Do consumers give Fairtrade a fair chance in the supermarket?

How often have you walked around in the supermarket trying to decide what product by which brand to choose? The options are many. Some people look for the price tag while others are more influenced by the esthetic appeals of the packaging design. Some people might look for ethical or environmental aspects of the brand. The area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) interests many people today and is a growing concern. We found that consumers consider companies acting ethically while also new jobs among the most important responsibilities by firms today. These factors are making the purchase decision process even harder for consumers. Sweden is one of the most socially responsible countries in the world, making it important for Swedish companies to integrate CSR into the core of their businesses. One example of such integration is Fairtrade, a concept that has grown tremendously during the last decade, while the attention focused on socially responsible behavior by firms has increased. The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between Fairtrade and the purchase decision of consumers living in Sweden, to investigate the awareness and perception of Fairtrade and how that ultimately translates into making a purchasing decision. From this we developed the research question: “What factors influences Swedish consumers purchase decision in buying products from Fairtrade Sweden?” The target group of our research is young adults ages 18-30. The nature of our degree project is quantitative with a deductive approach. The research philosophy is objectivism since we do not intervene in any way as we observe the data collected from our survey. Furthermore a positivistic approach is used since we rely heavy on numbers and data rather than words. We received 158 participants in our survey. The theoretical framework consists of theories within the areas of CSR, branding, consumer attitudes-behavior and finally previous empirical studies about Fairtrade. From the theories we have developed a series of hypotheses, which we test statistically using independent-samples t-test and bivariate correlation tests. Statistical support for gender differences between men and women were found and also positive correlations between willingness to pay for Fairtrade products and how often participants purchase Fairtrade products were found. The findings from our research show that the 18-30 year old Swedish consumers find Fairtrade important and the general attitude towards Fairtrade is positive. Most consumers chose Fairtrade to help people and because it makes them feel good. The most common reasons why not to choice Fairtrade is because of the price or that the products simply cannot be found. Women are keener on purchasing and caring about Fairtrade products compared to men