Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 22, 2011

Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting

How to Create the Ethical Consumer

Consumer surveys confirm two facts: First, consumers are aware of social and ethical side effects of production and consumption. Second, consumers indicate an intention to adapt their consumption behavior. Despite their willingness to change, consumers do not engage in ethical consumption behavior. We assert that the ethical consumer needs to be created and propose two mechanisms how corporations can cocreate the ethical consumer: Influencing external institutional factors and influencing internal psychological factors.