● ‘Green crusaders’ (11%): “are already making a significant difference themselves and expect business to take a lead as well.”
● ‘If it’s easy’ (27%): “are willing to play their part provided it does not require significant personal change or sacrifice.”
● ‘What’s the point’ (38%) – “are increasingly concerned about environmental and social issues but don’t believe that they personally can make a difference.”
● ‘Not my problem’ (24%) – “haven’t engaged with green issues to date.”
M&S says that some of its ethical interventions are aimed at involving the more committed consumers, while others are designed so that the less concerned can rest assured that M&S is doing something.
10. Third, the current high profile of ethical issues takes place in a particular set of economic and social conditions. There is some debate about whether is specific to these conditions – in which case concern about ethics is a flash in the pan – or a long-lasting shift in consumer attitudes. It has been suggested, for example that consumers' concern about ethics depends on the level of economic growth. Corrado (1997) uses poll data to show that consumer concerns about how British companies treat the environment decreased dramatically, by 17%, when a recession began at the end of the 1980s. As the recession came to an end, these concerns began to increase again.
11. The present change in attitudes towards ethical consumption can therefore be attributed to many factors. A few possibilities include: backlash against the growth of cheap, fast fashion; public awareness-raising by campaign groups; climate change; rise in disposable income and fall in retail costs; availability of labels offering a more cast-iron guarantee; growth in information technology and travel.
Supply side: how the market has responded to ethical consumerism
12. Organic and Fairtrade certified cotton, 'wash at 30 degrees' labels, Product (RED), Marks & Spencer's 'Plan A', Estethica @ London Fashion Week: there is no doubt that the fashion industry is attempting to respond to the market demand (“chasing the ethical pound”, as some have described it). In fact, there is some evidence that the plethora of responses has confused consumers.
"There have been an increasing number of media reports highlighting the complexities of environmental concerns and the difficulties that operators in the market face,” says Angela Hughes, Consumer Research Manager at Mintel (cited in Mintel, nd), “but our research shows that for many consumers too much information and mixed messages are causing them simply to ‘switch off’. Although there are no easy solutions to many of the environmental and ethical dilemmas, which face society today, most consumers clearly need to be presented with simpler messages."
13. This is an understandable state of affairs: how does one say what is ethical and what isn’t when choosing between products made in a conventional factory using Fairtrade certified cotton, others made from conventional cotton for a fair trade social enterprise, others made in a conventional factory but in the UK (with fewer transport emissions), or yet more made from recycled materials but sold in an out-of-town supermarket built on the greenbelt? Is it fair to be critical of one partially 'ethical' initiative because it is 'unethical' in other ways? To help sort through the different initiatives, we could approach clothing companies that make ethical claims with two set of distinctions in mind that that are not mutually exclusive: