Analyzing Ethics in Market Research: The CBS Network & Affectiva Case

This case study delves into the ethical considerations surrounding CBS Network's collaboration with Affectiva, focusing on the use of Affdex for market research. It examines the application of ethical theories such as deontology, utilitarianism, rights ethics, and virtues theory to the data collection methods employed, particularly the emotional responses gathered from 200 participants via webcams. The analysis also addresses professional codes of ethics, highlighting potential issues related to honesty, transparency, confidentiality, and data usage. Recommendations are provided to ensure ethical practices are upheld, emphasizing the importance of stakeholder well-being and responsible data management in business operations. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a wealth of academic resources for students.

Running head: ETHICS
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Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Case analysis with ethical theories Ethical theories............................................................3
Case analysis using the professional codes of ethics...........................................................5
Recommendations................................................................................................................8
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................9
References..........................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
This report will discuss about the ethical constrains that are present in the system. With
the help of the ethical constrains and the theory of code of ethics proper analyzing of the report
will be done. Discussions of the 4 ethical theories and this implementation in the sales and
product acceptance will also be discussed in this report. This report will discuss about the
professional code of ethics regarding the analyzing of the case. This report will also provide
recommendations regarding the better implementation of the ethics in the business management
sector especially in the field of estimation of the analyzing of the responses.
Case analysis with ethical theories Ethical theories
From the Deontology theory the main aspect that is taken into consideration is the
management of the entire business commencement with the help of the pre scheduled set of
rules. With the help of the pre scheduled set of rules the main advantage that will be present
includes better estimation of the output as per the management of the scheduled terminology.
The set of rules that will be implemented in the CBS network and Affectiva’s Affdex
collaboration use Acts towards a universal good. Treating the stakeholders as their own family.
Performing as per the benefits of the clients that can be achieved by the business organization.
After analyzing these pre scheduled terminology and rules of the organization will get performed
in a better manner. Due to these activities the main better understanding of the business
prosecution in an ethical manner. With the implementation of the deontology theorem, ethics
related to the sampling of the entities. As there are 200 participants who are selected in a random
manner hence the estimated output of the research might not be much accurate and deviations are
present in the system. This will lead to the fact that the understanding of the demands might not

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be well understood and this will lead to improper product management as per the norms of the
business organization.
From the utilitarianism theory, it can be stated that the management of the business
organization is completely dependent on the consequence that will be present in the
commencement of the project with better output. This section helps in better completion of the
project. Hence by understanding the consequentialism segment will help in better estimation of
the output of the CBS networks (Roloff and Zyphur 2018). After checking the eventual
consequences that can happen after completion of the task will ensure the fact that the
management of the project will get better as per the functioning of the business organization.
With the help of the understanding of the estimated outcome of the project, the function that is to
be prohibited can be well recognized and this will ensure that the business that is to be performed
will not take into consideration the functioning methodology the main concern of the project is to
gain the estimated outcome that has been scheduled. This is the main reason that ethical issues
might arise in the functioning of the project.
According to the rights ethics the main concern that is taken into consideration includes
the terminologies that are directly related to the livelihood of the stakeholders. This section leads
to the aspect that the management of the business proceeding will get effect ted in a negative
manner. For understanding the prosecution of the human rights the main issue that might be
faced is that the quality of the product that is to be manufactured. In this section it can be stated
that CBS network will be having a better understanding of the collaboration of the rights that will
be required by the society and the goal that are set by the business organization. After setting of
the goals better understanding of the requirements of the project can be understood. With the
help of the better understanding of the functioning of the entire system the main aspect that will

