Guido Di Fraia

G. DI FRAIA, Ethics in the market research In advanced societies, market research play a very important role within processes of production of material and symbolic reality. This role makes the ethical issue relevant to every stage of the production of marketing research and involving all stakeholders in the system. At present, the reflection on the subject tends to remain confined within the system and to be undertaken primarily at the level of professional ethics drafted in formal codes of conduct by the industry associations. The development of new technologies is radically changing the detection techniques, making observational processes increasingly invisible and «pervasive». The thesis proposed in this paper is that this process, opening a whole series of new problems, make urgent the activation of a broad debate on the subject able to increase widespread awareness about the role of research market and its ethical implications. Key words: market research; ethics; deontology of market research; innnovative marketing research methods.