Ethical Consumer Behavior - Assignment Example

Ethical Consumer Behaviour The current age is the age of technology, innovations, progress and performance. It has witnessed various innovations in the field of networking and communication along with all the other capacities in science. The current century has witnessed the emergence of social media and the manner in which it has influenced the behaviours of consumers and has increased the consumerism. The current paper will critically assess and evaluate the ways in which the consumer behaviours have altered and impacted in the present time. The essay will also highlight the general business ethics and the ethics that consumers depict along with other relevant factors. Consumer behaviour is one of the most important subjects that are studied in the marketing and management fields. This concept is defined as the study of the groups, individuals and organisations regarding the methods and process that they utilize for the selection, securing and disposing of the services, products, ideas, or experiences. This subject mainly refers to a detailed assessment of the satisfaction of consumer needs and the influence that the applied processes have on the society and consumers. The concept of consumer behaviour combines various elements from the sociology, psychology, economics and social anthropology. It strives upon understanding the entire process of the decision -making of buyers, both individually and in groups (Blackwell, Miniard and Engel, 2006). It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and behavioural variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general. The concept of ethical consumerism has gained a lot of significance in the shopping segments of United Kingdom's and United States. Ethical consumerism is defined as the concept in which the consumer depicts such activism which is practiced through the concept of 'positive buying' and favouring of ethical products. According to this concept, the consumers are empowered to make ethical decisions, the consumption choices that are ethically informed and are provided with reliable and authentic information on corporate behaviour. In order to assist the consumers with ethical buying behaviours, various standards and tables have been developed by the organizations. These include Fair-trade, Organic Foods, Made in USA and various other standards which formulate a certain benchmark to be followed (Bird, Kate and David, 1997). Fair-trade Certification, for instance, is a system of product certification that has been developed to enable people identifies such products which reach the agreed labour, environmental, and developmental standards. Through this system, the products are independently audited so that it can be guaranteed by the producers that they meet the required standards and ethics. The certification system of Fair-trade International provides coverage to a wide variety of the products which includes honey, bananas, cocoa, oranges, shortbread, fresh and dried fruits, coffee, cotton, and nuts, vegetables, oil seeds, juices, and spices, quinoa, sugar, rice, tea and wine (Carlos, 2007). The study of consumer behaviours is based upon the buying behaviours of the customers within which they pay three distinguishing roles of buyer, payers and users (Kholo, Swati, 2010). The concept of relationship marketing proves to be a powerful asset for the behaviour analysis of customers, it places greater stress on the on customer relationship management, consumer retention, customisation, personalisation, and one-to-one marketing. There are numerous factors that affect the consumer's intentions to buy or not to buy a certain product or service. It is essential for the business to understand the psychology of their consumer segments before they begin to market or promote their products properly. There are various psychological factors which affect the behaviours of consumers in the while making choices. Their perceptions regarding a product, and motivation towards buying behaviours, needs to be assessed. They may be too fond of a certain product and perceive it better than others and will be willing to buy it. The consumers in America possess an extensive history of the workers' right who manufacture the goods and services that the users wear and consume. During the 20th century, teh National Consumers League had begun working for fighting the sweatshop abuses and establish a consumers' union (OCA, 2012). This was done to boycott the table grapes in a unified manner in oredr to help and support the farm workers of California during the late 1960s and had emerged again during 1980s. Teh commitment towards the ethical consumerism has been depicted by the American and British consumer's times and again. During the 1990s, there was a time when the student had unified with the people and the sweatshop workers all across the developing world. There were hundreds and thousands of college students who had organized the unions with teh purpose to commit to sweatfree procurement of university-licensed apparel. The 1990s marked teh era of the ethical consumerism in the United States and all across the world through teh emerging of anti-sweatshop movement all across teh Western Europe and North America. They focused attention and time on the voluntary monitoring programs and laws regarding the code of ethical conduct which were being formulated by the footwear and garment industries and also through the 'multi-stakeholder' groups (Hilton, 2003).  These all initiatives were being introduced with the intention of improving and monitoring the factory conditions, and thus, teh consumers in teh United Sates also developed positive and ethical approaches and more progressive attitudes towards the consumerism. US are ready to support more progressive and positive approaches. The perception arrives from knowledge and negative or positive feelings about a product (Grande, Carlos, 2007). This also depends upon the social influences where the friends, family and reference groups force the consumers to make choices based on certain negative or positive aspects. Besides this, the demographic factors such as age, gender, and other features determine the consumer's habits of what products they need to buy and what they are not accustomed to. In the 21st century, the consumers have become more knowledgeable in terms of their choices regarding brands' purchase. Though high priced, the brands have created strong positioning in the market through various promotional strategies. Consumers these days are loyal to the brand names and thus, prefer to show affiliation with it by sticking to a particular brand. Other factors such as