Consumer views about business ethics
Today's consumers pay attention to companies' ethical credentials, and businesses market themselves accordingly. Yet, little is known about what causes positive or negative consumer impressions. The EU-funded 'Researching consumer perceived ethicality (CPE) of companies and brands' (RESEARCHING CPE) project aimed to find out. Over two years from May 2012 to April 2014, the project studied how company behaviour affects CPE, expressed as a positive/negative scale. Project work commenced with defining and 'operationalising' CPE, as a step towards two separate stages of quantitative analysis. Phase one consisted of developing a valid scale for measuring CPE. However, as a literature review revealed no such existing scale, the project surveyed consumer understanding of the term 'ethical'. The investigation revealed that consumers' perceptions are based on evaluation criteria, summarised to six key themes. These cover adhering to the law, moral norms, good or bad market action, social responsibility, avoiding damaging behaviour, and evaluating positive and negative consequences. Subsequently, the team tested and refined the proposed CPE scale, and confirmed the results. The second phase explored the dynamics of the CPE formation process, specifically how consumers resolve conflicts in the form of contradictory information and process new information affecting a known or fictitious brand. Findings of the combined stages suggested a negativity bias when ethical impressions are formed, which is manifested by the fact that consumers cannot easily name ethical companies, but opposite examples are particularly memorable. RESEARCHING CPE yielded a scale for measuring consumer perceptions of ethicality of companies or brands. Additionally, the project revealed some of the causes and factors contributing to the development of such perception.
Keywords
Consumer views, business ethics, consumer perceived ethicality, social responsibility
