CORONAVIRUS ETHICS: PANDEMIC SEVERITY AND JUDGMENTS OF MARKETING ETHICS Yvetta Simonyan, University of Bath N. Craig Smith, INSEAD Contact Information: For further information, please contact Yvetta Simonyan, Associate Professor, University of Bath (Y.Simonyan@bath.ac.uk) Keywords: ethical judgment, pandemic severity, marketing ethics, unconventional offers Description: This project explores the relationship between people’s ethical evaluations of controversial market offers and individual experience of pandemic severity. EXTENDED ABSTRACT Research Question COVID-19 has required major changes in behavior and created significant health and economic concerns for many individuals. While everybody is affected by a pandemic, there are differences in individual experience of pandemic severity, from vulnerability to the disease, to the circumstances of lockdown, to financial difficulties. At the outset of the pandemic, we were exploring people’s evaluations of controversial market offers, drawing on the critique of market society by the philosopher Michael Sandel (2012). We observed a large difference between people’s judgments of these offers before the pandemic and their judgments after the disease triggered the first lockdowns: the controversial offers were 2022 AMA Marketing and Public Policy Conference 71 perceived significantly less ethical before the pandemic. Eager to explore the link between the pandemic and ethical evaluations, we conducted a field study, which is the focus of this paper. Here, we examine not so much the general effects of the pandemic, but more the relationship between the circumstantial factors affecting respondents during lockdowns and their ethical evaluations of our egregious marketing scenarios. Do the concerns about financial uncertainty and vulnerability to COVID-19 mediate the relationship between these circumstantial factors and ethical evaluations? Does affect have a mediating role in that relationship? Method and Data We report a field study that explores ethical evaluations of controversial market offers, as part of a larger project on marketing ethics. All participants were asked to evaluate four scenarios randomly selected from a pool of scenarios mentioned in Sandel (2012) and scenarios specific to the pandemic. For example, the “sterilization” scenario read as follows: Undergoing sterilization: $300. Drug-addicted women in North Carolina are offered cash to undergo sterilization or long-term birth control. For each scenario, participants first read the description and then answered an attention-check question based on the description. Once participants passed the attention-check test, they were asked to provide a univariate ethical evaluation of the offer, measured using a 10-point rating scale with “Not at all ethical” and “Entirely ethical” as endpoints. Participants also indicated whether or not their city/state was in lockdown due to the pandemic at the time they completed the survey, how many weeks they had been in lockdown, and how many people were in lockdown with them in the same household. Finally, we asked participants about their feelings and emotions, their perceived likelihood of experiencing financial difficulties and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19, general well-being and behavioral changes due to the pandemic and demographics. 2022 AMA Marketing and Public Policy Conference 72 Summary of Findings Our analyses show that the participants in households with three of more people evaluated the scenarios as more ethical that those with smaller households (p < .0001), and participants who were in lockdown rated the scenarios as more ethical than those who were previously or never in lockdown (p < .0001). Participants’ ethical evaluations were also correlated with the affect measures, perceived vulnerability to Covid-19 and the likelihood of experiencing financial difficulties due to the pandemic (p < .01). The results also revealed a significant mediating effect of negative affect, the perceived likelihood of experiencing financial difficulties and vulnerability to COVID-19 both in the models where the household size was included as an independent variable and the lockdown status as a covariate (total effect: t = 8.77, p < .0001; direct effect: t = 5.22, p < .0001) and in the models where the lockdown status was included as an independent variable and the household size as a covariate (total effect: t = 7.52, p < .0001; direct effect: t = 5.11, p < .0001). The results on mediation effects remain statistically significant after including other covariates, such as income and lockdown duration, or other mediators such as overall wellbeing. Statement of Key Contributions Our findings contribute to research on marketing ethics and consumer response to external threats. The conceptual framework of consumer responses to external threats proposed by Campbell et al. (2020) for research related to the pandemic suggests that actual or potential threats affect consumers’ norms, beliefs, practices and routines, eventually leading to diminished ontological security that encourages adaptive responses. Our research provides evidence for the framework, by suggesting that the changes brought by the pandemic affect ethical judgment and are moderated by the degree of pandemic security experienced by 2022 AMA Marketing and Public Policy Conference 73 individuals. It also contributes to the idea that, while ethical decision-making is often a deliberative process that may consider several key criteria, for example, fairness, or cultural values, the use of such values and principles may be affected by context. We focus on ethical evaluations of marketing offers as important considerations in preventing abuse in the consumer marketplace. In a context of apparent diminished concern about unethical conduct (e.g., a pandemic), businesses and their stakeholders may be also affected because of questionable practices initiated by consumers. Our findings suggest that attenuated concern about questionable marketing practices may increase the need for regulation by policymakers or greater self-regulation by marketing practitioners.

Read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion in order to prepare your analysis. Using APA 6th edition citations and referencing, include the following requirements: 1. What is the purpose of the study? 2. Describe what the study did. 3. Offer an opinion as to the relevance or importance of study linked to marketing theory or principles (only time you can write in first person)