The fact that brands had certain values and defended certain beliefs or certain positions became a prominent element in recent times because it endowed firms and their products with certain dimensions and made them fit in with certain consumers. The values served to provide certain characteristics to the brands and thus made them fit in with certain market niches. The values were a very efficient tool, therefore, to make a market segmentation. The need for brands to comply with certain characteristics or to be located in certain positions was not, however, an element that marked the strategy at a general level Finland Mobile Database. That is, consumers did not want evil companies (and therefore companies made an effort to establish a strategy of corporate social responsibility and appear in information that showed that, despite everything, they were striving to do something or other well) but neither did they require completely inviolable ethical codes. In the list of things that mattered from brands, the issues that were most decisive were not their morals but elements such as the price or the quality of their products.
However, things are changing and consumers are demanding more and more complex and different things. Having certain morals, having certain ethics or highlighting certain values over other things is no longer an issue that affects companies trying to reach certain specific market niches. Now it has become a much more general question. More and more consumers are demanding that brands have principles. Ethics have thus become a crucial element of the identity of companies and one that consumers are increasingly taking into account. Ethics not only change what consumers think of the brand or the products, but it has a direct impact on purchasing decisions, making values an increasingly decisive element in the strategy of brands and in its positioning in the market. Thus, as a Mintel study shows , more and more consumers have made morality a primary issue and who are more willing than ever to stop consuming a product if they believe the brand is doing it wrong. According to their data, 63% of consumers (based on a US sample) consider ethical and moral issues to be increasingly important.
This means that three out of five have already incorporated it as a scale. But more interesting is to see how these elements affect their purchasing decisions: 56% of consumers would stop buying the products of a brand if they consider that it is unethical. It does not matter that there is no other alternative on the market: 35% would stop consuming even if there is no product to meet that need and 27% even if the competition offers a worse quality. Also, these elements have entered the conversation Brother Cell Phone List. Consumers are increasingly recommending to other consumers those products that belong to ethical firms and are becoming defenders, advocates , of firms that are doing things right. It is also very important to keep in mind that consumers do not want mere lip service. 52% believe that saying that a product is ethical is simply a way to manipulate consumers and 49% are convinced that even if a firm says that it is ethical in an item (for example, using fair trade chocolate or manufacturing nearby ) will not be in another area (for example paying salaries to your employees).
Therefore, companies do not have to show off their ethics with lip service but rather demonstrate it with facts. Why this change? What is it that has made consumers so tangibly focused on ethical issues? Why have they suddenly become obsessed with product morale and what affects them behind the scenes? It could be said that several forces have come into play and that they have all pulled along that line. On the one hand, there are the consumers’ own feelings, their own morals. Buyers feel much better when they are made with products that fall within this market niche. 58% of consumers, according to the Mintel study, feel much better when they buy ethical products. It could be said that the purchase is marked by the same realities that made the Christmas tele marathons succeed: consumers feel that they have complied, that they have done the good deed of the day. On the other hand, the growing interest in ethics can also be explained by a change in consumer demographics. As millennials become an increasingly important part of the consumer market and as their decisions have more and more weight in the market figures they also begin to weigh in the consumption habits of others.
And one of the issues that millennials value highly is ethics and values: they want brands to be more than just a money-making machine and they want them to have a kind of mission, to aspire to do something . And finally, the effect of fashion cannot be forgotten. Being aware has become the latest trend brands have to grapple with. “When corporate social responsibility became mainstream in the early 2000s, incorporating social initiatives and linking them to ethics became an effective way to attract attention and promote brand loyalty,” explains Lauren Bonetto, Style Analyst for life and entertainment at Mintel. “Now, with more than half of consumers willing to stop supporting unethical companies, it has become the norm and is often expected by consumers,” he says.
