Implications of Consumer Ethics - Coursework Example

Implications of Consumer ethics By Lecturer’s and Over the years, consumption has been observed as a moral delinquent when it comes to Ethical consumption. The promotion of products, locally, to consumers from distributors has caught the eye of many critics due to the contradiction that arises. The contradiction arises when distributors market their products with self-interest to a certain consumer culture by appearing as charitable but in real sense they are exploiting worker by offering ever-low prices for their produce. Due to this unethical deceit, distributers increase the number of consumers of their product who are more than prepared to pay more for the product due to their social and human obligation to help producer in developing countries. Fairtrade was developed to prevent such companies by providing a minimum payment to the producers should receive for their produce in any given situation. According to the Cooperative Bank (2003) report in the UK, 6.9 Billion pounds were accounted as being spent by ethical consumers who preferred to purchase certain products and services they valued as ethical in that they were helping out the community by purchasing the products from a that particular brand. The report provided a breakdown of their findings as follows; Organic foods consumption accounted for 920 million pounds, energy saving household appliances where estimated to have cost 829 million pounds due to their benefits to the environment. On the other hand, the Fairtrade Labelling Organization provided an estimate of 2381 million Euros worldwide in 20071 owing to ethical consumption. Owing to this, it evident that ethical consumers purchasing power is not solemnly based on enhancing their personal well-being but to also promote or encourage a better living environment either morally of environmentally although in some cases it lead to chaos such as when vegetarian and vegans demonstrate to protest against cruelty to animals. Based on this argument, it is evident that when consumers purchase Fairtrade goods they are do so while symbolically performing ethical consumption although it does not mean they are essentially consumers. According to Michal (2010), ethical consumers do not walk their talk hence the thesis of this paper. He argues that regardless the ethical consumer’s intentions, ethically minded consumers seldom buy ethical products when provided an opportunity to. Based on consumer behaviour, ethical consumers do not necessarily purchase the goods due to their ethical self-conscious intentions but due to other factors including; price of the goods, value of goods, quantity, availability, moral maturity, effectiveness/efficiency of the products etc. Kohlberg (1969) argued that moral maturity actively influences the purchasing behaviors of consumers thus, when an ethical consumer is making an ethical decision on the products to purchase his moral maturity will play a big part. Forte (2004) suggests that a person’s moral maturity will have a significant effect on his ethical intentions in purchasing a product of service. Ethical consumers who display a locus of control over their moral maturity tend to accept that they occasionally face an ethical dilemma when purchasing certain products. For example, some consumers are in unwilling to purchase pirated products while other prefer the pirated products due to their affordability. A study carried out by Singhapakdi and Vitell (1991) observed that many ethical consumers highly disagreed with the purchase of pirated products. They also held a view that the products on purchase might not all be genuine since a producer may purchase the pirated goods at a cheaper price and rebrand them to make a higher profit. This group of ethical consumers believes that by purchasing the products they deemed as genuine might influence a change on society while other held that it had no direct effect since other consumers who lack ethics will purchase the pirated products thus encouraging the production of more pirated goods. Therefore, it is arguable that ethical consumers who have more control over their moral maturity might consider purchasing genuine products in an attempt to bring about social change through their purchasing power while those without the power to control their moral maturity end up purchasing pirated goods eventually due to social influence. According to a research carried out by Deng Xinming2 , product quality was a great issue since majority of the participants in the study insisted that they distrust the quality of ethical products and services that were initialized by fairtrade. They argued that majority of the products purported to be from third world countries. Developing countries were purchasing them at significantly low prices thus, only the distributors where profiting from the sale of the products. The distributors ensured that the quality of the products was reduced to cut down on production costs while others argues that there was the possibility of a trade-off relationship between enterprise ability and corporate social responsibility behavior in that the corporate social responsibility was able to weaken the firm’s capability of producing high quality goods. On the other hand, the enterprise’s behavior would significantly cause a reduction in the resources input particularly in increasing work efficacy since it relied on resources from social responsibility activities. Based on this, Folkers and Karmin’s (1999) theory is proved since they argued that product quality cannot be suppressed by moral behavior thus people will always aim at getting the highest quality first before considering their ethical intentions. Price sensitivity is another consumer behavior that greatly suppresses the ethical intention of consumers. Throughout history, consumers have always looked on getting the best bargain for products and services. Therefore, it is evident that when comparing ethical value and financial value, majority of consumers will consider financial value first before their ethical values especially when purchasing vital goods such as food and clothing. Consumers consider the financial value in an attempt to reduce costs. Most consumers are willing to purchase ethical goods but are unwilling