Marketing Surverys

Recently I have noticed and increasing number of marketing surveys. It seems as though whenever I shop online I am asked to complete a survey about how I liked shopping on their website, and how I felt about my purchases. I can understand why these are beneficial to companies, but I believe that they are seen more as an annoyance to customers. I know that I usually don't want to complete a survey after I have already spent all that time shopping and filling out my payment information. The last thing I usually want to do is answer more questions. I also wonder about how often companies really take these surveys into consideration. Do they really take any of the information we give them and make changes?

In Response to Professor Johnson...

Should John smith sell the names? Also, What in the Statement relates to John Smith's dilemma?

After reading the John Smith case I believe that he should NOT sell the names to the car company. At first I thought it may be a good idea because it would avoid making him lay off some of his employees. but after further thought I believe that he could come up with other ways of making money in order to keep his employees and still maintain good ethics. Selling those names to the car company is no honest, he would be breaking the trust of all those customers who gave their names, therefore creating a bad image for himself and his company. 

At the store I work at in the summer called Sundance Clothing Company in Chatham, MA we are always asking customers for their name and email addresses to send them coupons and advertisements. Every time we ask for their name we promise to not sell their email addresses to any other companies and to not abuse the privilege. If we were to turn around and sell those names, that would be a breach of trust, and our customers would not be able to rely on us as trust worthy people. A strong customer base is a huge part of the store, there are many returning customers who wont shop anywhere else, if we were to break their trust, they wouldn't trust the company, but they also wouldn't trust our opinions when trying to sell them clothing either. Trust is such an important part of of a businesses relation with its customers.

In the Statement of Ethics of the American Marketing Associations website, "Avoid knowing participation in conflicts of interest. Seek to protect the private information of customers, employees and partners." This is what applies to John Smiths dilemma. This falls under the category of fairness. It is unfair to customers to sell their private information to a company so they have the upper hand in selling them their new car. 

If you owned a company would you buy names and personal information of customers from a marketing agency so that you would have the upper hand in the market of a certain product?