The Personal Selling Ethics Scale: Revisions and Expansions for Teaching Sales Ethics

Abstract

The field of sales draws a large number of marketing graduates. Sales curricula used within today’s marketing programs should include rigorous discussions of sales ethics. The Personal Selling Ethics Scale (PSE) provides an analytical tool for assessing and discussing students’ ethical sales sensitivities. However, since the scale fails to address many ethical issues within the personal selling process, it should be revised. The current research assessed the PSE’s content validity via a content analysis of today’s university sales texts, popular press sales books, and codes of ethics. Results of the content analysis were used to develop a revised scale (PSE-2) that includes new scenarios suggested by the literature search. A sample of 669 students was used to replicate the original study and test the revised PSE-2 and its new ethical scenarios. The updated scale offers marketing educators an effective tool by which to enhance sales ethics discussions.