Business Ethics Ethical Decision Making System

Question: Discuss about the Business Ethics for Ethical Decision Making System. Answer: Introduction Ethical Consumerism is a way of showing focus towards the purchase of products which are produced by the use of environment friendly materials. It includes all the products which tries to employ sustainable raw materials at all the levels of production[1]. There are many companies which follow Ethical way of manufacturing and sourcing their materials. One of these companies is ShopHere. ShopHere came into existence in 1984 and since then they have always procured ethically traded materials and have always believed in trading ethically to help the society. They have a preconceived notion that the customers which purchase their products are ethical consumers and they also believe in the betterment of society by using sustainable products. However, the profit margins of the company in now going down since customers are shifting to other options. So, it needs to be checked whether these customers were actually an ethical consumer at any point of time or not. Also, this is required by the company to think whether they need any changes in their business model. Search Method The search for the Ethical Consumers will involve performing Market Research. Majorly, it should be a Primary Research and lesser Secondary Research. Primary Research will include surveying people to know their focus. This would reveal whether the consumer is thinking ethically or it is just another purchase for him/her. The need of the hour is to find the behavior and rationale behind the consumers purchase from ShopHere. Survey will include a Questionnaire which will be having objective questions to test the behavior of the consumers. Consumers will also be grouped to form small focus groups to have a small discussion on ethical trading[2]. The outcome of the Focus Group would be the answer to the question as to whether there is any ethical mind frame in consumers mind while purchasing the products. Critical Review Ethical Consumer Research Association has classified the companies which trades ethically. It categorizes the companies based on a five factor scale which is commonly known as Ethiscore. Ethiscore includes Sustainability of Product, Politics, Animals, People and Environment. The ethical scenarios related to all these five factors are checked during the research[3]. The research of many companies are targeted towards whether people believe in ethical trading and in ethical consumerism or not[4]. Our research process included surveying the consumers to know their priorities while doing any purchase. The survey yielded the results which was slightly in line with the actual expectations of ShopHere. About one third of the participants told the surveyor that they are ready to pay somewhat extra money if they can surety that the products are ethically traded. Around 40% of the folks were having a neutral opinion about the ethicality of the products. They do not have any notions while purchasing any product. Some 20% wants the products to be ethically traded but questioned as to why to increase the selling prices. They argued that ethical trading can be achieved if at the final retail level also, it is sold at the actual prices. ShopHere got to know from this that at least there are customers who focus on ethical trading. They were thinking of increasing margins to increase the profit. After the survey, they can take a decision to marginally increase their prices so that they can get a boost in their profit margins thereby maintaining their business model to use only ethical means to trade. These will also help them in inching closer towards their vision and mission of Ethical Trading. The market research on the issue came out to rescue for the ShopHere. In Ethical Consumerism, there are many other concepts which somebody should know. Two such concepts are Alternative Giving and Conscientious Consumption[5]. Alternative giving focuses on the fact that people generally provide gifts to their close relative and friends in various occasions. So, some companies brought in the concept of Alternative giving where the donor will make the contributions and the gift recipient will get a voucher which will explain the details about the gift[6]. However, the actual gift will be provided to Poor people who need and deserve those gifts. These gifts might include food supplies, agricultural help etc. which will help the poor. Conscientious Consumption focuses on the fact that people usually buy unwanted items just to be associated with a cause. Many of the people buy Pink Ribbons on the occasion of Breast Cancer Day to support the global cause[7]. Similar things happen in case of purchasing stationary to support the orphanages and many more such examples are there. They do not think that a mere cash donation could have helped the needy in a better manner than through the purchasing of such goods. People in these cases are not only buying the products for supporting the cause but are also buying the intangible association with that particular cause. There are also lot of criticism associated with Ethical Consumerism. Many of the researchers claim that buying green product is perceived by people as getting license on the back of which they perform unethical acts and think themselves as better people[8]. People should bring about the change which will be beneficial for the society in the long run. It should be focused towards sustainable development. Just like ShopHere, all the companies should start focusing on use of ethical traded materials and selling only those kind of products. Conclusion In the above sections, we saw that Ethical Consumerism is a very important concept in todays world where slowly and steadily the world is inching towards environmental degradation risking the lives of future generation. ShopHere understand this fact and has always tried to use and sell sustainable products. Every other companies and the consumers are expected to follow the same. References Anderson, Matthew. A History of fair trade in contemporary Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Ferrell, Odies C., and John Fraedrich. Business ethics: Ethical decision making cases. Nelson Education, 2015. Hainmueller, Jens, Michael J. Hiscox, and Sandra Sequeira. "Consumer demand for fair trade: Evidence from a multistore field experiment." Review of Economics and Statistics 97, no. 2 (2015): 242-256. Ladhari, Riadh, and Nina Michle Tchetgna. 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