The Impact of Ethical Considerations in Purchase Behavior: a propaedeutic to further research

Abstract

Many organizations assume that having a good ethical reputation often has an impact on consumers’ responses to a service or product. The research reported in this paper sought to confirm this intuition by investigating: 1) consumers’ attitudes about the ethics of corporate behavior in relation to stockholders, customers (middlemen and ultimate consumers), suppliers, employees, and host communities; 2) consumer willingness to reward ethical firms through purchase decisions; and 3) the impact of the consumers’ attitudes towards corporate ethical behavior on company behavior. The results indicate that the consumers do care about corporate ethical behavior towards all groups of people and they will reward the firms that behave ethically via their purchase decision. This suggests that corporate ethics is important to the consumers and provides ethical firms with a marketplace advantage.

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