Consumer Perceptions on the Consumerism Issues and Its Influence on Their Purchasing Behavior: A View from Malaysian Food Industry

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the growing awareness of the consumerism and social responsibility issues in academia as well as in the industry, the investigation of the influence or effect of these issues on the consumer purchasing behavior especially in terms of both fairness on business practices(micro issues) and environmental consumerism practice(macro issue) is very limited. Though there exist very few prior studies which tend to conceptually show the effect of the consumerist issues/ethical issues on the consumer purchasing behavior, empirical evident are yet to be explored. Thus, this study had been developed to empirically investigate the factors of business ethics and consumerism that would likely to influence the customer ethical purchasing behavior. The basic objective of this study is to find out the consumers' perceptions on the both consumerism issues such as fairness on trade practices and environmental consumerism practice and their impact on their ethical purchasing behavior in food industry in Malaysia. Data was collected by applying the personal interview method where by the selection of sample respondents was based on the convenience sampling techniques targeted at 400 respondents for 4 states such as Kula Lumpur and Negeri Sembilan (Central region) and Melaka and Johor Bahru(southern region). The investigation was applied to the food products since it is very delicate sector and where there is much concern for the consumerist issues as suggested by Bhushan (2003); Brunk(1973); and Turner (1995). The result revealed that both the micro and macro consumerism issues such as fairness on trade practices and environmental consumerism practice were found to have significant association with the consumer ethical purchasing behavior. It implies that the companies should try to concentrate on the ethical aspects of business in order to build competitive advantage in the market. Furthermore, the companies should also try to reconcile the ethical aspects of the products with the other functional attributes of the products since the findings revealed that the consumers are not ready to sacrifice the other necessary attributes of products such as product quality, brand image, convenience etc only for ethics. INTRODUCTION In this modern era of societal marketing concept business ethics and social responsibility is becoming one of the central issues of all the marketing practices. Now the business enterprises cannot consider themselves as sovereign in the marketplace. The modern waves of consumerism have made the consumers vocal in expressing their rights and privileges in the marketplace. However, from the prior studies it can be inferred that a comprehensive study is still required in this area especially in respect of consumer behavioral perspective. The growing concern for ethical issues or consumerist issues among consumers has been well documented in marketing literature. However, despite the attention to the subject and rising concern for 'ethical' issues in society, research has tended to neglect the ethical consumer (Mintel 1999). In recent years, business ethics has drawn increased interest from business and marketing practitioners as well as from academicians. However, much of the research that has been done on business ethics has focused on marketing activities (Ferrell and Gresham, 1985; Ferrell, Gresham and Fraedrich 1989; and Hunt and Vitell; 1986, 1992). Uusitalo and Oksanen(2004) also argued that though business ethics and corporate social responsibility have gained more attention in recent years, the empirical research of consumers perspective on ethics is still minimal. The overall objective of the study is to explore the consumers' perceptions towards the business practices in term of fairness on trade practices(micro consumerism issues) and environmental consumerism practice(macro consumerism issue) in the marketplace; the extent of the consumers' purchasing behavior regarding the consumerist issues and the relationship between the fairness on trade practices and environmental consumerism practice with the consumers purchasing behavior regarding the consumerist issues in the food industry in a newly developed country like Malaysia. …