Ethical product premiums: antecedents and extent of consumers' willingness to pay

Corporate social responsibility is now high on the strategic agendas of major retailers, as consumers demonstrate growing ethical awareness and concern. However, evidence regarding consumers' willingness to pay the price premiums often associated with ethical products is inconclusive. Studies have adopted various survey-based and experimental methods, focusing upon different product categories, each with particular ethical issues. This study included a Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) exploratory investigation then a mail survey of 1000 consumers, indicating willingness to pay ethical premiums across 6 categories. Demographics proved to be poor predictors, although education explained some variance in willingness to pay. Ethical motivations, measured within the framework of the Decisional Balance Scale, proved stronger antecedents, providing guidelines for the communication of ethical attributes. Implications for retailers and opportunities for researchers are discussed.     

Ethical positioning and political marketing: the ethical awareness and concerns of UK voters

There is clear evidence of increased voter awareness and concern for environmental and other ethical issues, leading many organisations to reappraise and communicate more effectively their ethical credentials. The manifestos of the three main political parties in the UK show clear differences in their positioning on ethical issues.

Following a qualitative investigation using in-depth discussions and ZMET, a questionnaire was developed and administered to a representative UK sample of 1,000 consumers. This included a measure of awareness, concern and action on 16 ethical issues, the scale developed from the Stages of Change concept within the transtheoretical model.

Using principal components analysis, ANOVA and chi-squared analysis, differences are identified in the ethical positions of voter groups affiliated with the three main parties. These differences are not consistent between different sets of issues, suggesting further scope for ethical targeting and positioning by political marketers.     

Ethical Consumers Among the Millennials: A Cross-National Study

Using two samples drawn from contrasting developed and developing countries, this investigation considers the powerful, unique Millennial consumer group and their engagement in ethical consumerism. Specifically, this study explores the levers that promote their ethical consumption and the potential impact of country of residence on cause-related purchase decisions. Three distinct subgroups of ethical consumers emerge among Millennials, providing insight into their concerns and behaviors. Instead of being conceptualized as a single niche market, Millennials should be treated as a collection of submarkets that differ in their levels of awareness of ethical issues, consider discrete motives when making consumption decisions, and are willing to engage in cause-related purchasing to varying degrees. These findings have several critical implications for theory and practice.     

An Exploratory Study into the Factors Impeding Ethical Consumption

Although consumers are increasingly engaged with ethical factors when forming opinions about products and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers’ intentions to consume ethically, and their actual purchase behaviour. This article contributes to an understanding of this ‘Ethical Purchasing Gap’ through a review of existing literature, and the inductive analysis of focus group discussions. A model is suggested which includes exogenous variables such as moral maturity and age which have been well covered in the literature, together with further impeding factors identified from the focus group discussions. For some consumers, inertia in purchasing behaviour was such that the decision-making process was devoid of ethical considerations. Several consumers manifested their ethical views through post-purchase dissonance and retrospective feelings of guilt. Others displayed a reluctance to consume ethically due to personal constraints, a perceived negative impact on image or quality, or an outright negation of responsibility. Those who expressed a desire to consume ethically often seemed deterred by cynicism, which caused them to question the impact they, as an individual, could achieve. These findings enhance the understanding of ethical consumption decisions and provide a platform for future research in this area.     

Sartrean Existentialism and Ethical Decision-Making in Business

A wide range of decision-making models have been offered to assist in making ethical decisions in the workplace. Those that are based on normative moral frameworks typically include elements of traditional moral philosophy such as consequentialist and/or deontological␣ethics. This paper suggests an alternative model drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism. Accordingly, the model focuses on making decisions in full awareness of one’s freedom and responsibility. The steps of the model are intended to encourage reflection of one’s projects and one’s situation and the possibility of refusing the expectations of others. A case study involving affirmative action in South Africa is used to demonstrate the workings of the model and a number of strengths and weaknesses are identified. Despite several weaknesses that can be raised regarding existential ethics, the model’s success lies in the way that it reframes ethical dilemmas in terms of individual freedom and responsibility, and in its acceptance and analysis of subjective experiences and personal situations. Andrew West is a Lecturer in the School of Business and Economics at the South African Campus of Monash University, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Pretoria.     

