Ethics and Public Policy Implications of Research on Consumer Well-Being
Published 11/1/2008
Author: M. Joseph Sirgy
View this contentExecutive Summary
This essay provides an overview of consumer well-being (CWB) research programs and discusses the ethics perspectives and public policy implications of the programs. The author groups CWB research programs into five ethics perspectives: (1) ethics of consumer sovereignty, (2) duty ethics of nonmaleficence, (3) ethics of stakeholder theory, (4) ethics of social justice, and (5) ethics of human development and quality of life.
Ethical guidelines and public policy implications are then logically deduced to assist professional and industry associations in setting CWB standards, train member organizations to develop and implement programs to enhance CWB, and monitor the extent to which the entire profession or industry is contributing to society through CWB. These ethical guidelines also can assist government institutions and nongovernmental organizations to create public policies to ensure institutions deliver higher levels of CWB.
Biography
M. Joseph Sirgy is a consumer/organizational psychologist (PhD, University of Massachusetts, 1979), Professor of Marketing, and Virginia Real Estate Research Fellow at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has published extensively in the area of consumer behavior, marketing and quality of life, and business ethics. He is the editor of the “Quality of Life” section in Journal of Macromarketing and editor-in-chief of Applied Research in Quality of Life.
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Volume 27, Number 2, Fall 2008
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