Phase 1: Problem discovery and definition.
Business Problem: Shop-Here is a small company that aims to provide the best quality services to the consumers. The company is faced with several challenges regarding management. Currently, the company is planning to invest in offering ethically sourced products to attract a large spectrum of consumers and remain relevant in the market. Therefore, the project assesses factors that the company needs to consider when rebranding its products to meet the clients’ needs.
Working Title: Ethical consumption acting as a barometer of profitability; a convergent mixed method approach
Aims of the Project: The aim of the project is to evaluate the behaviors of the consumers towards sustainably sourced products.
Objectives of the Project: The objective of the research is to determine the relationship between ethical consumers’ purchasing behavior and their apparent intention to consume. The other objective is to understand ethically minded consumers’ requirement and preferences. Last, the objective will identify which attributes make products more appealing to ethical consumers.
Research Question: The research will tend to find the answers to the following questions:
• Do ethical consumers turn their environmental concerns into actual buying decisions?
• Do environmental issues or disasters influence conscious buying behaviors?
• What are the factors that influence ethical consumptions?
• What are the attributes or characteristics that make a product attractive to ethical consumers?
• Can environmentally responsible firms influence ethical consumers’ purchasing behavior through CSR reports or eco-labels?
Phase 2: Review the literature.
Description of Search Process: The study’s title is “Ethical consumption as a Barometer of Profitability; a Convergent Mixed Method Approach.” The resources utilized encompassed scholarly articles, and peer-reviewed journals from sites such as ProQuest; The review will cover the historical and current academic information as well as the debates or controversies related to management dilemma. Analysis and subsequent synthesis of the information will aid in refining the research topic by providing a clear distinction of the study areas that have been investigated and validating the research topic for the current study.
Literature review coverage and search strategy: Over the past decade alone, tens of thousands of research works have been published and added to existing database sites. As such, the amount of paperwork available for a researcher conducting a literature review can take many resources, in terms of time and money, to go through (Liñán & Fayolle, 2015). It is, therefore, not only necessary but also advantageous to lay out a plan to enable a timely and quality literature review development. Reviewing literature calls for locating the relevant materials, evaluating the content, and synthesizing all the information from the different sources to come up with an informative summarized document. This literature review section will cover scholarly material on ethical behaviors of consumers.
According to Liñán & Fayolle (2015), it is important to first define the topic and audience in developing a comprehensive literature review. An interesting topic in a given area will ascertain the availability of more than enough if not adequate research works to review. It will also make the pending study relevant as it will be guaranteed that there will be an audience for it once it is published. Searching and re-searching available literature is another vital step taken in preparing to conduct a literature review. Identifying the key words to be used to locate the material is useful. This study will utilize online search engines to locate relevant academic materials related to organizational challenges.
The review needs to be thorough, which is why the materials need to be reviewed several times, making sure that the methodologies, strengths, limitations, and findings are properly recorded and stored. Additionally, making sure that the information provided is merely not descriptive, but analytical is of the essence. The analysis pin points the major achievements and outstanding aspects of the resources while at the same time, raises questions and provides positive criticism (Liñán & Fayolle, 2015). Finally, the gathered content needs to be arranged in a logical structure to give it flow and a good presentation. Moreover, while determining the materials to be used in the literature review, inclusion and exclusion criteria will be used.
Criteria for inclusion
• Relevance – the materials will be related to either organizational leadership or CSR.
• Source – the materials will have to be in online scholarly databases with the journals being peer-reviewed.
• Material Age – all the materials have to be between the past five years with an exception for historical content that can be derived from older sources.
• Study design – the materials have to be academic and can either be qualitative or quantitative
• Geography – the materials will cover a worldwide scale
• Language – must be written in English
Criteria for Exclusion: Any materials that do not meet the inclusion criteria will be excluded. In particular, no material outside management or business dilemma will be used, non-scholarly materials will also not be used, materials written in other languages apart from English will also not be used.
