• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1-18
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• 2016

This study examines the impact of consumer ethics on the CSR motive attributions and, the subsequent consumer perception of the firm's ethicality. Data of 512 adults were collected nationwide using a self-administered questionnaire online. Exploratory and confirmative factor analysis were employed to identify six underlying dimensions of consumer ethics, as follows: actively benefiting from illegal actions, passively benefiting from illegal actions, no harm/no foul, economic benefiting from illegal actions, intellectual property infringement, and pro-environmental behavior. In order to examine the relationships between consumer ethics, CSR motive attribution, and consumer perceived ethicality, a structural equation modeling test was conducted. The results demonstrated that actively benefiting from illegal actions, economic benefiting from illegal action, and pro-environmental behavior had impacts on CSR motive attributions such as strategy-driven attribution, value-driven attribution, and stakeholder-driven attribution. Consequently, strategy-driven attribution and value-driven attribution influenced the consumer perception of the firm's ethicality, whereas stakeholder-driven attribution did not. This study provides an understanding of the CSR attribution mechanism from the view of consumer ethics that are multi-dimensional. The ethical judgements on different types of consumer behavior lead to attributions of CSR motives and subsequently their perception of a firm's ethicality.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.1204-1220
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• 2023

With the rising importance placed on sustainability for brands, a plethora of research addresses consumer responses concerning eco-friendly products. While positive effects of eco-friendly traits on beauty products have been discussed, this study addresses a wide research gap in the makeup category. Based on the goal-attribute theory and the lay theory of ethicality, detrimental effects of eco-friendly ingredient claims on perceived appearance enhancement attributes (AEA) were examined. A between-subject, single-factor (eco-friendly ingredient claims present vs. absent) web-based experimental design tested the effect of conditions on makeup products that emphasized AEA. Results found a negative effect of eco-friendly ingredient claims on perceived AEA, supporting previous literature regarding the 'green gap'. Evidence showed that perceived AEA fully mediated the effect of eco-friendly claims on purchase intention, which was moderated by AEA preference. Interestingly, findings show that the purchase intention of respondents with a near-average preference for AEA was not moderated. Results contribute to preexisting literature by extending the lay theory of ethicality and product function mismatch to the field of makeup. Managerial implications are discussed, including opportunities for eco-friendly makeup products to appeal to alternative benefits.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.527-541
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• 2020

Consumers' favorable attitude toward ethical brands, and the rise of ethical consumers, is a recent global trend. Nevertheless, prior studies have emerged that favoring ethical products does not necessarily lead to consumers' purchase. Focusing on this, authors attempted to explore what perceptions of the brand lead to purchase behavior. Three experiments were conducted for this purpose. Results are as follows. First, even in ethical products, consumers choose the product when it is perceived as more ethical. This tendency has been shown for both eco-friendly type and donation type products. Second, when there was no noticeable difference in ethicality, ethical consumers consider brand reputation as an important factor in choice. Third, results remains regardless of consumer individual characteristics (consumer altruism, conspicuousness). Note that, unexpectedly, the underdog effect was not observed among altruistic consumers. Several implications, limitations of research, and suggestions for future research were discussed.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.83-91
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• 2011

In addition to the globalization of the distribution industry and intensified competition, the importance of Private Brands has been emphasized, and thus, many studies that clarify the various preceding factors that affect PB purchase intent are being conducted. Following this trend, the purpose of this study is the following. First, the effect of distributor's corporate image on consumer behavior was verified. Second, the perceived quality difference on PB products according to consumers' job was verified. Third, satisfaction difference for PB products according to consumers' job was examined. Research results were shown as the following. First, factorial analysis, conducted to verify distributor's corporate image, gave out the result of ethicality, reliability, stability factors. Among those factors, ethicality and stability were shown to have an effect on brand attitude. However, reliability was not shown to influence PB brand attitude. Second, through the analysis to see the effect of distributor's corporate image on PB product attitude, it was verified that stability has an effect on PB product attitude but ethicality and reliability do not. Third, the analysis to verify the effect of distributor's corporate image on PB product purchase intent showed that ethicality has an effect on purchase intent, but reliability and stability do not. Fourth, housewives, the most active users of distributors, were shown the highest in the research on whether there is perceived quality difference according to consumers' job. Following the group were college students, and then office workers. Fifth, research on the level of satisfaction according to consumers' job showed that there was not a significant difference. The limitations and suggestions of this research were as the following. First, this study could go over each corporate image according to distributor type and characteristics. Due to the vast development of distribution industry, the companies can be classified according to the various types. Therefore, we propose the corporate image of each distributors to be checked, and furthermore, to verify which image of the different types of distributors has positive influence on consumer attitude. Second, PB products should have various perceived quality. However, in this research, it has not been verified which specific factors among the various perceived quality of PB products has a more meaningful influence on consumer attitude. Therefore, we also would like to propose a need for closer research on the specific factors and on which factor has a more positive influence on consumer attitude.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.47-56
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• 2020

Purpose: This study aims to explore how consumers respond to the immoral actions of a CEO. More specifically, this research focuses on the moral reasoning processes used by consumers in order to maintain support for the CEO despite the immoral action. In addition, this research suggests that support for the CEO would improve product purchase intention. Research design, data, and methodology: To test the hypotheses presented, an online research company was hired and online survey was conducted with adult participants. Online research company sent an email to the potential subjects asking their participation in an online survey. Subjects were able to participate in the online survey by clicking a link to the survey. When the participants clicked the link, they were instructed to read a fictitious newspaper article on a CEO's immoral action. And then, they were asked to answer several questions online. Responses were obtained from 336 adults participants and data were analyzed using SPSS Hayes Macro for a moderation effect and AMOS for a structural equation model. Result: Moral reasoning processes were divided into moral decoupling and moral rationalization and analyzed to determine their influence on product purchase. Also in this study, we suggest the public self-consciousness of consumers as an antecedent of moral reasoning processes, and argue that consumers with high public self-consciousness are more likely to engage in moral decoupling than moral rationalization. Conclusions: Our results showed that moral decoupling and moral rationalization improved the consumer's perception of corporate ethicality, which increased product purchase intention. In addition, consumers with high public self-consciousness were more likely to engage in moral decoupling than in moral rationalization. In addition, this research suggested that severity of the scandal would moderate the impact of public self-consciousness on moral decoupling. However, this hypothesis was not supported statistically since most participants perceived the scandal to be a highly severe incident, that may lead to an insignificant interaction effect between severity of the scandal and public self-consciousness. This research expands the scope of available research on corporate ethics and consumer responses to negative information involving celebrities and provides practical implications for corporate crisis management.