Values,socially conscious behaviour and consumption emotions as predictors of Canadians’ intent to buy fair trade products

Over the last two decades, a growing concern about ethical behaviour has been observed among consumers. Ethically minded consumers are more inclined towards the consumption of ethical goods, such as green products and fair trade (hereafter, ‘FT’) products, organic products and local products. Establishing the motives that predict FT consumption behaviour provides ground for understanding how consumers make purchase decisions. This research postulates that the intention of buying FT products is influenced by socially conscious behaviour, consumers’ values and emotions. The study, conducted among 268 Canadian consumers, shows that the high intention of buying FT products is linked to high levels of pride, enthusiasm, satisfaction, happiness and joy related to FT product consumption. The FT consumption experience provides consumers with hedonic gratification. It shows that the higher the levels of self‐centred, equality and social justice values are, the higher the intention of buying FT products. An increase in socially conscious behaviour generates an increase in intention of purchasing FT products. The research contributes to a preliminary analysis of the role of emotions in this field and calls for the development of cognitive‐affective models of purchase and consumption behaviour. Understanding the dimensions of hedonic values and the significance of pleasure experience is essential to the development of the theory and practices of FT consumption.     

Young millennials,environmental orientation,food company sustainability,and green word-of-mouth recommendations

Threats loom for the global food supply. Food companies are taking action, yet consumer awareness lags. A sustainability materiality (SM) index was created that asked young millennials if issues related to a food company’s environmental footprint, ethical governance, community engagement, and nutrition-related actions influenced their product purchasing decisions. In comparison to their peers, those who held new ecological paradigm-related values were more likely to report that the SM index issues influenced their purchasing decisions. They offered more green word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations to their friends. Regardless of their environmental orientation, those who purchase products consistent with the SM index are more likely to provide green WOM recommendations. Purchasing products consistent with SM index issues mediated the relationship between proenvironmental orientation and green WOM recommendations. Perceived personal ability was unrelated to green WOM recommendations. Educating and enlisting young consumers to offer green WOM recommendations will increasingly become a strategic business concern.     

Financial service providers: Does it matter if banks don't behave ethically?

The ethical consumer literature predominantly concentrates on fast‐moving consuming goods and thus, neglects insights to consumer behaviour within ethical services. As the financial services sector continues to grow in the UK, this paper addresses this anomaly by providing further insight into consumers and their ethical banking practices. More specifically, it examines their motivations as well as the trade‐offs and barriers which prevent greater uptake. Using a combination of in‐depth interviews and projective techniques, the research draws on Freestone and McGoldrick's model to reveal a lack of awareness towards ethical financial service providers and sheds light on various perceptions regarding what constitutes an ethical financial service. Additionally, numerous underlying personal benefits of ethical financial services became apparent alongside consumer expectations of customer care. In conclusion, our findings help to create a revised model which identifies more precisely the stages of ethical awareness, motivation and behaviour of ethical consumers both in the context of ethical financial services but also ethical consumption practices in general.     

Quantitative and qualitative insights into consumers’ sustainable purchasing behaviour: a segmentation approach based on motives and heuristic cues

The present study draws on the concepts of motives and heuristics to thoroughly understand consumers’ sustainable consumption behaviour in the context of personal care products. The mixed-methods approach combines real purchasing data with in-depth qualitative data to generate insights with a high external validity. In the first section of the study, quantitative analysis is applied to actual purchasing behaviour (n = 10,772,477) to identify market trends. Three main groupings, along with specific heuristic cues, are established. In the second step, a qualitative study (n = 21) provides deeper insights into consumers’ motives and decision-making processes. By synthesising the quantitative and qualitative research findings, a segmentation approach is developed. Relevant motives and values, and corresponding specific heuristic cues are identified for each consumer segment. Analysis suggests that consumers are motivated by self-interest and environmental motives, and that they use simple heuristic cues to make quick and satisfying purchasing decisions. Both retailers and manufacturers can leverage these insights to seize the opportunities of the developing market for sustainable personal care products.     

