What if ethical buying behavior leads to boycotts? : The buying behavior of Generation Z

The care for the environment has been a hot topic during the last fifteen years. Ecological and Fairtrade products made from sustainable materials and methods can be found in almost every store. It seems like awareness regarding our environmental impact has increased and therefore changed our purchase behavior. The awareness has also created pressure on the companies to behave in an ethical manner, if the consumers feel that their ethical needs are not acknowledged, they will tend to stop purchasing products from that company. In this new aware society there is a new player that in a few years will make up the new buying force. Generation Z is individuals born after 1995 and is expected to bring new demands to the market. The purpose of this thesis is to study if ethical products and ethical consumption have an effect on the buying behavior of Generation Z. To better understand if the ethical awareness affect the purchase behavior of Generation Z and if they are willing to boycott companies that misbehaves, theory within the fields of CSR, consumer behavior and ethical consumption has been collected to form questions for a survey. The findings show that the ethical awareness do not affect the purchase behavior of Generation Z, however there is discovered attributes such as ethical profile that affect the frequency of purchases. The findings also show that Generation Z will actively boycott a company if that company misbehaves