It is necessary to quantify the instances and types of noncompliance with ethical
behavior observed in each type of product or service tested, as well the information available
to consumers about these faults. In the case of the supermarket sector in Chile, there was at
least one incident per month in the year prior to the fieldwork for this study, and all of the
events were widely covered by the press. They included penalties assessed for poor sanitary conditions for perishable goods, the distribution of toys made with toxic substances, abusive
payment practices for suppliers, illegal treatment of workers, excessive and illegal hidden
charges on store credit cards, differences between the prices publicized and the prices
charged, discrimination in personnel selection, and misleading advertising. The retail
supermarket sector in Chile is continually in the news for these types of issues, but
consumers‘ purchase behavior seems to be unaffected. Du et al. (2010) explain that even
though ―much of the academic research to date … has largely presumed or mandated (e.g. in
laboratory studies) CSR awareness on the part of the relevant test populations…, recent
studies with real stakeholders revealed that awareness of a company‘s CSR activities is
typically low among its stakeholders‖ and that this may explain the low stakeholders‘ reaction
to these strategic initiatives. From this information, we derive the first research hypothesis:
H1. There is no awareness among the majority of consumers in Chile about the unethical
behaviors of supermarkets