An exploration of rule configuration effects on the ethical decision processes of advertising professionals

This study explores the ethical perceptions of advertising professionals regarding two child-oriented television advertising issues: deceptive messages and host selling. Differences in ethical evaluative and decision processes are investigated for both issues, using two evaluative rules. The results indicate that variations in advertisers’ ethical judgments and ethical intentions are affected by the type of rule(s) used during the evaluative process, and by the degree to which the rules are embraced. The article concludes with recommendations for advertising management and implications for future research. She graduated with honors in 1989 from Mississippi State University with a D.B.A. in marketing. She has practical experience in marketing research and her research interests are ethics and social responsibility, and professional services marketing. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from Michigan State University in 1980. He is the coauthor of two books on business ethics and has contributed numerous articles on ethics to various academic and applied business journals. He received his D.B.A. in marketing from Louisiana State University in 1969. He has coauthored two books on business ethics and has published articles on ethics in marketing journals. He is a frequent lecturer on business ethics. She graduated in 1990 from Mississippi State University with a D.B.A. in management. Her research interests are business ethics and student ethics, and corporate social responsibility.