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take into consideration is the fulfilling of the business needs of the stakeholders of the
organization. After commencing of the projection of the entire ethical terminology it can be
stated that the management of the entire project will not be very efficient. A differentiation in
between the rights that the company wants to deal with are decided in this stage. This process
can be well maintained with the help of the spontaneous reactions of 200 participants. These 200
participants will have the right to express their thoughts in a manner that will positively guide the
business organization to their estimated outcome (Crane and Matten 2016). The main reason
behind this aspect is that the company will get to know about the demands of the people and
hence the products will be launched in the market will be having the detailing’s that will increase
the efficiency of the product.
According to the virtues theory, the main aspect that is taken into consideration is that the
persons that are treated as the stakeholders are judged as per their natural characteristics rather
than the output that is produced by them. This theory will access the person`s motive, reputation
and the behavioral aspect that are displayed by the client on daily basis. This is the main reason
that projection. Irregular behavior is also taken into consideration for better understanding of the
stakeholder characteristics. Change in characteristics are not taken into consideration. This is the
also a reason that the estimation of the output gets difficult. Hence in this case the management
of the project will get performed as per the estimated outcome. The 200 participant’s
characteristics will get well analyzed and the predicted analysis will be performed with the help
of the Virtue theory of ethics. With the help of this ethical theory better understanding of the
regular needs of the participants can be well understood and this is the main reason that the
prosecution of the entire system will get processed in a better manner. The output that will be

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received after the participants pole their expressions will be helpful in better understanding their
needs.
Case analysis using the professional codes of ethics
While considering the code of ethics, there are several of codes or principles which need
to be followed by the organizations with extreme precautions. This code of ethics are very much
important for the businesses and organizations to define their approach towards their customers.
Several of organization follows different types of code of ethics for the organization but there are
some code of ethics which are common for almost every organizations or business. Here the
most common code of ethics for the organizations and the business are the honesty, transparency,
respect, confidentiality, loyalty and integrity.
In this context the main case is collecting data about emotional responses of the
customers regarding a digital content provided by the organization. Here main organization is the
Affectiva which is currently working for another organization which is CBS network. Affectiva
is currently working for the CBS network in the sector of market research and of that Affectiva is
using their market research solution which was Affdex (Withers and Ebrahimpour 2018). In this
context there are various types of ethical implication of using this type of market research
solution. Here the research will be done by gathering data about facial reactions over 200
participants via webcams in respond to a 60 minute TV drama show.
While this type of data is collected for conducting a market research several of ethical
implications might come in this case which can conflict with the professional code of ethics.
Here the ethics in the marketing research is moral principle values that are hold by the research
organization which is Affectiva in this case (Sroka and Lőrinczy 2015). There can be several of

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ethical issues in the marketing research but mainly this issues are regarding the respondents’
rights which the researcher should concern about. Also, the data assurance of the respondents are
very much important in the marketing research sector (Rallapalli, Nwachuku and Valle 2015). In
this type of market research the four entities that are affected by the research are the client,
general public, researcher and the respondents.
Honesty is one of the common code of ethics in business and organization and here issues
can arise regarding honesty from both the side. While the research is done on emotions of the
audiences regarding a 60 minute drama TV show it is not necessary that the audiences or the
respondents will always produce genuine reaction regarding the TV show situation. This occurs
because many of the viewers might not interested to watch the TV show. Thus it is very much
normal that genuine reaction will not be produced (Kumar and Steinmann 2015). This is also
same for the other side. While the research is conducted it is not ensured by the research
organization that the collected data will be solely used for a particular research.
After the honesty, transparency is also a big factor of ethics in business and
organizations. While this code of ethics is followed the collected data should be transparent to
everyone including the respondents also. In such cases ethical issues also rises when
transparency of the collected data is not maintained (Moore and Donnelly 2018). In many cases
the researcher might want a positive output for the client while the output is going towards
negative conclusion. Here the researcher might want to alter data to get desired output and for
that the research organization might force or may provide some other benefits to the respondents
to get their desired conclusion from the research. Thus this raises an ethical issues in the market
research procedure of the Affectiva.