Evaluating Online Sources: The internet has become the single largest source of information in the world today. This study will use literature materials uploaded in online databases. As such, measures to ensure that the information utilized is true and authentic is essential to establish data validity and credibility. All the content included in the study will be evaluated to find out the authorship, publication, and date of publication to establish relevance, currency, purpose, and objectivity.
Systematic Literature Review
Ethical Consumers’ Buying Process
According to Culiberg & Bajde (2014), the consumer purchasing procedure is a mental state that a customer uses when he or she is making a buying choice. In this process, there are five stages, which include; Issue Recognition: Two minor processes occur in this step, and they are initial a solicitation and demand of the consumer. The second stage is the information search. Here, the ethical consumer looks for data concerning the items he ought to buy as well as suppliers of the items. The employment of advertisers is to ensure that data is accessible when and where business clients need it. Business purchasers regularly create item particulars, that is, a composed depiction of the quality, size, weight, shading, highlights, amount, preparing, guarantee, administration terms, and conveyance necessities for the buy. The step aims to recognize potential suppliers and acquire composed or verbal proposition, or offers, from one or a greater amount of them (Culiberg & Bajde, 2014). The third stage is the evaluation of alternative. In this stage, the consumer compares and contrasts his or her moral impacts of his or her purchasing behavior. The second last stage is product and supplier selection- Here, the ethical consumer goes for the supplier who offers the best products. In this case, the selected product or supplier must offer services that render less harm to people and the community as a whole.
Furthermore, the offered products must not violate the rights of other individuals (Culiberg & Bajde, 2014). The last stage is post-purchase evaluation-a hierarchical purchaser surveys whether the execution of the item and the supplier is satisfying desires. The purchaser overviews the clients to decide their fulfillment with the item, and in addition to the establishment, conveyance, and administration gave by the supplier.
Factors that Influence Ethical Consumption of Product
According to Mark (2016), there are various factors that affect the purchasing behaviors of consumers. The first factor is government policies and regulations. Consumers will go for a product if it is legally accepted by the government and the local authority. On the other hand, they will avoid products banned by the authority. For instance, it is rare to find consumers buying marijuana in the streets of Texas since it means violating the laws. The second factor is the impacts of the product on the environment. There are products that have negative impacts on the environment and society as a whole (Mark, 2016). For instance, products that cause discomfort is that social places do not attract a large spectrum of consumers.
Similarly, consumers tend to go for the goods and commodities that do not cause environmental pollution. It is important to note that people buy commodities that conform to their culture and traditions. Among the Muslim, it immoral to buy pork and rear pigs since it is treated as a sin. Therefore, consumers will consider using these commodities. Lastly, individual preference is another factor that influences the ethical consumption of a commodity. It implies an individual attitude towards a particular product (Mark, 2016). An ethical act is that behavior that makes an individual happy. Many consumers will tend to go for those products that satisfy their wants, without considering the consequences it has on others.
Consumer Decision Making
According to Richard & Jovine (2017), making decisions as a consumer is crucial in purchasing an item. It is important that one gathers information about the item from various sources such as newspaper, internet, and billboards before deciding to purchase the item. Thus, a consumer has to go through various stages before purchasing an item in the long run. Before purchasing an item, it is crucial for the consumer first to recognize why he or she needs the product. Need recognition is an important process before any purchase is made. It is the need for a particular product or service that makes the consumer develop the urge to get the products or services (Richard & Jovine, 2017). For instance, if an individual buys cold water from the stores, he or she is driven by the need to quench thirst. It is only after recognizing the need for a certain product or service that an individual can start searching for information about the product or service. There are several sources where an individual can gather information for the products he or she needs. Some of the sources include personal sources, public sources, and commercial sources. After gathering information, it is upon the individual to make the right choice for an alternative that is convenient to his or her needs (Richard & Jovine, 2017). The alternative that one chooses can depend on the preferred goods and services that the individual wants and the amount of money at hand. The consumer can then purchase the product after going through all these procedures. The consumer can then conduct a post-purchase analysis on the product to ascertain whether it was useful or not for the purpose he or she bought it for.
