Validating Antecedent Factors Affecting Ethical Purchase Behavior: Comparing the Effect of Customer Citizenship versus Corporate Citizenship

Abstract

The objective of this study was to verify the influence of corporate image and subjective norms on consumers’ purchase intention of a firm’s products. Another important objective was to determine what kind of citizenship—corporate citizenship or customer citizenship—has a greater impact on the relationships between corporate image and purchase intention, and between subjective norms and purchase intention. The findings suggest that both ethical corporate image and subjective norms have positive effects on ethical purchase intention, and that both corporate and customer citizenship significantly moderate this causal relationship. Specifically, we found that corporate citizenship exerted greater impact as a moderator than customer citizenship on ethical purchase behavior. This finding has important theoretical/practical implications as it highlights the weighted attention to be paid to individual versus corporate focus in the study of ethical consumption behavior. In particular, the finding sheds light on the importance of subjective norms as a social peer pressure mechanism since ethical consumption is embedded with socially responsible consumption behavior.