Why ethical consumerism is an important strategy for a business?
There are growing number of population who make their decisions of consumption based on their ethical values like eco friendly products, pollution free production process, maintenance of labour standard and the most important human rights. Ethical consumerism is a growing activity that has an influence on ethical trade movements. Some stakeholder uses the consumerism as a force which can cause for a social change. Based on this concept a company can take its decisions for consumers demand. Generally companies create consumers demand by effective advertising and branding, but consumer’s power can also be used to prove that the company is accountable for the society. It creates a good image about the company in the mind of the public. The introduction of the ethical consumerism was made in very earlier stage of trade, but the problem is that the word consumerism is more celebrated in business world than it is practiced. But obviously different persons have different opinion about it. Further development of ethical consumerism is growing in recent consumer’s world which is known as the Sustainable Development. So from the view point of the above I have taken an initiative to make a report on TESCO Company and how they maintain an effective ethical consumerism (Douglas-Jones, 2015) ; (Hudson, Hudson and Edgerton, 2013).
Ethical consumerism means activities of the consumers towards ethical practices. An ethical consumer is a person who buys those goods and services which produced ethically. Definitions of ethical consumers are varies from one area to another. Some person thinks that ethical means more conscious about protecting environmental values but the word Ethical has a wider prospective. Those persons who are concerned about only environmental issues omit the other ethical issues like child labour or unfair trade practices etc. But all these should be the part of it. There are several product/service areas which include the ethical consumerism like in banking and finance industry e banking, paperless work; in energy producing sectors, use of natural resources for producing pollution less energy; in food and drink industry, introduction of organic foods; in fashion industry use of natural cosmetics etc.
Following are some arguments which proves the necessity of ethical consumerism (Ethical consumerism to reptile welfare: views aired at welfare forum, 2011); (Guivarch and Hallegatte, 2013)
There are now very less company who are concerned only about price. So we can say from the above discussion that in order to sustain in the competitive environment a company should follow ethical consumerism (Van Ooteghem and Xu, 2012).
Tesco is one of the leading retails (M Molavi and L Barrall, 2014) among the retail sectors in the world. This company was incorporated in a small market at London by Jack Cohen. With the increase in time the company grows and today it operates around 12 countries all over the globe. Wal- Mart and Carrefour are their main two competitors.
TESCO claims that a business if wants to be sustainable then it must follow a sustainable supply chain. TESCO’s ethical approach is based on four pillars like Values, Monitoring, Improvement, and Transparency (Tesco plc, 2015).
TESCO was the member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and it wants all of its suppliers should ensure works under the ETI based standard. In practice of ethical trading are committed to their suppliers and consumers in following ways:
Ethical audits are conducted by Tesco by adopting new methodologies. This helps consumers and supplies by reduction of duplicate work and ensure good quality product. It also takes corrective action plan to eliminate their inefficient business area. For this purpose an Auditor Recognition Program (ARP) is developed where a tight group of audit bodies approved the audit work.
TESCO gathers information about their workplace through workers because they think that they are the most suitable persons who can give them a better feedback about consumers’ preference as they have the direct communication with the consumers. Tesco team is also concerned about a good working environment for the workers. They had a farm level grievance mechanism giving opportunity over 3000 workmen to give their views and assure them that their problems will be taken into considerations.
TESCO provides a help line facility to the consumers and they are always active to give responses about their queries. After getting complain they immediately investigate the concerned matter and they are happy to maintain confidentiality about the complainants if requested.
It should be the most important matter of concern for each company. Recently Tesco has launched a safety programme in Dhaka, Bangladesh after the tragedy happened their where some workers lost their lives. They have around 54 people in Dhaka who improve and maintain the standard of their garment factories. They have employed qualified engineers to check the structural format of factory buildings. They have also the membership of Multi stakeholder Accord on Fire and Building safety. This is a very strong programme associated with other leading retailers chaired by the UN International Labour Organization.
As the consumers become trendier day by day their preferences are also changes at a fast rate. TESCO can identified the trends and focus more on the availability of hygienic resources which can serve consumers need as well as help them a greatest leverage point.
Tesco as its part of Corporate Social Responsibility provides an updated ethical programme to the leading public newspapers and websites for public information (Caruana and Chatzidakis, 2013) ; (Green and Peloza, 2014).
References
Caruana, R. and Chatzidakis, A. (2013). Consumer Social Responsibility (CnSR): Toward a Multi-Level, Multi-Agent Conceptualization of the “Other CSR”. Journal of Business Ethics, 121(4), pp.577-592.
Clarke, N. (2008). From Ethical Consumerism to Political Consumption. Geography Compass, 2(6), pp.1870-1884.
Douglas-Jones, R. (2015). A ‘good’ ethical review: audit and professionalism in research ethics. Social Anthropology, 23(1), pp.53-67.
Ethical consumerism to reptile welfare: views aired at welfare forum. (2011). Veterinary Record, 168(22), pp.595-595.
Green, T. and Peloza, J. (2014). How do consumers infer corporate social responsibility? The role of organisation size. J. Consumer Behav., p.n/a-n/a.
Guivarch, C. and Hallegatte, S. (2013). 2C or not 2C?. Global Environmental Change, 23(1), pp.179-192.
Harvard Business Review, (2015). Ethical Consumerism Isn’t Dead, It Just Needs Better Marketing. [online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2015/01/ethical-consumerism-isnt-dead-it-just-needs-betterMARKETING [Accessed 2 Jul. 2015].
Hawkins, (2012). Consumer behavior. [S.l.]: Mcgraw Hill Higher Educat.
Hazlett, K. (2012). Reputation Management: The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication (2nd ed.)20122John Doorley and Helio Fred Garcia. Reputation Management: The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication (2nd ed.) . New York, NY: Routledge 2011. 398 pp. Jnl of Product & Brand Mgt, 21(5), pp.380-381.
Hudson, M., Hudson, I. and Edgerton, J. (2013). Political Consumerism in Context: An Experiment on Status and Information in Ethical Consumption Decisions. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 72(4), pp.1009-1037.
Kotler, P. (2013). MARKETING. Frenchs Forest, N.S.W.: Pearson Australia.
M Molavi, J. and L Barrall, D. (2014). Energy Performance And Cost Analysis; A Prototype Sustainable Retail Building Vs. A Conventional Retail Building. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology, 03(08), pp.15108-15117.
Sternberg, E. (2013). Ethical Misconduct and the GlobalFINANCIAL Crisis. Economic Affairs, 33(1), pp.18-33.
Tesco plc, (2015). Tesco plc. [online] Available at: https://www.tescoplc.com/index.asp?pageid=11 [Accessed 2 Jul. 2015].
Van Ooteghem, K. and Xu, L. (2012). The life-cycle assessment of a single-storey retail building in Canada. Building and Environment, 49, pp.212-226.
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