Customer Relationship and Purchasing Behaviors
According to Tseng & Wu (2014), customer relationship management has become an invaluable business tool since it enables organizations to factor into their plans the input of their consumers. The concept allows businesses to gather information about the purchasing trends and patterns of their clients using the technological platform. Subsequently, the analyzed data is used to formulate of usable products and promotional schemes that are customer-centric (Tseng & Wu, 2014). The data contained in the publications imply future business and management practices since they place the customer at the center of the organizations, thus enhancing sustainability. Broadly, customer relationship management is a primary business process that should be used in making business decisions, particularly in a competitive business environment.
Analysis of the Sources
The articles used in this literature review provide useful information on ethical customers’ behaviors that have gained traction in recent years. To begin with, the publications provide clear pathways on how businesses can exploit information technology to develop cogent customer-facing processes. Investments in digital infrastructure that include call centers and websites is a significant aspect of customer-facing methods discussed in the articles. Fundamentally, the scholars agree that the future of business lies in the ability to anticipate customer needs through analytics and multi-channel marketing, which is consistent with current practices.
Nevertheless, one of the authors posits that despite that, it is advisable to understand the behaviors of the consumers as well considering the impacts of the business to attract a large spectrum of consumers. Many firms have failed to reap benefits due to a non-proactive culture of waiting for consumers to start the initiative. The development of mutually beneficial CFP with clients is vital in understanding customer needs from an external perspective. Ideally, the approach is used in the creation of products that are aligned with the needs of the users. Most of the articles have emphasized on data collection, which is accentuated by interacting with the customer to offer information to develop product offerings. The themes covered in the texts are timely and useful to business entities, which can result in growth and enhanced revenue generation.
Overall, the arguments by the authors are convincing since they discuss issues that are current and aligned with course readings. The inclusion of customer-facing processes to collect data from their customers is an apt example, which adds to the body of knowledge in the topic being reviewed. Again, the writers state that businesses need to consider products that are in line with the morals of the society since this reduces marketing costs due to the systematic analysis of purchasing trends and patterns, which should be adopted by all enterprises. In a sense, the arguments by the scholars that CSR is the future of business are correct since the advertising organizations are aiming at reaching the different categories of consumers by being socially and environmentally responsible. Firms that have hesitated to embrace the new model are at risk of redundancy soon. Towards this end, analytics has become a valuable business tool since it enables an organization to anticipate what their clients want, unlike in the past where salespeople were used to gathering information from the consumers.
Summary and Conclusion
The chapter discusses the factors that influence ethical consumers’ behaviors. It is started by defining the term literature review and the approaches the author used to obtain reliable sources. Furthermore, the researcher goes ahead and analyzes different sources that relate to ethical consumers’ behaviors. Lastly, the paper analyzes the credibility of the sources, how they related to the course, as well their significance to the topic of study.
References
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Eleni, P., Paparoidamis, N. G., & Chumpitaz, R. (2015). Understanding Ethical Consumers: A New Approach Towards Modeling Ethical Consumer Behaviours. In Marketing Dynamism & Sustainability: Things Change, Things Stay the Same… (pp. 223-225). Springer, Cham. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10912-1_72
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Liñán, F., & Fayolle, A. (2015). A systematic literature review on entrepreneurial intentions: citation, thematic analyses, and research agenda. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 11(4), 907-933. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11365-
Mark, S. P. (2016) Looking at Consumer Behavior in a Moral Perspective. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226765395_Looking_at_Consumer_Behavior_in_a_Moral_Perspective
Moser, A. K. (2015). Thinking green, buying green? Drivers of pro-environmental purchasing behavior. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 32(3), 167-175.
Richard, S. & Jovin O. (2017). The Role of Ethical Concerns in Consumer Purchase Behavior ... Retrieved from http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/7422/volumes/v20/NA-20
Tseng, S. M., & Wu, P. H. (2014). The impact of customer knowledge and customer relationship management on service quality. International journal of quality and service sciences, 6(1), 77-96. https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJQSS-08-2012-0014
