Shopping

Consumers who have no concerns about the ethical sourcing of products they buy think less of shoppers who do, according to a recent marketing study.

Products that are genuinely sustainable, environmentally friendly and produced in accordance with fair trade standards – not using child workers, for example – can be difficult to find.

And while shoppers generally will consider ethical information if it’s readily available on product packaging, they won’t go out of their way to track it down in order to make a more informed choice. In addition, they tend to ridicule shoppers who do take ethical concerns into consideration.

“It is this vicious cycle,” said Rebecca Walker Reczek, co-author of the study and associate professor of marketing at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

“You choose not to find out if a product is made ethically. Then you harshly judge people who do consider ethical values when buying products. Then that makes you less ethical in the future,” she said.

As part of the study, participants were asked to evaluate brands of jeans that differed by four characteristics: price, style, wash and a fourth attribute. The fourth attribute pertained either to an ethical practice (using child labor, for example) or a control issue (such as delivery time.) They were told they could only select two of the four attributes because of time constraints.

Most customers chose not to find out the companies’ practices, choosing instead to hear about the price, style or wash. They were then given a survey in which they were asked to provide their opinions about consumers who chose to evaluate the brands based on ethical concerns. The results were overwhelmingly negative. The participants were more likely to dismiss the ethical shoppers as odd, boring and less fashionable, among other negative traits.

“They judged ethical consumers less positively on positive traits and more negatively on negative traits,” Reczek said. “Willfully ignorant consumers put ethical shoppers down because of the threat they feel for not having done the right thing themselves. They feel bad, and striking back at the ethical consumers makes themselves feel better.”

The threat to feeling unethical is the key driver of this behavior, as demonstrated by the second part of the experiment. Participants were faced with the same choices but had the chance to donate to charity before being asked to evaluate other shoppers. Those who donated to charity judged ethical shoppers less harshly than in the first study, because they’d been given the chance to show that they were, in fact, ethical people.

“If we give people a chance to prove that they are indeed ethical, they don’t judge more ethical consumers as harshly,” Reczek said.

However, the researchers also found that internalized guilt over not behaving ethically in one instance is likely to influence consumers’ behavior in the future. In a third study, consumers who ignored environmental concerns in their purchases not only denigrated shoppers who expressed concern but also were less likely to support a pro-sustainability pledge online.

“After you denigrate consumers who act ethically concerning a specific issue, you actually care a little less about that specific issue yourself,” Reczek said. “This may have some disturbing implications for how ethically you will act in the future.”

Reczek said companies that adhere to certain ethical sourcing practices in producing their products should make the information prominent on the packaging in order to make it easier for shoppers to consider.

“People are not going to go to your website to find out your company’s good deeds,” she said. “If consumers don’t see ethical information right when they are shopping, there can be … [a] cascade of negative consequences.”