to pay a higher price for the goods due to the financial position. For example, after a natural disaster an organization may produce goods in stores to support the rehabilitation of the affected areas so that willing consumers can aid in the process. It might pose to be difficult to purchase the goods in an effort to be ethical when the price of the goods is high while on the shelf below are the same type of products being sold at half the price. Buying inertia is another consumer behavior beside price and quality of the products and services. Although, price and quality of the products are considered the key drivers opposing ethical purchases, buying inertia in terms of brand loyalty and brand familiarity is also a considerable factor. In a situation where the price of a commodity is the same, any consumer will consider the brand they are purchasing before thinking about the ethical implications of the products. Most consumers will cling on to their buying inertia thus will first consider purchasing the brands they are familiar with or are loyal to, although they mostly lack any ethical value, then consider the ethical implications later on after purchase. Cynicism is believed to contribute to unethical purchases. Most consumers have the notion that a company might pose to ethical and present its ‘ethical image’ so that they have a reason to increase the price of their products while in real sense, the company is just a show to promote the company’s image and value just to increase their financial gains. Due to this, most consumers shy away from buying ethical goods and prefer buying goods that lack any ethical values because they feel that the company is not deceiving them into buying their products. Other consumers argue that the ethical behaviors of some companies do not match their economic ability. For example, a large multinational company that poses as ethical might contribute little funds towards a cause that they have been campaigning for while a smaller local company that had never campaigned for the same contributes a higher amount. The reason for shopping will also influence on the consumer’s purchasing will, meaning that the purchase of goods will depend on the reason for purchase whether it is being purchased for personal use, family use or to give them as gifts (Bryce, 2003). Most consumers will rely on the quality and price of the commodity when purchasing goods to give as gifts and consider the ethical value of the goods when purchasing for family and in most cases considering the lowest price when purchasing goods for personal use. The status of the consumers can also cause them to shy away from purchasing ethical products. The consumer’s emotions such as hostility and anxiety or their status such as recession and shortage of products might result to them neglecting the purchase of ethical products (Bryce, 2003). Boulstridge and Carrington (2000) discovered that ethical cognitive efforts discouraged ethical purchase behavior. They found out that majority of the consumers in shops and malls rely heavily on the product labels for information other that searching for adequate information about the enterprise and the activities it is involved in. With little information offered to them via the labels they make quick judgments and end up purchasing good from companies that lack any ethical values while in their mind they believe that the product in ethical and will help in improving the society. They also argued that time is also a vital contributor. They suggested that the urgency of a consumer while shopping dictates their keenness on the goods being purchased. When a consumer is in a hurry, he might not get enough information about the company’s ethics to choose the most ethically valuable products. According to Titus and Bradford (1996) time pressure bundled up with information burden eventually undermine the ability of a consumer to make accurate judgment concerning the product quality. Physical surroundings including location, size, colors etc. of a shopping mall/place are also a contributing factor on the consumer’s decision since they will interact with his product perception. The consumers’ cognition of goods in a store will stimulate his need to purchase goods that fit the presentation and his ethical considerations. For example, consumers will not travel for a long distance just to buy goods that they consider ethical and neither will they risk incurring additional costs to fulfill their ethical intentions. The social surroundings of consumer will also influence their decision on the type of goods to purchase. Social surroundings in this case refer to the influence other people have on consumers in the type of goods they purchase such as family, friends or co-workers. Consumers will rely heavily on the opinions and suggestions of the company they are with since humans tend to follow group norms because they perceive the behavior of other people who are close to them as appropriate and more acceptable. In conclusion, consideration of techniques to aid consumers in ethical decision-making processes to reduce the number of consumers being influenced away from the purchase of ethical goods should be developed and implemented to increase socials and environmental wellbeing. Therefore, we can conclude that buying ethical goods from companies with ethical values is just a way that fairtrade tries to help the producers to avoid exploitation from unethical, selfish companies who offer low wages to producers therefore when people buy Fairtrade they are symbolically performing ethical consumption although a lot of factors contribute to the purchase of these goods. Even though ethical consumers try to better the society by participating in these activities they do not always end up as essential consumers. References Berry, H., & McEachern, M. G. 2005.Informing ethical consumers, in R. Harrison, T. Newholm and D. Shaw (eds). The Ethical Consumer, Sage, London, 11–24. Blythe, J. 2003. Consumer Behavior, Thomson Learning Press. Boulstridge, E., & Carrington, M. 2000. Do consumers really care about corporate responsibility? High-lighting the attitude-behavior gap. Journal of Communication Management, 4, 355-–368. Ethical Consumer 2003, ‘Why buy ethically? 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