Abstract
This study investigates the impact of consumers’ ethical buying intentions on their buying behavior. Using a survey approach, the findings suggest the link between ethical buying intentions and behavior depends on consumers’ awareness of the brand’s general corporate social responsibility activities. Only when consumers with ethical purchase intentions are aware of the brand’s CSR activities can their intentions translate into behavior.
Highlights
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained increasing attention from individual consumers, policy makers, and companies
We propose that while the attitudes towards CSR directly influences ethical purchase intention (H1a), their ethical purchase intention does not lead to their actual ethical behavior (H1b)
Since the awareness of CSR activities in general influence how consumers decide their purchasing choices, we argue that the ethical buying intentions can be translated into their actual buying behavior only when they are aware of the CSR activities
Summary
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained increasing attention from individual consumers, policy makers, and companies. CSR represents the deliberate engagement of the company to allocate resources to social or ethical actions beyond the financial and shareholders’ obligations (Brown & Dacin, 1997), and has become part of the corporate image which influences consumers’ product choice (Brown & Dacin, 1997). To understand the reason why the relationship between CSR and financial performance is weak, it is necessary to unravel the relationship between ethical buying intentions and actual ethical buying behavior from consumers’ point of view. While most studies use experimental approaches to study ethical buying behavior, an approach that is able to tap into consumers’ ethical intentions and actual behavior is necessary to understand this relationship. Using a real case from animal-testing evidence in shampoos, we investigate the relationship between ethical buying behavior and actual buy intention
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