The Effect of Beauty Consumers' Ethical Consumption Awareness on Motive to Purchase Refillable Cosmetics

Abstract

Although the range of choices of consumers has expanded due to the variety of products, ethical consumption is spreading by raising objections to social phenomena that cause risks such as waste of resources and destruction of the global environment. Cosmetic containers, which increase in proportion to the size of the global beauty industry, are thrown away as general waste, and research on container recycling or refilling cosmetics is lacking. The purpose is to help educational basic materials for the generation and marketing aspects for revitalization of refill cosmetics. For the empirical analysis of the study, 337 questionnaires were used as final data for beauty consumers in their 10s to 60s who have purchased refillable cosmetics living in Seoul and metropolitan areas. For the collected data, frequency analysis, factor analysis and reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were performed through SPSS 24.0. As a result of the analysis, ethical consumption consciousness was divided into two sub-dimensions: ‘trust in certified products’ (45.4%) and ‘resource saving’ (22.3%). The motivation for purchasing refill cosmetics was extracted from two sub-dimensions: ‘purchase promotion’ (42.7%) and ‘environmental protection’ (26.6%). In conclusion, it was found that the higher the propensity for ethical consumption awareness to trust certified products, the higher the purchase promotion of refillable cosmetics and environmental protection factors. This study has regional limitations, and in relation to the above study, we expect meaningful and active studies on the effect of refill cosmetic consumption on the sustainability management (ESG) of beauty companies. Consumers expect it to be an index to measure corporate social responsibility activities.