Important Aspects of Marketing Management - Coursework Example

Marketing Management 2 Ethical consumer behavior refers to the idea when consumers start to buy products made and for ethical purposes only. They could practice positive buying which is starting buying ethical products or stop buying unethical products which is negative buying (Ethical Consumer). These products do not harm the environment, the person using or producing them. This is what makes them ethical products. The consumers practice ethical consumer behavior by buying only these products or by boycotting to unethical goods or the consumers producing them. The consumers have realized that their consumption of various products affects the world around them socially and ethically and this is the reason why they have started practicing this behavior. Various case studies and research work has confirmed this. According to a report by Ethical Consumerism, the amount of expenditure spent on ethical goods has doubled in the past five years (Good with Money). The first issue that the consumer would be concerned with is human rights. In this issue, the consumer would look at whether human rights are not over ruled in the workplace and then base his decision on whether or not the product is ethical or not. We can take the example of sports goods and carpets in developing countries. (Anti-Slavery Society). This clearly violates human rights and an ethical consumer would not buy this product because of this. Another example could be of a company that does not give basic rights of health and safety in their factories to its workers. An example of service that violates human rights could be taking service from an insurance company that does not respect the rights of their customers. The second issue that will be discussed is pollution. An example of a good that causes pollution is buying cars that run on diesel. Since these cars emit pollution, ethical consumers are no longer going for these. Another example of a good could be cigarettes. Since these give out pollution when used, consumers have stopped consuming them. An example of service could include a consumer stop using the service of garbage dumper because they burn the garbage in order to get rid of this. Since this practice causes pollution, ethical consumers avoid using such services. The third issue is animal rights. An example of a good that is of concern to ethical consumers is a certain beauty product that is tested on animals. A consumer may stop buying such products or start buying products that claim that animal testing is not practiced. The body shop did this and this helped it become one of the most ethically perceived brands (Grande, C). Another example is of a pharmaceutical company testing medicines on animals in order to know if they are safe or not. These products are considered unethical by ethical consumers and this is a reason they avoid using them. An example of service that involves animal testing is a beauty parlor trying out its latest technique of re bonding on an animal in order to see if it results in hair loss. The next issue is careless marketing. An example of a good that could be boycotted because of this could be a claim to fully clean clothes after the first wash in a detergent advertisement. If this claim is not true, the product will be considered as unethical. Next example could be promotion of bad goods such as cigarettes. If an advertisement promotes that smoking is cool for youngsters, an ethical consumer would boycott all of the products produced by that company. An example of service would be promising a 20 percent profit per annum on saving and not living up to it. Since in the advertisements, a lie was told, consumers would not go for this service as they would consider this as unethical. The second last issue that will be discussed is a company’s code of conduct. This basically outlines how the company conducts its operations. If the consumers feel that a company does not treat employees fairly, they would not go for products produced by the company. Another example could be if the customers feel that the policies of a company are not fair for the customers, they will start to consider the goods produced by this company as unethical and boycott it. An example of service could be giving favors to people with more power and money when providing service. Since this is not an ethical code of conduct, consumers may boycott from the services given from this organization. The last issue is oppressive regimes. An example of this issue could be boycotting from goods being provided by the government through unfair means. Another example could include boycotting from goods that were imported by the government by violating the rules of fair-trade. These goods will be considered as unethical so the consumers will boycott from these goods. An example of a service would include a government institution providing loans to the general public at an interest rate that is higher than the market rates. Consumers would boycott from other services provided by this institution because they feel that this organization is trying to exploit its customers. The Decision-making Process One way that marketers may find out how much evaluation that the consumers will carry out in the decision making process is by taking a note of their involvement with the product. Involvement is the degree to which the consumer feels that a particular purchase affects him or her. This effect on the consumer may either be financially or emotionally. In an ethical consumer context, the decision making process could move from low involvement to high involvement. Before we elaborate on this point, it is important to understand what is meant by high involvement and low involvement. High involvement is when the consumer is consuming a good or service that costs a lot and is more personally relevant to the consumer. An example of a good in which the consumer is highly involved could be when he is buying a house. Since this costs a lot, the consumer will carry out extensive research before making that purchase. On the other hand, choosing a cereal is an example of low involvement because this does not involve a high price or personal relevance either (Tutor 2 U). In our ethical consumer context, the consumers start to feel that there is a need to consume goods and services that are ethical. Therefore, for a product which is usually low involvement would become high involvement in the decision making process because the consumer would start evaluating it deeper. Let’s take an example of cereal. This is a low involvement product for the consumers who are not bothered with ethical issues. However, once a consumer realizes the importance of