Ethical Consumer Behavior: An Article From The Wall Street Journal

What approaches should one take in selling to those interested in higher ethical standards? How will consumers reward and punish ethical and unethical companies?

This is excellent article tackles this question and discusses strategic approaches to the ethical customer. Though the survey tests views on organic tee shirts and coffee, I highly recommend it to any jewelery retailer reading this blog.

Here are quotes from the concluding two paragraphs. Below that is a link to the entire article.

“Those with high expectations were willing to pay a mean of $11.59 per pound for the ethical coffee, versus $9.90 for those with low expectations. And the high-expectations group punished the unethical coffee with a price of $6.92, versus $8.44 for low-expectations consumers.

The lessons are clear. Companies should segment their market and make a particular effort to reach out to buyers with high ethical standards, because those are the customers who can deliver the biggest potential profits on ethically produced goods.”

Read the whole story:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121018735490274425.html

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