Acta Univ. Agric. Silvic. Mendelianae Brun. 2013, 61(7), 1957-1967 | DOI: 10.11118/actaun201361071957

Purchasing behavior of Fairtrade customers

Mariana Ambrožová, Ondřej Částek

Department of Corporate Economy, Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University, Lipová 41a, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic

The volume of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities is increasing worldwide; the European Union considers CSR to be one of the ways to achieve the most competitive economy and CSR awareness is also rising among companies in the Czech Republic, their customers, and the public. Bearing this in mind, Fairtrade goods, a subset of CSR and sustainable development, is an attractive step for vendors to take towards their customers. In this paper, we try to learn who the buyers of Fairtrade products are and what their motivation is in order to help Fairtrade dealers know their target group better, while at the same time helping expand this target group for organizations such as Fairtrade Czech Republic. We utilize an empirical survey and employ both univariate and bivariate statistical analyses (descriptives, associations, correlations) for this purpose. While some previous findings were confirmed, such as (the influence of age and education on Fairtrade purchasing behavior, moral principles and quality of the product being stated as the most important motives to buy Fairtrade products, the significance of the Fairtrade logo and certificate for the buyers' awareness) one was disproved. According to the gathered data, the economic situation of a household does not affect Fairtrade purchasing behavior.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, Fairtrade, political consumer, competitive advantage, buyers' motivation, buyers' behavior, empirical research

Received: August 26, 2013; Published: December 24, 2013  Show citation