buying ethical goods, he will start evaluating the cereal deeply. He will look at the contents, advertisement claims, working conditions of the labor that produce this product and other dimensions. Hence the consumer become highly involved in the decision making process from low involvement. Generally, the decision-making process has five stages. It starts with the customer realizing that need for something. In this stage the consumer decides that a good or service because must be bought (Baker, D). The ethical consumer at this stage would not behave any differently from other consumers because this feeling or requirement of a good or service is common to all. If we take example of beauty products, our target customer in this stage would realize that she needs a fairness cream because her complexion is getting darker because of the dangerous sun rays. Once our target customer has recognized the problem, he or she will attempt to solve it. Therefore, the second step in our consumer decision making process is the information search. In this stage our target customer will look for all the information possible. He will look for information related to the possible goods or services that could fulfill his or her needs or requirements. This information could be coming to him from commercial, public, personal and experiential sources. (Sandhusen, R.L) He will look for public opinions regarding a company or its products. If the results of his research prove that the company is socially responsible and the products that it is procuring are also ethical, he will go for the product. In our example of beauty products, if your customer is an ethically responsible consumer, he will look for information which will prove that the beauty product is not tested on animals or the human rights are not over ruled in the workplace of the organization producing those products. If the customer is satisfied, he will consider this particular fairness cream. Once the ethical customer has done his or her search, he or she will start evaluating all the choices that are available at that point in time. He will try all the alternatives and after trial and error, he will choose the most preferred service (Sandhusen, R.L). This preference would on the basis of to what extent the organization that is producing that product is socially responsible and also to what extent that product is ethical. This is the third stage of the customer decision-making process. In an ethical consumer context, this depends on the degree of ethical dimensions that were followed during the production of those goods. In the fourth stage, the potential customer will make a decision about what product he or she would want to go for. He will base this decision on impact of advertisements, his information search and his evaluation of beauty products in the market. In short, the basis would be on the previous stages of the decision making process. In our example of beauty products, if the previous stages show that the fairness cream they are going for is better in terms of ethical dimensions from the rest of the products in the market, she will decide that this is the product that she will go for. The fifth and the final step of the consumer decision-making process involve the customer evaluating his decision. This is the post-purchase behavior stage. If the evaluation of the customer shows that he is satisfied, he or she will become loyal and would choose this particular product over others in the market (Sandhusen, R.L). And if on the other hand he or she is unsatisfied with his experience with the company, he or she will carry out the entire decision making process once again and choose a different beauty product the next time. Situational Influences The situation affects the ethical consumer behavior to a great extent. It could either increase the ethical consumer behavior or discourage it. Take an example of a situation where there is a devastating earthquake and a particular company does not decrease its prices to assist the victims of the earthquake. The consumer ethical behavior would increase because the consumers would realize the importance of buying from companies that are socially responsible. On the other hand, consider that there is a shortage of a particular good which is unethically produced. The shortage is so serious that the consumers have no other choice than go for the unethically produced good. This will decrease the ethical consumer behavior. Personal Influences Personal influences also affect the degree to which consumers go for goods or services that are ethically produced or supplied. There could be many factors that are personal that might influence ethical consumer behavior. An example could be a personal experience like attending a seminar that promoted the need to buy ethically produced goods and services. This seminar would make the consumer realize that he or she needs to behave in that particular manner. A contrasting scenario could be a consumer experience major financial loss. As a result, he has no other choice but to go for goods and services that are cheap but unethical at the same time. This would discourage ethical consumer behavior. External Influences External influences affect the ethical consumer behavior to a great extent. This could include any factor that influences a consumers buying behavior from outside. We can take for example of the technological improvement especially the IT which has allowed the consumers with access to information. This information influences their decision of buying ethical goods for themselves. When they see various articles promoting this and when they understand the necessity of behaving in this manner, their ethical behavior would increase and this is how external influences may affect a consumer’s ethical behavior. References Anti-Slavery Society. (2003) Child Labor in the Carpet Industry. Anti-Slavery Society [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 29 August 2008]. Baker, D. (2003) Consumer Decision Making. Ohio State Univeristy [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 29 August 2008]. Ethical Consumer. (2008) Why buy ethically? Ethical Consumer [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 29 August 2008]. Grande, C (2007) Ethical consumption makes mark on branding. Financial Times [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 29 August 2008]. Good with Money. (2007) Ethical Consumerism Report 2007. Good with Money [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 29 August 2008]. Sandhusen, R.L. (2000) Marketing. Barrons Educational Series. Tutor 2 U. (2008) buyer behaviour - decision-making process. Tutor 2 U [Internet] Available from: [Accessed 29 August 2008]. Read More