Consumer Research on Ethical Consumption Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Consumer Research on Ethical Consumption - Essay Example General assumption on relationship between attitudes and behavior is the consistency. This is known as principle of consistency which means expectation on consistency of one’s behavior with the attitudes hold by them. Furthermore it means people are rational and try to behave rationally at every time. Though this principle is through, it is clear that consumers do not always follow that. Sometimes it is able to experience irrational behavior. For an instance, majority of consumers are smoking cigarettes while knowing this consumption causes heart diseases and lung cancers. Literature relevant to theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior are significant theories that discussed this attitude-behavior relationship in-depth manner. Attitude is defined as a permanent, general evaluation regarding people or person, objects, issues or advertisements (Soloman et.al, 2010). Difficulty of changing and nature of evaluating something are discussed as the characteristics of attitude according to above definition. Relationship between attitude and behavior is presented by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) based on theory of reasoned action. As theorized by Gordon W. Allport in 1935, there is a multidimensional relationship in between attitude and behavior but not one-dimensional relationship. It means attitude is a complex system that consists with individual’s belief regarding the object, feeling on the object and action tendencies towards the object.