celebrity endorsements in the capacity of brand marketing have also encouraged the consumers to be influenced by it. The behaviour of consumers is also steered with respect to the existence of the general business ethical standards. The concept of business or corporate ethics is practiced in order to observe the ethical moral and principles along with any types of ethical problems that may emerge in the environment of a business organziation. The ethical behaviour of the companies can be judged by the consumers and they are allowed to express their concerns over it (Bateman, Fraedrich, and Iyer, 2001). An ethical consumer is generally responsible towards the society and its surroundings and his feelings in this respect are expressed through the purchasing behaviour that the consumers exhibit. The ethical consumption behaviour emerges from the ethical purchasing and it depicts various issues such as showing concerns for the environment, the human relations and the ethical choices made by the consumers It is seen in the market surveys and through other resources that the ethical consumers are seen to be more affluent than average; they tend to favour brands about which they believes share their green values and norms and beliefs. For instance, numerous brands such as the Co-operative Bank, Innocent Drinks, Marks & Spencer are active in the promotion and advertising of their ethical credentials tend to fare well in the perceptions of such consumers (Carrigan, Smzigin and Wright, 2004). In the meantime, there are various other companies such as RBS, Tesco, Snickers and Argos which may have the reasons to be concerned about their brand and corporate image. The consumers can be categorized into different classes with respect to their stance and opinions on ethics. This is usually observed and assessed by the fact whether the companies make claims of the recycling of the waste material, make charitable donations and participate in the community services, support local retailers, buy organic food, buy Fair-trade products, do voluntary work and check companies’ ethical claims (Shaw, Grehan, Shiu, Hassan, and Thomson, 2005). According to a study it has been found that those consumers who stand in the class of being “highly ethical” are apparently richer than those consumers who are less ethically motivated. Such highly ethical consumers form about 19% of the entire population of United Kingdom and there is a close correlation between the ethical reputation of a brand and the possibility of consumers' likelihood to express a preference for it. Moreover, by showing responsible behaviours, the organizations may obtain numerous strong commercial benefits to their brands and thus, are able to position them well in the markets. Moreover, it has also been seen regarding the behaviours of the consumers that for them it is more easy and convenient to use the enormous social media database to obtained desired information. The users, only with the help of few clicks, can search and watch the latest drama on YouTube, collect well on Flickr, or download the PDF file of an interesting novel from Book Crossing. The main point is that, they find it all for free. Therefore, it is easier to understand that the consumer behaviour has shifted from making purchases from a physical shop to first searching for the free availability of products online. Today, the majority of consumers also gain access to the social media instantly with the help of their mobile phones. Since there are more and more people now who have their own smart phones, which acts as the instant devices for people to post pictures, share ideas and make comments to their friends, the limitation of space and times are decreasing at a faster pace for the consumers to get hold of social media for everything (Rob, Dave and Carol, 2010).  One of the biggest roles with respect to the consumer behaviour is being played by the social media in the current era. At present, Facebook has more than 400 million users, and this offers various brands good opportunities to attract the customers and target them with their appealing marketing strategies (Michael Barnett, 2011). This influences the behaviour of consumers further in the purchase decision making and consumption practices. Teh current era has witnessed teh consumers' concerns and organizations' responses in order to act in an ethical manner. Various standards, laws, codes of ethics on teh individual as well as national levels are applied in order to ensure the prevalence of ethical consumerism in a revised manner. This fact is not obvious only in the consumer buying behaviour or organizations' marketing strategies but is also apparent in the current behaviours of consumers over the social media technology. Thus, the contemporary marketing approaches consider the ethical consumerism to be a major element. References Bateman, C., Fraedrich, J. and Iyer, R., (2001), Framing effects within the ethical decision making process of consumers, Journal of Business Ethics, 36, 119-140 Bird, Kate and David R. Hughes, (1997), Ethical Consumerism: The Case of ‘‘Fairly-Traded’’ Coffee, Business Ethics: A European Review, 6 (3): 159–167 Blackwell, Miniard and Engel, (2006), Consumer Behaviour (10th Ed.), Thomson Learning. Boulstridge, Emma and Marylyn Carrigan, (2000), Do Consumers Really Care about Corporate Responsibility? Highlighting the Attitude–Behaviour Gap, Journal of Communication Management, 4 (4): 355–368 Carlos Grande, (2007), Ethical consumption makes mark on branding, FTC Corporation, Accessed online. Carrigan, M., Smzigin, I. and Wright, J., (2004), Shopping for w better world? An interpretative study of the potential for ethical consumption within the older market, Accessed online Grande, Carlos, (2007), Ethical consumption makes mark on branding, FT.com. Accessed online. Hilton, M. (2003), Consumerism in twentieth-century Britain: the search for a historical movement, Cambridge University Press. Khosla, Swati, (2010), Consumer psychology: The essence of Marketing, International Journal of Educational Administration, 2 (2): 220-220 Michael Barnett, (2011), The only way is ethics, Marketing Week, Accessed online. OCA, (2012), A Short History of the Ethical Consumer/Anti-Sweatshop Movement in the USA, Organic Consumer Association, Accessed online. Rob Gray, Dave Owen and Carol Adams, (2010), Accounting and accountability : changes and challenges in corporate social and environmental reporting, Accessed online. Shaw, D., E. Grehan, E. Shiu, L. Hassan, and J. Thomson, (2005), An exploration of values in ethical consumer decision making, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Volume 4 Issue 3: 185-200 References Read More