from that study? And that's why it's really important to make sure you have ethical marketing research. And probably one of the biggest things you need to make sure you're doing is making sure you're keeping the participants anonymous, you want them to, you know, give all the information they can, without them worrying about someone's going to come back and find out about what they say. If you look at in YouTube comments, where people can make up fake accounts, they'll share a lot of information, maybe too many things, it'll be really mean or over the top. But the thing is that anonymity gives them that kind of freedom to say everything they want. And when you're doing marketing research, you want them to share everything they can, you want them to share all their deepest, darkest secrets, how they feel about stuff and things like that. So you get more out of your research, because if they know that you know who is going to answer that, don't you think they're going to give you the answer that they want you to hear? It's like, oh, students, I want to know who is your favorite professor. I start staring at you like this, you're probably gonna say, oh, Professor Walters, he's the best. Well, yeah, because you're kind of like, you know that I know what your answer is going to be. So that's why it's really important. If you want to get honest answers, you keep them anonymous. Okay. Now, another thing that's going to help you keep with ethical marketing research is to make sure you're not coercing the participants. Because if you're forcing people to do the study, I mean, think about if I say you have to do this, fine. Is it for a great? No, it's just participation. What are you going to do? A, A, A, A, A, A, you're gonna answer as fast as you can, not read the answers and be done with it. Does that give me as a researcher good information? No, it doesn't. So you want to make sure people want to do that they want to participate. That's why my classes when we have these marketing research studies, it's all extra credit. Hey, if you want to do it, great, go for it. We'd love you to do it. If you don't, it's okay. Don't worry about it. Because we want the people to feel like, hey, I'm going to answer this with my free will. I'm going to do it because I want to do it. And you get better information that way. Now another thing you really should try to not do is do not trick them. Don't mislead them. None of these things because if you mislead the participants, they're going to start answering questions that way. It's kind of like if I say, what do you think about this wonderful, fantastic, amazing candidate? Are they great? Let- let us hear what you think while you're already leading them to say good things versus vice versa, where you say, oh, what do you think about this horrible, crazy, weird candidates? And of course, that's going to lead people to kind of go with those ways. And that's the thing is you can look online when they'll be interviewing people and they'll say, oh, we want a mean comment or we want a nice comment. They'll do that. Okay, so don't mislead them. Okay? Let them know we're doing the study for this, so they know what's going on. Because you hold that back, that- that's not a good way to do your research. Now, obviously, this should go without saying, but you do not want to hurt or kill or maim your participants. Look, they don't do that shocking thing anymore. Okay? It's the thought that they might be shocking people that gets people to go, oh, no, no, you don't want to do those kind of things, all right? You want- you want those participants to come back and do more research with you. You've got a panel study that's going over time, you need them to make it through from year one to year five, okay? So- so don't hurt your participants. Now, another thing we want to look at in terms of ethical marketing and research is you have to realize if you're doing research on people, a lot of times, you're tracking a lot of information about them, okay? Whether it's anonymous or not, you're tracking these kind of things. And what you need to do is you need to make sure you have the data privacy protected, you have protection services, is your data warehouse protected? Can people get into that? What's going on? Because if people find out that all those information they share with you was lost, it's kind of like thinking of it this way. If you share your secrets with your friends, and then your friend tells all your secrets, are you ever going to share anything with them again? No, okay? So make sure that you do protect that data privacy, protect that information you've collected. And when you have all this information, I think my last little thing I want to talk about with this ethical marketing research is make sure you're not misusing the findings. I mean, this is one of those things I always laugh about because you watch TV, and they'll say, oh, three out of four dentists prefer, you know, toothpaste number one, and two out of three dentists prefer toothpaste number two. Wait a minute, three fourths and two thirds. That's more than 100% of people, of dentists, what's going on? Yeah, you can see how you can kind of mislead people with their findings. You don't want to do that, okay? So make sure you keep it on the up and up, because you want to have the best marketing research possible, because that will give you the best information for you to go forward. So you know what products you should sell, how you should sell to people, what your customers really want, you want to have that information. So I hope this helps you know a bit more about ethical marketing research. There's a lot more issues out there we could talk about, but I think this is a nice way to start, and I'll say bye from here in the beautiful beaches of El Salvador.