Assessing the "myth of the Ethical Consumer": Demand for "living Wage" Apparel in the Penn State Bookstore
Open Access
- Author:
- Ogden, Justin Mark
- Area of Honors:
- Labor and Employment Relations
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Mark Sebastian Anner, Thesis Supervisor
Mark Sebastian Anner, Thesis Honors Advisor
Xiangmin Liu, Faculty Reader
Lisa Elizabeth Bolton, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- ethical consumerism
fair trade
living wage
collegiate apparel
globalization
Alta Gracia
worker rights
consumer behavior - Abstract:
- Alta Gracia apparel - the world's first "living wage" collegiate option presents collegiate bookstore consumers a unique product that does not command a price premium. Alta Gracia challenges the traditional approaches of paying workers low wages and preventing workers from joining unions by paying their employees a “living wage” and working with the local union. This study assesses consumer preferences for core and secondary product features and investigates how the ethical product performs in the Penn State bookstore. My study investigates the influence of expressed labor concern on actual purchasing decision, providing explanations for the gap between purchasing intent and actual purchasing behavior. Moving past the “mythical” nature of the ethical consumer, I present a complex collegiate apparel consumer split between selfless acts of citizenship and self-interested acts of consumption. Instead of expressed concern for labor ethics, individual purchasing decisions are more significantly influenced by perception of the ethical option’s style and labor ethics, loyalty to a single brand and willingness to pay for the ethical product. Consumer expectations are met by Alta Gracia product, although the average individual has great difficulty evaluating the ethical claims of the company. Implications of this clearer understanding of individual consumer behavior in the collegiate apparel marketplace are relevant to bookstores selling the ethical product, activist organizations advocating for support of the ethical product and Knights Apparel engaging individuals with the ethical product.