Browsing by Author "Torniainen, Meri"

The purpose of the thesis is to portray the attitude of a Finnish consumer towards ethical consumption. Ethical consumption is studied by dividing it into three different sectors. Ethical consumption is studied through consumers' attitudes, action and the information available from ethical products and companies. Data for the empirical part of the thesis was collected with an internet survey. A link for the survey was on the Finnish Consumers' Associations front webpage. Link was also posted on two different discussion forums in internet. The survey was also sent to my acquaintances. Target for this survey was hence hard to forecast in advance. As a result I got 247 respondents. The concept of ethical consumption is hard to define. Everyone's moral defines what is ethical and what is not. Ethical action aims for the well being of an individual and humankind. A consumer who acts ethically takes care of others wellbeing and does not concentrate on himself only. In this study ethical consumption takes into account the environmental problems and the social problems. Social problems are ethical problems which consider the wellbeing and rights of animals, human and nature. Ethical problems are for example animal testing, poor working and employment conditions, child labour and the environmental pollution. According to my findings people think really positively about ethical consumption. They are interested on ethical aspects but on the other hand they do not want to make any extra effort, for example finding information. Consumers are easily ready to abandon ethical aspects in their action. According to the research consumers think that their choices do matter in companies' action. Consumers are ready to boycott companies but they are also ready to buy ethically acting companies' products, even with a premium price. Consumers suffer from a lack of information and they do not trust on the information that companies deliver. On the other hand there is quite a lot of information available which might confuse some consumers. To consume ethically is complicated but it also gives pleasure for many consumers.