Theoretical framework on state-of-the-art sales ethics in marketing

Sales ethics have been influenced by multitudinous factors that are thoroughly explored by researchers over time. It is comprehended from the available research domain of sales ethics that it is imperative to study and validate those factors that directly or indirectly enhance the productivity of sales. It is observed that only sprinkling of research efforts have evaluated the available studies on sales ethics in a single tabular study. To address this concern, in this paper, researchers have presented the state-of-the-art framework on sales ethics that tends to evaluate various sales domains ranging from job satisfaction, purchase intention, sales leadership, sales situation, leader-member exchange, ethical sales behavior, individual and organization perspectives. The entire literature review is divided into four categories based on the shift in trends focus of variables undertaken to study sales ethics. The findings indicate that during the four-time span of studies, the focus has shifted from organizational factors to individual characteristics and skills of the salesperson and their influence on ethical climate. In the third identified duration, researchers focus on customer dealings and ethical behavior, and finally, the main emphasis is on the moralistic values of salesperson while performing sales activities. The practice of competition and leader-member exchange, the collegiality of salesperson, and conflict of the role were identified by various researchers in this state-of-the-art strategy of sales ethics. In this work, researchers delineated the objectives and essential findings of the reported work in the sales ethics domain. This will help the readers to practice the dependent factors covered in this study. It is comprehended that the implementation of sole factors in the sales profession will not help in meeting the goal of a successful selling along with its commensurate productivity rather, the realization of potential dependent factors is as essential as a customer to any seller.