“A healthy outside starts from the inside”: A matter of sustainable consumption behavior in Italy and Pakistan

The aim of this research is to determine people's motives when purchasing organic food and how these motives are moderated by price sensitivity and ethical concerns in a cross-cultural setting. A highly structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from 673 Italian and 594 Pakistani consumers, using the convenience sampling technique. Based on the etic research approach, the measurement invariance tests were performed, and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that environmental concerns and health-consciousness are significant predictors of subjective norms and purchase attitudes among Italian consumers. Food safety concern proved the strongest predictor of purchase attitude and perceived behavioral control among Pakistani consumers. The results also confirm the moderating role of ethical concerns and price sensitivity in buying organic food in both cultures. In terms of originality, this study fills significant gaps in the literature, particularly regarding the roles of attitude, behavioral control, and subjective norms in consumer buying motives and purchasing intentions in cross-cultural studies but more importantly, the results validate that consumer concerns across the globe are related to the Sustainability Development Goals and the U.N. 2030 agenda, which aptly provides a blue print for the development and developmental goals and concerns across nations.     

Consumers' Attitudes Toward Labelling of Ethical Products: The Case of Organic and Fair Trade Products

This article aims to investigate the factors that influence consumer attitudes to use labelling information in purchasing organic and Fair Trade products and to verify if labelling is a valid tool of direct shopping aid to consumers, with a view to derive inferences that may contribute to better strategic and tactical marketing decisions. A quantitative survey with a sample of 300 consumers living in south Italy was conducted to explore consumers' knowledge and attitudes toward labelling of organic and fair trade products. Data generated in this way were submitted to exploratory and segmentation analysis. The results indicate significant differences in consumer attitudes and behavior for ethical products and show the importance of new variables, other than demographics characteristics, that can influence the purchasing behavior and label information use.     

Ethical consumption behaviours in supermarket shoppers: determinants and marketing implications

Understanding how consumers make ethical purchases has numerous benefits for firms and other stakeholders. Although several ethical decision-making frameworks seek to explain such purchasing behaviour, they typically focus on the content of such decisions, rather than considering how such decisions unfold in a given context. Yet, the complexities of consumer choice suggest that greater insight into how consumers make ethical purchases in store can enhance understanding. We report our findings from a survey of a geographically disperse sample of 688 UK shoppers and argue that a naturalistic theory of decision making, image theory, enhances our ability to explain consumer behaviour in this setting. As well as contributing to theoretical understanding of consumer choice, this has implications for the merchandising of ethical products, such as Fair Trade and ‘green’ goods.     

An Exploratory Study of Counterexplanation as an Ethical Intervention Strategy

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the use of an ethical intervention strategy – counterexplanation – on individuals’ ethical decision-making. As opposed to providing reasons to support a decision in the case of explanation, counterexplanation is the provision of reasons that either speak against or provide evidence against a chosen course of action. The number of explanations and/or counterexplanations provided by the participants is expected to have a significant effect on ethical evaluation and intention. The number of explanations is expected to be negatively related to ethical decision-making while the number of counterexplanations is expected to be positively related to ethical decision-making. The experiment, that made use of five ethical vignettes, manipulated four treatment groups – explanation, counterexplanation, explanation/counterexplanation, and counterexplanation/explanation. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four reatments. They performed the requirements of their treatment before recording their ethical evaluations and intentions. As expected, larger numbers of explanations led to less ethical decision-making and larger numbers of counterexplanations led to more ethical decision-making. However, when both types of explanations are required, the order of counterexplaining before explaining is more desirable as it leads to more ethical decision-making. The study also reports that individuals with high social desirability bias (a tendency to present oneself in a culturally acceptable manner) may generate less counterexplanations. Implications of the findings are explained in the paper.     

