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How can the market research industry act ethically in 2025?

Josh Baines

9 min read

Introduction

Market research organizations have an obligation to put ethics at the forefront of their plans and processes when working with respondents to accumulate the audience data they need to divine all-important insights. 

As a supplier or buyer, you need to know that your data is in good hands. This means that ethical concerns should be considered from all approaches. 

What, though, do industry experts consider to be crucial when it comes to ensuring that this really is the case, and that when it comes to issues like data privacy and participant consent everything has been assessed through an ethical lens?

During the course of 2024, Cint spoke with a series of industry experts to gauge what the key ethical areas are for market research and insights professionals are in the year ahead — and how to keep on top of them.

Regulation rules

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) might not be the most glamorous topic in the world but is an essential piece of legislation for anyone working in the Restech industry. 

Nik Samoylov, founder of Conjointly, a platform for conjoint analysis, a technique of discrete choice experimentation that helps brands and researchers understand the trade-offs people make between options when people buy products, describes it as the ‘gold standard’ of regulatory and legal frameworks of this kind. 

He strongly recommends market research and insights professionals get their head around GDPR. 

“It’s about consent, it’s about making sure that you are using data for the purposes that you collected data for, and gathered consent for,” Samoylov says. “And that’s a very important cornerstone principle of gathering and using people’s information, which applies very squarely to market research as well.”  

Always remember to keep regulatory frameworks such as GDPR top of mind when conducting research. 

Be sensitive to sensitivity

For Mark Wiser, Managing Partner of full-service consultancy Wiser Insights Group, remaining steadfastly attuned to the sensitivities of your respondents is the ethical choice. His tenets are simple: play by the rules, avoid surprises, be transparent with everyone you’re dealing with, and always give people taking surveys an easy way to opt-out of answering questions that might cause discomfort.

He cites questions about household income as a common source of historical unease for respondents. 

“Nowadays, what we’re finding is people are more and more sensitive to all sorts of things, and what we’ve found is the only way to be sure that you don’t upset somebody is to give people the opportunity to say that they would prefer not to answer that question,” says Wiser. 

Where feasible, give respondents an ‘out’ when it comes to questions that concern themselves with potentially sensitive topics.

Conclusion

As established, maintaining an ethical mindset when it comes to conducting market research is a primary means of ensuring that respondents know where they stand in an ever-shifting landscape. 

Want to keep in the loop with all things related to ethics in market research? Join the conversation on our LinkedIn page

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