A Research On Consumer Ethics In Mainland China With Sociality Views

Using a sample (N=535) drawn from consumers of Mainland China, this study investigates Chinese consumer's ethical behaviors with three sociality views such as the consumer ethics actuality, the influence of consumers'cognition to social rewards-punishments on their ethical decision-making, the correlation between ethical evaluation and their response to cause-related marketing.The results reveal that, the factor structure of ethical beliefs produced in this study is consistent with previous studies greatly, and Chinese consumers are more sensitive to the"illegal"and"passive"unethical behaviors than those"active"and"no harm"behaviors, which offers a useful support for the argument that a link exists between ethical intentions implied in the western ethical scale and ethical behavior, as well as reports that consumers of Mainland China present double-standards in ethical evaluation similar to their counterparts of Hong Kong.It is also found in this study that two ethical ideology categories (idealism and relativism) and Machiavellianism affect significantly Chinese consumers'ethical evaluation but ethical ideology functions correlated to consumption situations while Machiavellianism does not. In demographical variables, gender, age, family annul income, birthplace and education are found to affect significantly their ethical evaluation in some consumption situations.Moreover, the results report that consumers'ethical decision in some consumption situations with ethical implications is significantly correlated to their cognition to social rewards-punishments. The more sensitive to the soft dimension of social rewards-punishments consumers are, the more they are likely to refuse those questionable benefiting behaviors, which indicating that cultural environment influence the relationship between consumer ethics and social rewards-punishments, and in collectivism culture which emphasizing group's welfare and social harmony, the soft dimension of social rewards-punishments (social consensus and the pressure from relational groups), a soft guiding power, can promote consumers to be more ethical for Chinese traditional cultural values can induce moral behaviors. However, the hard dimension of social rewards-punishments has two-side functions to their ethical evaluation, which related to consumption situations and individual characteristics, and this result indicats that the legal measures may fail in stopping consumers buying piratical goods in China's market.In addition, the results affirm that the ethical cognition of Chinese consumers in different consumption situations and their response to cause-related marketing influence with each other, and Chinese consumers tend to being two-sides in their response to cause-related marketing: more favor of firms that taking cause-related marketing in their cognition domain but less support in their consumption behaviors like buying cause-related goods, which are correlated to the double-standards in their ethical evaluation and the current situation of China's market.The conclusions in three sociality views imply that Chinese consumers show obvious sociality of attending in social groups and improving social welfare in their consumption behaviors, and these sociality is not only correlated to individual variables, consumption situations, social cultural factors, but also to the social behaviors of bargainers, the another one of general buyer-seller game.