Ethical Consumerism: Buying for a Better World

Page: 217-220
Harmilan Kaur, Laveena Jain, Gagandeep Banga, and Babita Kumar (School of Business Studies, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab)

The world can be influenced by consumers in many different ways through their purchasing power. Ethical consumerism is carried out by “positive buying,” which favours ethical products, or by “negative buying,” which involves boycotting goods that adversely impact the health of consumers or others, harm the environment during production, use, or disposal, use excessive energy, produce unnecessary waste, use materials that inflict unnecessary suffering on animals. The major areas of concern, types and history of ethical consumerism have been discussed in this paper. The key behavioural patterns, factors influencing and decision model of ethical consumers have been taken into consideration. In the last section, motivators, trends and challenges of ethical consumerism are discussed.