Surveying Ethical Sales Behavior Research in terms of Meta-Method:Google Scholar, Science Direct, Emerald, Springer, T & F, SAGE Database
Subject Areas : MarketingReza Shaabani 1 , Pejman Jafary 2 * , Bahram kheiri 3
1 - PhD Student, Department of Business Administration, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
3 - Associate Professor, Department of Business Management, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Ethics, Ethical Sales behavior, Meta-Method,
Abstract :
Today, with the introduction of technology and the consequent market transformation, the wide range of available products, and the continuous increase in brands and manufacturing companies an intensely competitive environment has been created. In such an environment, companies primarily focus on strategies that guarantee their survival and profitability in the market. The excessive focus of attention on profitability and survival, though, has led to a neglect of ethical issues in business. In recent years, sales ethics has drawn many researchers’ attention; however, the intrinsic nature of ethics has not been the target of such research. With this research gap, the current study aims at doing a meta-analysis of methodologies used in previous research. To this end, methodologies reported in published papers in 6 databases during a definite time period were investigated. Our results revealed that previous research suffered from monotony and bias in their applied methods, with most articles limiting themselves to quantitative approaches, exclusively using questionnaires and structural equation modeling for data gathering and analysis, respectively. This has led to the scarcity of qualitative and mixed-model research compared to the quantitative research carried out in the field.