When does an ethical attribute matter for product evaluation? The role of warm-glow feelings for low-rated products

Research on the effects of ethical attributes has recently gained traction. However, limited research has addressed consumer response to ethical attributes in the current context where product ratings have become of primary importance to make decisions. Specifically, this study examines the relative effect of ethical attributes on product evaluations across different product ratings. Building on cue consistency theory and the negativity bias, we suggest that ethical attributes gain weight when consumers evaluate a low-rated product. This process leads consumers to anticipate more warm-glow feelings, generating better evaluations for such low-rated products featuring an ethical attribute (vs. another type of attribute). Two experiments provide consistent empirical support for this prediction, and demonstrate that, compared to other attributes or no attribute, an ethical attribute increases product evaluations to a larger extent when the product received low (vs. higher) ratings. We show that this effect occurs because of warm-glow feelings: when product ratings are low, consumers anticipate more warm-glow feelings from purchasing a product with an ethical attribute (vs. another type of attribute), leading to better product evaluations. These findings have direct managerial and ethical implications for practitioners.     

The Effect of Implicit Moral Attitudes on Managerial Decision-Making: An Implicit Social Cognition Approach

This article concerns itself with the relationship between implicit moral cognitions and decisions in the realm of business ethics. Traditionally, business ethics research emphasized the effects of overt or␣explicit attitudes on ethical decision-making and neglected intuitive or implicit attitudes. Therefore, based on an implicit social cognition approach it is important to␣know whether implicit moral attitudes may have a substantial impact on managerial ethical decision-making processes. To test this thesis, a study with 50 participants was conducted. In this study the participants were asked to work on a deliberative managerial ethical decision-making task, in which they had to decide on one of two options. Implicit moral attitudes towards the two options were measured using the implicit association test (IAT). A semantic differential scale was used to diagnose explicit moral attitudes towards the two options. Each step taken within the deliberative decision-making process, as well the decision itself, was assessed using a scoring model-based decision analysis and a decision-making questionnaire. The results of this study show that implicit moral attitude has a great influence on the deliberative ethical decision-making process. The derived conclusion is that complex and deliberative decision-making processes in the context of business ethics can be affected by implicit social cognitions such as implicit moral attitudes.     

An Examination of Differences in Ethical Decision-Making Between Canadian Business Students and Accounting Professionals

This study investigates the differences in individuals' ethical decision making between Canadian university business students and accounting professionals. We examine the differences in three measures known to be important in the ethical decision-making process: ethical awareness, ethical orientation, and intention to perform questionable acts. We tested for differences in these three measures in eight different questionable actions among three groups: students starting business studies, those in their final year of university, and professional accountants.The measures of awareness capture the extent to which respondents felt that a particular action was unethical according to each of several ethical criteria. We found few differences between the two student groups on these measures, suggesting that their education had minimal effect on raising their awareness of the ethical issues in the vignettes. Indeed, overall, the graduating student's scores were marginally lower than those of the entry-level students. However, the professionals viewed some actions as significantly less ethical than did the graduating students.The measures of ethical orientation capture the weight respondents placed on each of the criteria above in their evaluation of the overall morality of an action. The differences between the three groups were generally small, and were a function of the vignette, consistent with Jones' (1991) model of issue-contingent ethical reasoning.The measures of intention capture the extent to which a respondent perceives that s/he would perform the action. There were significant differences between the groups in three of the eight vignettes, driven by a difference between the professionals and the other two student groups. The awareness measures were strong predictors of intention. We discuss the implications of these findings for professional training and future research.     

