The results concerning the willingness of consumers to reward corporate behaviors deemed to be ethical was rather mixed. Although all 5 participants reported that if given the option to decide between an ethical and unethical company they would most likely choose to purchase the ethical firm’s products. As well as believing that businesses who are more ethically conscious about their actions would do better in the market and see greater profits. However, this is limited in effect as participants...
The results concerning the willingness of consumers to reward corporate behaviors deemed to be ethical was rather mixed. Although all 5 participants reported that if given the option to decide between an ethical and unethical company they would most likely choose to purchase the ethical firm’s products. As well as believing that businesses who are more ethically conscious about their actions would do better in the market and see greater profits. However, this is limited in effect as participants were not willing to pay a higher price for the same product manufactured by a company perceived to be ethical.
Participant 3: “Well it is mostly based on fashion, whether I like the shoe or not, how durable it’s going to be, is it going to feel comfortable after an 8-hour shift at work. Like social issue does cross my mind when buying products from Nike, but they don’t offer anything ethically sourced, but the cost would be more important”.
The results from this study challenge the findings of Creyer and Ross, stating that consumers were willing to pay a premium for ethically manufactured products. These results from this study appear to suggest that consumers are only willing to reward the ethical behavior by purchasing products only if it does not cost them more in terms of price and quality. There was also no significant evidence from the interviews to suggest that consumers would pay more for ethically sourced products.
