Ethics in marketing research?
On 25 May 2018, all the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation - RGPD will apply throughout the European Union.
Interesting little survey carried out in mid-February by the Journal du Net with its readers: to the question "Is your business ready for the RGPD?"70% respond "No".
Of course, this is not a real survey, with representative quotas: anyone can respond, with their own motivations: go and find out whether some respondents are not ultra-pessimistic geeks who are critical of their company's general policy and not at all objective!
Be that as it may, with three months to go before the deadline, the result looks very serious...
Some sectors of the economy seem to be lagging behind more than others: materially and organisationally speaking, but also in terms of the quality of the services offered. "philosophically you might say.
Take the marketing sector, with which our readers are very familiar: some players are already in breach of existing laws... We all know this sadly every time we receive unsolicited emails, even after unsubscribing several times - mind you, I'm not condemning all direct marketing players here, just some who lack ethics.
The market research sector is naturally in the vanguard on this issue: institutes have long been developing a culture of respect for citizens - you can't expect good, sincere answers from people you don't respect.
We will never eavesdrop on or film consumers without their knowledge... even if we sometimes deprive ourselves of interesting information; nor will we pass on qualified files for research purposes to direct marketing professionals - but beware: some unscrupulous salespeople may unfortunately present themselves as researchers in order to mislead their customers.
Trade associations to which Adwise belongs - Adetem in France, Esomar internationally - have ethical codes and charters and are extremely rigorous in ensuring that they are respected; and of course, we respect them.
The RGPD is obviously a constraint... but it is also a demonstration of common sense: can we ask people to help us by responding to our requests without showing them a minimum of respect?
If we don't, they won't respect us either, and will say whatever stupid things come to mind at group meetings, waiting to pick up their cheque at the end.
