INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF RELIGIOSITY, CONSUMER ETHICAL BELIEFS AND ANTICIPATED GUILT ON UNETHICAL CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

Ethical behaviour is indispensable for a long lasting and mutually satisfying seller-buyer dyadic relationship (Berry and Seiders, 2008). As a result, a substantial amount of conceptual and empirical work in the marketing discipline has been devoted to examining and investigating ethical issues (Ferrell et al., 1989; Hunt and Vitell, 1986, 2006; Schlegelmilch and Oberseder, 2010). However, Schlegelmilch and Oberseder, in their review of the marketing ethics literature, acknowledged that while “research interest in consumer ethics [CO] has grown since the 1990s research that focuses on ethical issues surrounding corporations still exerts considerable dominance ….. that consumer ethics research still has to catch up” (2010, p. 13). Moreover, other researchers have also highlighted that the majority of the literature concerning ethics in the marketplace is favoured towards the seller side. (Kavak et al., 2009; Swaidan, 2012). Until recently, there has been minimal change in marketing research ethics to correct this imbalance, and consumer ethics continues to be a “nascent field of enquiry” (Vitell et al., 2016). Consumer ethics, thus, represents the underdeveloped counter-equivalent of business ethics. It is noteworthy that while research in consumer ethics existed before 1990, it did not receive much attention (e.g., Moschis and Powell, 1986). However, beyond the 1990s, consumer ethics research gained traction due to the realization that (a) consumers are an essential part of the seller-buyer dyadic relationship and (b) supporting a truly ethical marketplace is crucial for taking marketing transactions beyond short-term discrete exchanges to long-term relational exchanges (Berry and Seiders, 2008; Gundlach and Murphy, 1993; Rao and Wugayan, 2005). The relevance of consumer ethics in business and social contexts is beyond doubt due to the substantial costs that firms, employees, customers, and the environment suffer from unethical consumer behaviour (Schwart, 2016). For instance, in the service context, consumer misbehaviour impacts a firm’s bottom line and has a negative impact on the service experience of other consumers (Schaefers et al., 2016). Likewise, Appriss Retail (2018) reported that fraudulent or abusive returns from consumers touched $ 18.4 billion in monetary terms. The above examples suggest that unethical consumer behaviour is expanding in scope and intensity with time and connotes a form of “guerrilla warfare against companies” (Fombelle et al., 2020; Tian et al., 2002). Thus, unethical behaviour on the part of consumers is a major cause of concern for practitioners as it leads to significant business losses and jeopardizes the maintenance of consumer-firm relationships (Rao and Wugayan, 2005; Steenhaut and Van Kenhove, 2006). The fact that marketers often find it challenging to deal with unethical consumer practices makes consumer ethics a key focus for both marketing practitioners and researchers. Therefore, a better understanding of why some consumers behave unethically can help practitioners devise strategies to curtail such (unethical) practices and reinforce the long-lasting and mutually satisfying customer-firm relationships. Its pervasive nature and non-trivial implications for organizations and other stakeholders present an urgent case for exploring the factors that may discourage consumers from taking advantage of the seller. To address this lacuna in marketing ethics literature, the present research work examines the role of religiosity, consumer ethical beliefs, and anticipated guilt in curbing unethical consumer behaviour. For this, a conceptual model is proposed that investigates the role of religiosity (i.e., intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity) on consumer ethical beliefs (beliefs towards unethical behaviour and beliefs towards doing good) and the subsequent direct and indirect (via anticipated guilt) impact of ethical beliefs on unethical consumer behaviour. This research adopted a quantitative cross-sectional research design for testing the proposed relationships. Data was collected from students enrolled in a public university in Roorkee, India through offline and online modes. The data analysis was carried out using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Overall, the findings reveal that religiosity, consumer ethical beliefs, and anticipated guilt can play a crucial role in curbing unethical consumer behaviour. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity has an inverse relationship with beliefs towards unethical behaviour and a positive relationship with beliefs towards doing good. Further, beliefs towards unethical behaviour promote unethical conduct, while beliefs towards doing good have the opposite effect on unethical behaviour. Finally, results reveal that anticipated guilt not only promotes an individual’s tendency to desist from unethical behaviour but also mediates the relationship between beliefs towards unethical behaviour and unethical consumer behaviour. These research findings have significant theoretical and practical implications. The research advocates a novel approach to prevent or scale down the prevalence of unethical consumer behaviour by activating “internal moral concern” among individuals based on religiosity, ethical beliefs and anticipated guilt. This may foster an ethically conscious mindset and, subsequently, curtail unethical consumer behaviour. Overall, this empirical research adds to the consumer ethics literature by providing insights into the consumer ethical beliefs of Indian consumers and ways to curtail unethical consumer behaviour.