소비자의 윤리적 상품에 대한 태도 및 구매의도의 관련요인 분석

Abstract

Recently many consumers have been concerned about ethical products and the real purchasing power on the ethical products have been increased in Korea. The purposes of this study are to investigate major factors to influence the consumer's attitude and purchase intention on the ethical products and to analyze the casual relationship among independent variables, attitude, and purchase intention. For the theoretical model of ethical consumer decision-making, this study is based on the ‘modified theory of planned behavior’ by Shaw &Shui(2002a; 2002b; 2003). The independent variables in this study included three consumer values related to ethical consumption(universalism, benevolence, and self-direction), ethical obligation, self-identity, perceived consumer effectiveness, human relation, altruism, and the socio-demographic variables. For this study, the ethical products include eco-friendly products which are no harm both to nature and human body and various fair-trade products which are designed to contribute to economical self-sufficiency of poor workers in the Third World. The data were collected from both on-line and off-line survey in March, 2010 and 888 samples were used to the final analyses. The major results are follows. First, 65.3% of the sample had purchased at least one or more the ethical products. The high purchase percentage among the ethical products was the order of eco-friendly agricultural products, fair-trade coffee, fair-trade chocolate, and fair-trade clothing & fashion products. The average score about consumer's attitude on the ethical products was 4.85 point at 7 point criteria, and it means that the respondents have some positive attitude on the ethical products. The average score about consumer's purchase intention on the ethical products was 5.04 point at 7 point criteria, meaning the respondents have some purchase intention on the ethical products. Second, the results of impacts of the socio-demographic variables on consumer's attitude on the ethical products indicated that there were significant differences among the educational level, the average monthly household income, and the occupation. For the consumer's purchase intention on the ethical products, there were significant differences among the educational level, the religion, and the average monthly household income. Especially, the groups with the college graduate and over and the highest household income had not only positive attitude on the ethical products, but also high purchase intention on the ethical products. Third, the results of the regression analysis indicated that the value of universalism, ethical obligation, perceived consumer effectiveness, and altruism positively influenced on the consumer's attitude on the ethical products. Among the socio-demographic variables, women in terms of sex, the groups both college and college graduate and over in terms of the educational level,and the group with 4,000 thousand won and over in terms of the average monthly household income positively influenced on the consumer's attitude. Among significant factors influencing on the consumer's attitude, the value of universalism had the greatest influence and the next are ethical obligation, the education level with college and college graduate and over, the household income with 4,000 thousand won and over. For the purchase intention on the ethical product, only altruism and attitude were significant factors, and the attitude was greater influence than the altruism. Finally, the results of path analysis indicated that the attitude and altruism had direct effects on the purchase intention of the ethical products, while the value of universalism,ethical obligation, perceived consumer effectiveness, women in terms of sex, college graduate and over in terms of educational level, and the group with 4,000 thousand won in terms of average monthly household income had indirect effects on purchase intention. This result implies that in order to increase the purchase of ethical products, it is important for consumers to have positive attitude toward the ethical products. The results of this study has some implications of consumer's purchase behavior on the ethical products for the experts at consumer studies and marketing. For example, the consumer educators help some groups(for instance, men and the consumer with the high school graduate) to have positive attitude toward the ethical products. For the marketing managers, the results of this study may help to create a sales strategy about, the ethical products, implying that some groups(women, the consumers with college graduate and over,and the group with 4,000 thousand won and over at monthly household income) had positive attitude and higher probability to purchase the ethical products. This study included the ethical obligation, self-identity, and attitude as the major independent variables based on the 'modified theory of planned behavior', but the results indicated that the self-identity didn't have significant effect on both the consumer's attitude and the purchase intention. The further studies are needed to elaborate the measure of the self-identity and to help the understanding of consumer's ethical consumption behavior with the quantitative data.