Does Fair Trade Breed Contempt? A Cross-Country Examination on the Moderating Role of Brand Familiarity and Consumer Expertise on Product Evaluation

Vera Herédia-Colaço, Rita Coelho do Vale and Sofia Villas-Boas

Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley

Abstract: This article is a within- and cross-country examination of the impact of fair trade certification on consumers’ evaluations and attitudes toward ethically certified products. Across three experimental studies, the authors analyze how different levels of brand familiarity and fair trade expertise impact consumer decisions. The authors study this phenomenon across markets with different social orientation cultures to analyze potential dissimilarities in the way consumers evaluate and behave toward ethically certified products. Findings suggest that fair trade certifications enhance product valuations. However, this effect is especially observed for low familiar brands, once the level of fair trade expertise increases. Findings also suggest that there are individual cultural differences with respect to social and environmental labeling expertise that may account for some of the unexplained variation in choice behaviors observed across countries. Results indicate that especially in more (mature) individualistic markets (vs. collectivistic) consumer ethical behavior seems to be greatly influenced by consumers’ perceptions about the eligibility of brands using (or not) fair trade. This effect is strengthened by the significant mediating role of consumers’ ethicality perceptions on the relationship between fair trade and the willingness to pay for brands.

Keywords: Behavioral and Social Science; Fair trade; Product valuation; Product evaluation; Willingness to pay; Ethical consumption; Cross-cultural ethical behaviors; Business and Management; Marketing; Applied Ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/89d1v08c.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Fair Trade Breed Contempt? A Cross-Country Examination on the Moderating Role of Brand Familiarity and Consumer Expertise on Product Evaluation (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:agrebk:qt89d1v08c

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().