A Marketing Research Of Consumer Attitudes

By Author: James White
Total Articles: 29
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Introduction
While prosperous consumers in wealthy countries pay quite a few dollars for a cup of coffee at store such as Starbucks, some millions of small scale coffee farmers are struggle since prices for coffee bean have tumbled to extraordinary lows. This juxtaposition of the stylish coffee explosion and rock-bottom raw coffee prices has stricken market criticism as compelling proof of injustice and also exploitation. The critics are blaming multinational coffee roasters and the retailers for making profits at the expense of poor farmers. The consumer are critics are proposing several scheme which, includes fair trade coffee, using of fresh quality standards in restricting imports, and returning to political control of coffee export, so as to help coffee farmers through pulling up coffee bean prices.
This proposed research will explore the basis of consumer attitudes towards fair-trade coffee when it is found unfair. This research will draw from the findings and implications of previous performed research and data to provide clarity to the underlying factors of:

Problem Statement
There is indelible ...
... evidence about retailers and producers who are selling unfair trade coffee and fair trade coffee to their consumers. However when consumer find out they react differently as this is unethical marketing behaviour. With increasing number of consumer becoming more conscious ethics in marketing, the research will seek to find out how their attitudes changes in relation o this issue.. This researcher proposes to study the direct relationship consumer behaviour and attitudes towards retailers after discovery fair trade coffee to be unfair coffee.

Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this quantitative study is to gain factual information from the consumer to examine how and to what extent their consumer attitudes change after discovery of buying or consuming coffee which is unfairly traded, but sold as fair traded. Prior studies on this subject matter have revealed that when customers become a ware of unethical behaviour of concerning a product or a company, their behaviour and attitudes changes to an extent. (Dean, 2004)

Consumer behaviour:
Consumer behaviour is defined as the study of why people buy, what they buy, when they buy and how the do the buying. This blends various elements from economics, anthropology, socio-psychology, sociology and psychology. In this there is an attempt to understand the entire decision making process for the buyers both as groups and as individuals. In this there is the study of the individual characteristics of the consumers. They include the psychographics, behavioural variables and demographics. Unless a company carries out research on consumer behaviour, then there are high chances that the company can fail to meet what the consumers want. (Hoyer and MacInnis, 2000)

Fair trade: fair trade or Ethical consumerism identifies the huge amounts of efforts required to obtain information concerning products, in addition to the usually high prices of ethically-good products, as barriers to make ethical selections. This model of consumerism, just like the start of green consumerism in the past, is becoming to be a more significant principle in Western nations, mostly as international trade raises up (Uusitalo and Oksanen 2003).

Research Question
The questions designed for this research are:
(1) How does consumer behaviours changes when they discover that they are being sold unfair trade instead of fair trade coffee
(2) To what degree does consumer attitudes changes when they discover that they are being sold unfair trade instead of fair trade coffee

Research Design
This research was carried out using qualitative research methods. The methods used to get information are through interviewing and through questionnaires, which were designed to get specific information from the respondent. The aim of the research is to find out the change of consumer behaviour after finding out they are buying unfair trade which being sold as fair trade. (Grunert, 1988)

Methodology
The research was conducted in the Texas, the research was based on 200 consumers who consume coffee. The consumer chosen were aware of the fair trade coffee and unfair trade coffee. For the sake of keeping the data to managerial size, it was thought that the research should concentrate basically on a small number of the participants.

Methods of Data Collection
Standardized questions were prepared and asked to all participants. The questions will be asked to consumers of coffee. The researcher will carry out the interviews. Participants will be required to adhere to, and sign a confidentiality agreement to alleviate the propensity of identities being revealed.

Delimitations
The delimitations of this research effort are the types of Assertive Discipline models that will be used; the experiences of the consumer being observed as well as the consequences of other factors will delimit the research.

Limitations
The limitations of this research include but are not confined to the consumers and others who will participate voluntarily in the study, the consumer standards and predisposed cultural tolerances and allowances.

Data Analysis Procedures
Compiled data will be inputted into an Excel Spreadsheet by the researcher along with anecdotal notes from the field observations of this study.

Ethics
All research participants will be informed of a minimal amount of risk, which includes the allowance for someone identifying them as a participant in this investigation. No actual names will be used during this investigation, rather subject letter variables, to further eliminate the opportunity for identities to be divulged. All participants observation notes, responses and personal information will be held in the strictest of confidence and will not be revealed even after the study has concluded. All participants will be required to sign a confidentiality statement and will be encouraged vehemently to concur with the terms of the agreement. In the event that any information that could affect the validity of this study is compromised, that information will be discarded, and nullified from being considered in the analysis of the findings. (Loudon, 1988)

Review
Many previous studies have queried consumers' consciousness of ethical issues (Uusitalo and Oksanen 2004; Corrigan and Attalla 2001), where consumers considered to be uncertain concerning which items are fairly traded and which one are not. Nevertheless, a study carried out by Corrigan and Attalla's (2001), concluded that, unethical trading changes only a small number of consumers behaviours. As Barnett et al. (2005) argues there are obvious political aspects to ethical consumption that can be viewed as a structure of combined, organised communal action, and maybe perceived by a lot of consumers as merely a fringe social pressure group that they do not of necessity wish to relate. Purchasing products for helpful reasons (for example environmentally-friendly items) or boycotting some products for various negative reasons (for example not purchasing shoes made by child labour). (Shaw. et al, 2005)