Ethical consumer behaviour in Germany: The attitude‐behaviour gap in the green apparel industry

In today's society, the trend of ethical consumerism is undeniable. Yet, even though consumers are ethically concerned, they rarely transform their intentions into a green purchasing behaviour—and this phenomenon is also evident in the sustainable fashion industry. This study aims to understand the prevailing attitude‐behaviour gap and explores the barriers that constrain consumers in purchasing green apparel. A total of 13 in‐depth interviews were conducted and analysed to the principles of grounded theory. The analysis reveals that the following barriers impede consumption of sustainable fashion: price, availability, knowledge, transparency, image, inertia and consumption habits. The impact of each dimension on consumers' purchase decisions might be of interest to apparel manufacturers and retailers who should implement strategies to encourage eco‐conscious apparel acquisition and focus on diminishing these barriers. Accordingly, three major recommendations are made: (a) to concentrate on specific product attributes; (b) to adopt an efficient digital communication strategy; and (c) to make a greater effort on making green apparel attainable. This study contributes to the overall understanding of consumer behaviour in the ethical fashion industry and examines in‐depth the purchasing criteria for sustainable fashion for consumers.     

Do What Consumers Say Matter? The Misalignment of Preferences with Unconstrained Ethical Intentions

Nearly all studies of consumers’ willingness to engage in ethical or socially responsible purchasing behavior is based on unconstrained survey response methods. In the present article we ask the question of how well does asking consumers the extent to which they care about a specific social or ethical issue relate to how they would behave in a more constrained environment where there is no socially acceptable response. The results of a comparison between traditional survey questions of “intention to purchase” and estimates of individuals willingness-to-pay for social attributes in products reveal that simple survey questions are too “noisy” to provide operationally meaningful information and overstate intentions to a considerable extent. Pat Auger is Associate Professor at the Melbourne Business School. Timothy M. Devinney is Professor and Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian Graduate School of Management.     

Gender Differences in Double Standards

The purpose of the present study is to investigate gender differences in the use of double standards in ethical judgements of questionable conduct instigated by business or consumers. We investigate if consumers are more critical towards unethical corporate versus consumer actions and if these double standards depend on the gender of the respondent. In the first study, we compared evaluations of four specific unethical actions [cfr. DePaulo, 1987, in: J. Saegert (ed.) Proceedings of the Division of Consumer Psychology (American Psychological Association, Washington DC)] instigated by either the consumer or the corporation. In a second study, we investigated the perception of some general consumer and corporate (un)ethical actions in addition to DePaulo’s unethical scenarios. Both researches show that females are less likely to use double standards when it comes to their own (un)ethical behaviour compared to corporate (un)ethical actions. Furthermore, gender differences in the use of double standards depend on the type of unethical behaviour. Limitations and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

The Mediating Role of Anticipated Guilt in Consumers’ Ethical Decision-Making

In this paper, we theorize that the anticipation of guilt plays an important role in ethically questionable consumer situations. We propose an ethical decision-making framework incorporating anticipated guilt as partial mediator between consumers’ ethical beliefs (anteceded by ethical ideology) and intentions. In the first study, we compared several models using structural equation modeling and found empirical support for our research model. A second experiment was set up to illustrate how these new insights may be applied to prevent consumers from taking advantage of the seller. Results showed that enhancing the anticipation of guilt (by making the interpersonal consequences of the unethical act more salient) increased consumers’ ethical intentions, controlling for ethical beliefs. Together these two studies might have important theoretical and managerial contributions.Sarah Steenhaut is research assistant and doctoral candidate at Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Research Center for Consumer Psychology and Marketing (Belgium). Her research interests lie in the area of ethical aspects and marketing, more specifically, consumers’ ethical beliefs, attitudes and behavior. She has recently published in Journal of Business Ethics.Patrick Van Kenhove is Professor of Marketing at Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Marketing (Belgium). He has recently published in Journal of Business Ethics, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Advances in Consumer Research, Journal of Economic Psychology, Journal of Health Communication and The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research.