The growing field of marketing ethics research is investigating the many aspects of marketing that have an ethical dimension. This article provides a systematic review of this research by

(1) developing a categorization scheme for marketing ethics research

(2) by analyzing—via content analysis—all journal articles, which have been revealed by a major search engine for the time span 1981 to 2005, in terms of quantity, nature and scope, topical areas, and publication outlets. While the results indicate an increase in the number of publications, marketing ethics became less represented in the mainstream literature. Much progress has been made in areas such as improving our understanding of marketers' values, marketers' ethical decision-making processes, and cross-cultural related issues. Societal issues and basic normative questions attracted substantially less interest from researchers.