Recently, many sources show that general awareness of ethical consumption has been increased. However, at the same time, it is also found that there is a certain gap between the members’ awareness and behavior on ethical consumption. This is supported by the fact that the rate of buying ethical products in consumers’ real purchase situation is much less than the level of their awareness. This phenomenon has been reflected in many preceding researches, and is called ‘Ethical consumption gap’, ‘Gap between the ethical purchase intentions and behavior’, and/or ‘Ethical consumer paradox.’
According to preceding researches, the primary factors to generate gap of ethical consumption are high price, lack of information, inconvenience, and insufficient attitude and consciousness toward ethical consumption, etc. For example, Nicholls(2002; 2004) suggested that the level of WTP(willing to pay) for ethical product is 15% higher than that of general product. This tends to predict the possibility of actual purchasing behavior by measuring purchase intention, because in many marketing literatures, purchase intention is regarded as purchase behavior. However, these studies have limitation of not observing actual purchase behavior, but just measuring purchase intention of ethical product. In other words, most of them used quantitative research methods with which measuring real purchase behavior is difficult.
The purpose of this study is to find the factors disturbing consumer’s purchase intention of ethical consumption to convert into actual buying, and to find the point at which the gap between purchase intention and actual buying behavior is reduced or relieved. For this research, we use qualitative research methods. We conducted in-depth interviews with organic products consumers, most of which are members of consumer cooperatives. In case of Korea, consumer cooperatives are regarded as where consumers can buy ethical products. This is because most of consumer cooperatives have maintained important principles rooted in values of cooperative such as labor/worker’s rights, fair price, and safe goods. They have pursued solidarity with organic farmers, producers and workers through consumption, and some of them used to present a slogan, “Joining consumer cooperative means doing ethical consumption” or “You are an ethical consumer”.
To analyze the result of the interviews, we use GDM(Grounded Delphi Method) which combines grounded theory with Delphi method. The interview data from 20 participants are analyzed through two steps, and the result is as followed. At the first step, we found 18 gap factors from the interview. Then, for Delphi analysis, we chose seven cooperative researchers as professional panels to ask questions and get feedbacks. We finally categorized 18 gap factors into four groups. With regard to common traits of the gap factors in each group, we did the axial coding method of GDM and labeled them into four themes; quality-service awareness, price sensitiveness, access convenience, and information and trust. These labeling for four themes are based on the marketing mix factors to strengthen theoretical power of explanation. At the second step, we analyzed the data to discover the point to reduce or remove the gap factors. As a result, we found the point to reduce or remove the gap for each 18 factors. Also, there is an interaction between four themes. For example, if factors in a certain theme has positive effect for ethical consumption, this offsets negative effect of other gap factors. Especially, it is shown that positive effect of the factors related to information and trust theme is the most powerful to relieve negative effects of other gap factors.
This paper would provide several theoretical implications. First, we use GDM method for qualitative research to support methodological reliability and validity. Second, to acquire power of explanation, we adopt marketing mix tools for axial coding labeling. For practitioners in the field of ethical consumption and social economy, this study suggests the ways to promote consumers’ ethical buying behavior. Specifically, we draw practical points to minimize each gap factors from the interview. In addition, by observing the interaction between four themes resulting from axial coding, this paper could contribute to offering practitioners strategic direction and implication to facilitate ethical consumption.
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8. Social enterprises, sustainable transition and common goods
EMES2017_Fanial_paper_Yoobin_LEE.pdf 