Are consumers consistently ethical? Consumer preferences for ethically sourced palm oil

The actuality of the ethical consumer is a controversial topic in marketing. Whereas consumers consistently state ethical intentions, these attitudes rarely translate to sales at the checkout. The resultant intention-behaviour gap is variously described in the literature according to product category benefit, social desirability bias, information overload, and distrust in ethical labelling. This thesis applies product experience theory to propose a novel framework that accounts for the mediating effects of product category and ethical information on consumer choice. Evidence is presented from two student surveys founded on discrete choice experiments (DCEs) that test the consistency of consumer preferences for palm oil in supermarket products. Information effects are elicited using a DCE embedded within a 2 x 2 behavioural experiment. Consistency is assessed using structural choice models, which allow the direct observation of a common latent source of variation driving ethical preferences. Results reveal that consumers are not consistently ethical and indicate that information alone is seldom effective in facilitating positive ethical consumption. This research recommends that firms adopt relationship marketing and invest in word of mouth campaigns to increase the salience of ethical information in product evaluations. This thesis also provides an optimised experimental design and revised ethical consumption framework for the use of any researchers aiming to better understand ethical decision making