Present research
The present research aims at determining whether knowing that coffee is unethical, i.e. unfair trade coffee being sold as fair trade coffee would have a bigger impact on consumer behaviour and attitudes. That is to say, if information concerning the unethical practices of coffee company or store were at the frontage of a consumer's mind, would he or she take it into account? Therefore the first hypothesis of this research is that:
If consumer becomes aware that a product being sold as fair traded is in fact unfairly traded, they will have negative attitudes the company selling that product.
To what degree does consumer attitudes changes when they discover that they are being sold unfair trade instead of fair trade coffee

Methodology
The sample consisted of 200 participants (120 males and 80 females) who were aged from 18 to 54 years (mean age 30 years).
The participants were informed that the research was regarding consumer behaviours and attitudes in general, but not specifically about Starbucks. Though this sample is clearly not representative of the broad populace and raises concerns of external soundness, it is an answer to demographic for coffee consumers and thus is specifically relevant to the current study. (Patton, 2002)

The study applied an easy investigational design where two different versions of a survey were at random given to participants, and thus, crafting a control and also an experimental cluster. The difference among the surveys was the exclusion or inclusion of anti-Starbucks information at the start of the survey. The anti-Starbucks information entailed of allegations of unfair trade labour practices procurements of coffee bean by Starbucks from farmers in Latin America and Asia. The company was selected because of its prominence in the question. (Patton, 2002)
One part of the survey had a succession of statements applying a five-point Likert scale to measure responses, varying from 1 to 5 (with higher numerals showing high levels of agreement). The other section of the survey asked if the participants had heard of Starbucks unfair trade coffee and if the buy coffee at Starbucks or whether they will continue buying coffee at Starbucks. Each investigation started with questions connected to demography (age and gender) and ended with a succession of open-ended queries where participants can remark on the matters raised and also on the study itself. (Patton, 2002)

Results
Attitudes
Two of the 10 questions concerning attitudes exposed major differences among the cluster which received anti-Starbucks information and the cluster which did not receive any information (Table 1). Some of the statements were, When I think of the
Manner in which companies exploit farmers, I get frustrated and annoyed.

Behaviour
Just one statement connecting to actual behaviour exposed a major difference among the two clusters ( Table 2). The cluster which did not get the anti-Starbucks information had a considerably high level of concurrence with the statement, Consumers ought to pay extra for products which are produced through unfair trade practices.
Participants were asked also to point out if they would buy Starbucks products in
future. Across all clusters, 68 % of participants specified that they continued buying
Starbucks products, while only 12 % stated that they won't buy, but 20% were uncertain).

Discussion
There was barely limited proof to support the first hypothesis while the subsequent hypothesis was mainly supported, amid the exemption of one unanticipated outcome. Maybe the first hypothesis did not get support since the unfair trade information is not fresh information for a lot of the respondents. More than a third of participants had really heard specifically about the unfair trade coffee campaign. Since this is among many campaigns tackling this issue, it is plausible that lots of more participants would have gotten some kind of negative information concerning multinational coffee roasters and dealers. It is possible there would have been major differences supposing one cluster had completely no prior information of the matter and were thus giving an instant emotional answer. (Auger, et al, 2003)

What does this mean for consumers?
The main difficulty with this kind of research, a position that many researchers in this subject have concluded, is that the ethical consumerism can't be condensed to if a consumers will stay away from an unfair traded (unethical unsound) product. Whether consumers do not buy products prepared by use child labour, for instance, it does not essentially imply that those children in the developing countries will be happier. Hence, besides other factors previously identified, several well-meaning consumers might really consider that boycotting will do further harm than buying ethically-unsound items. Consumers might also believe that all coffee producers and roasters employ same unfair trade practices, and consequently believe that purchasing new brands will not create any difference. In spite of the findings in this research and other previous studies, it is realistic to presume that activist pressure groups and coffee companies will carry on increasing information or advertisements campaigns as two sides try to convince consumers. It is most likely that activist pressure groups will just turn into being extra emotionally forceful in their tone of campaigns in an effort to draw out desired reactions. On the same note the targeted companies also will just as forcefully react to these off-putting campaigns with much more advertisements, if not to counteract the claims, then least to drown them. (Auger, et al 2003)
While consumers continue being exposed to such sort of campaigns, it should be anticipated that it will increasingly become difficult for consumer to settle the divergence messages and sense confident enough to make informed decisions. (Spar, and Lane, 2003)

Future Research
There are numerous ways for future studies in this field of consumerism, one option for further study is to investigate whether a source of negative information, for example word-of-mouth, or advertising and credibility of the source are significant factors (Ahluwalia et al. 2000).

Conclusion
This study was aimed at determining if negative information regarding a company's trading practices would result in any changes of behaviour and attitudes and . It can cautiously be drawn that the anti-Starbucks information to consumers did provoke a little annoyance and frustration; however this is observed as not adequate to make a consumer change his/ her behaviours.

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