An Exploratory Study into the Factors Impeding Ethical Consumption

Although consumers are increasingly engaged with ethical factors when forming opinions about products and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers’ intentions to consume ethically, and their actual purchase behaviour. This article contributes to an understanding of this “ethical purchasing gap” through a review of existing literature, and the inductive analysis of focus group discussions. A model is suggested which includes exogenous variables such as moral maturity and age which have been well covered in the literature, together with further impeding factors identified from the focus group discussions. For some consumers, inertia in purchasing behaviour was such that the decision-making process was devoid of ethical considerations. Several manifested their ethical views through post-purchase dissonance and retrospective feelings of guilt. Others displayed a reluctance to consume ethically due to personal constraints, a perceived negative impact on image or quality, or an outright negation of responsibility. Those who expressed a desire to consume ethically often seemed deterred by cynicism, which caused them to question the impact they, as an individual, could achieve. These findings enhance the understanding of ethical consumption decisions and provide a platform for future research in this area

The impact of corporate social responsibility, service quality and customer- company identification on customers

Conference: 9th International Strategic Management Conference -- Location: Riga, LATVIA -- Date: JUN 27-29, 2013Despite the importance of corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) as an important construct in academia and a pressing item on corporate agenda, some contradictory results suggesting that CSR is far away from being the most dominant criteria in purchase behavior call for further research on the topic. Research supporting this view suggests that traditional criteria such as price, quality and brand familiarity are still the most important choice criteria. Acknowledging the significant role that quality can play in the context of services, this study incorporates these two separate views and considers the effect that both CSR and service quality have on customer-related outcomes such as customer- company identification, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The study also investigates the mediating role of customer- company identification, pointing to the fact that improving customers' psychological attachment to a company can serve as a strategic tool for enhancing the effect that CSR and service quality have on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. To test the hypothesized relationships, an online questionnaire is conducted to a sample of 242 bank customers.Int Strateg Management & Managers Assoc

Ethical differentiation and consumption in an incentivized market experiment

In surveys consumers express preferences for ethical goods. Some authors claim, however, that survey responses do not translate into actual costly purchase behavior. To study if ethical consumption and differentiation occur in an incentive-compatible setting, this paper implements a design of an incentivized market experiment, which has been studied in the context of homogenous goods and both theoretically and experimentally engenders a dynamic of price decrease. This experiment establishes that ethical differentiation can be an effective strategy for sellers with ethically motivated buyers; and, although there is an ethical price premium, it accrues to the charity rather than to the seller.FEDER funds through Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade—COMPETE and by national funds through FCT—Fundacão para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT Portugal) project Grant No. PTDC/IIM-ECO/4574/2012 andPEst-OE/EGE/UI3181/2014

How Techniques of Neutralization Legitimize Norm- and Attitude-Inconsistent Consumer Behavior

In accordance with societal norms and values, consumers readily indicate their positive attitudes towards sustainability. However, they hardly take sustainability into account when engaging in exchange relationships with companies. To shed light on this paradox, this paper investigates whether defense mechanisms and the more specific concept of neutralization techniques can explain the discrepancy between societal norms and actual behavior. A multi-method qualitative research design provides rich insights into consumers' underlying cognitive processes and how they make sense of their attitude-behavior divergences. Drawing on the Ways Model of account-taking, which is advanced to a Cycle Model, the findings illustrate how neutralization strategies are used to legitimize inconsistencies between norm-conforming attitudes and actual behavior. Furthermore, the paper discusses how the repetitive reinforcement of neutralizing patterns and feedback loops between individuals and society are linked to the rise of anomic consumer behavior

Bags for life: The embedding of ethical consumerism

The aim of this paper is to understand why some ethical behaviours fail to embed, and importantly what can be done about it. We address this by looking at an example where ethical behaviour has not become the norm, i.e. the widespread, habitual, use of ‘bags for life’. This is an interesting case because whilst a consistent message of ‘saving the environment’ has been the basis of the promotion of ‘bags for life’ in the United Kingdom for many years, their uptake has only recently become more widespread and still remains at low levels. Through an exploratory study, we unpack some of the contextual barriers which may influence ethical consumerism. We do this by examining the attitudes which influenced people to start using ‘bags for life’, and how people persuade others to use ‘bags for life’. We use a case study analysis to try and understand why ethical behaviour change has stalled and not become sustained. We find that both individuals and institutions play a significant interaction role in encouraging a sustained behavioural change towards ethical consumerism

Fragment-based discovery of the pyrazol-4-yl urea (AT9283), a multitargeted kinase inhibitor with potent aurora kinase activity

Here, we describe the identification of a clinical candidate via structure-based optimization of a ligand efficient pyrazole-benzimidazole fragment. Aurora kinases play a key role in the regulation of mitosis and in recent years have become attractive targets for the treatment of cancer. X-ray crystallographic structures were generated using a novel soakable form of Aurora A and were used to drive the optimization toward potent (IC50 ≈ 3 nM) dual Aurora A/Aurora B inhibitors. These compounds inhibited growth and survival of HCT116 cells and produced the polyploid cellular phenotype typically associated with Aurora B kinase inhibition. Optimization of cellular activity and physicochemical properties ultimately led to the identification of compound 16 (AT9283). In addition to Aurora A and Aurora B, compound 16 was also found to inhibit a number of other kinases including JAK2 and Abl (T315I). This compound demonstrated in vivo efficacy in mouse xenograft models and is currently under evaluation in phase I clinical trials

Do What Consumers Say Matter? The Misalignment of Preferences with Unconstrained Ethical Intentions

ethical product features, willingness-to-pay, survey methods,