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As per code of ethics of the American Marketing association the research organization
should use the collated data from the respondents only for the specific marketing research and
this data should not be used for any other purposes such as selling data to other research
organization. Thus in this case also ethical implication arises regarding the use of improper data
and selling the data. In such ethical issues the research organization might use this data for
conducting a similar type of research which can produce improper data (Edwards 2017). Also,
selling the data create ethical issues of exposing personal information of the respondents and an
improper research conclusion for the buyer organization. Hence the project will get performed in
a manner that will help in better prosecution of the task that is to be performed.
Also this American Marketing code of ethics has elaborated that it is the liability of
researcher to protect the confidentiality and the information that is collected from the
respondents. In many cases it has been seen that data has been leaked regarding the responses of
the respondents and due to that either the research has been failed or the respondents have to face
several of problems. Thus Affectiva need to ensure that confidentiality of the collected data is
maintained otherwise ethical issues is likely going to be occurring. The American Marketing
code of ethics also states that the research organization need to avoid misinterpretation of the
research method and the research results (Kaptein 2017). As per this code of ethics the
organization must not use the gathered information for the personal use or to gain any type of
advantages. Thus this code of ethics should be maintained by the Affectiva research organization
to avoid any type of research related issues in the ethical implication.
Recommendations
Recommendations will help in completion of the task are as follows: -

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 Focusing on the changes of the stakeholders:
With the help of the management strategy that is proposed in the virtues theory, the main
issue that is present in the curse of the management system incurs the fact that the projection of
the stakeholders will not focus on the management of the system as per the changes that are
instilled in the stakeholders of the organization. This ignoring the changes that have been taking
place in the mentality of the stakeholders will act harmful in recognizing of the changes that are
to be brought in. in case proper attention is provided towards the changes that have been taking
place ensures the fact that the management of the entire system will get easier and the
expectation of the response of the participants
 Not having a pre destined mind set
As the output of the sample will be performed with the help of the random sampling the outcome
of the project is not decided as per the management of the entire system. This is the main reason
that the prosecuting of the entire system might produce a result that will not be accurate in
nature. In that case the expected outcome of the project might vary. Hence keeping back up of
resources is also important. This is the main reason that the prosecution of the entre process will
get associated as per the completion of the response estimation.
 Protecting confidentiality
As the sampling size is very high and random in nature, confidentiality issue might arise.
Keeping in mind the fact that the audience that is being sampled are not chosen by the
managerial section, the sample size will not matter much. In case the sample size of the
estimation process is very high, data security is not very high. In case the security of the entire

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response system gets low then new launching of the product as per the market response will lack
in efficiency.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that commencing of the ethical terminology
while performing of the project is very important because the administration process of the
project is completely dependent on the management of the system. Hence following of the
deontology theory of ethics will help in better completion of the project. With the help of the pre-
scheduled rules and regulations, gaining a better infrastructure for the response collection. This
factor will also help in increasing the discipline in the functioning of the project. Virtue ethics
theory will also help in understanding the nature of the respondents and this will be the major
reason that the prosecution of the understanding of the motives each respondents are having are
prosecuted. This is one of the major factor that help in substantial completion of the project.
Maintaining the integrity, honesty, transparency, confidentiality and loyalty are considered as the
important steps that will help in better management of the system. With the stated
recommendations the issues that are spotted can be mitigated.

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References
Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and
sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
Edwards, A.A., 2017. An important change to the American Dental Association Principles of
Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct: The evolution of Section 5. H, and a new perspective
on the announcement of specialties. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 148(2),
pp.125-127.
Kaptein, M., 2017. The living code: Embedding ethics into the corporate DNA. Routledge.
Kumar, B.N. and Steinmann, H. eds., 2015. Ethics in international management (Vol. 84).
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Moore, A. and Donnelly, A., 2018. The job of ‘ethics committees’. Journal of medical
ethics, 44(7), pp.481-487.
Rallapalli, K.C., Nwachuku, S. and Valle, M., 2015. International Marketing Ethics: Challenges
in Developing Global Code of Ethics. In Proceedings of the 1996 Multicultural Marketing
Conference (pp. 146-147). Springer, Cham.
Roloff, J. and Zyphur, M.J., 2018. Null Findings, Replications and Preregistered Studies in
Business Ethics Research. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-11.
Sroka, W. and Lőrinczy, M., 2015. The perception of ethics in business: Analysis of research
results. Procedia Economics and Finance, 34, pp.156-163.
Withers, B. and Ebrahimpour, M., 2018. The effects of codes of ethics on the supply chain: A
comparison of LEs and SMEs. Journal of Business and Economic Studies, 19(1), p.3766.

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