Comment on the ethics of the following situations:
a. During the course of telephone calls to investors, a stockbroker records respondents’ voices when they are answering sensitive investment questions and then conducts a voice-pitch analysis. The respondents do not know that their voices are being recorded.
b. A researcher plans to invite consumers to be test users in a simulated kitchen located in a shopping mall and then to videotape their reactions to a new microwave dinner from behind a two-way mirror (one that an observer behind the mirror can see through but the person looking into the mirror sees only the reflection).
c. A marketing researcher arranges to purchase the trash from the headquarters of a major competitor. The purpose is to sift through discarded documents to determine the company’s strategic plans.
d. A political research firm considers technology that activates a consumer’s tablet microphone to “observe dinner time conversations” in an effort to produce better political ads.