Eetilise ja poliitilise tarbimise kuvand tudengite seas
Date
2009
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
Social responsibility is one of the most important issues to gain global attention lately. The
subject is also well known in Estonian context and deserves to be pointed out. The bachelor´s
thesis "Image of ethical and political consumption among students" is researching the
awareness and attitudes of young mature consumers in relation to ethical consumption.
The theoretical part of this research focuses on describing the consumer society. It looks into
the object of research: ethical and political consumption. It also expands on social marketing
as a way to approach ethical consumption. Fair trade is pointed out under ethical consumption
because ethical consumption embodiments through it. Additionally there are brought out a
few earlier researches, some of which have also focused on ethical consumption. The most
significant one is the research made by The Nielsen Company.
The purpose of this bachelor´s thesis was to find out, what influences students on their
decisions in consumption to see, if ethical or political aspects come forth. After that I focused
more and more on ethical consumption. I found out if and how the ethical, political, fair trade
related etc. aspects of mature young people´s habits in consumption differentiate.
Furthermore, in which lines of goods or decisions in consumption these aspects are
considered.
In the third part of the interviews I examined how the students connect their habits in
consumption with their field of studies in the university. The purpose was to see, if the habits
in consumption of students with different specialties are somehow influenced by their
specialties. The last blocks of the interview focused on creating a semantic field for ethical
consumption among students and on the expert opinions of students on the subject of
research.
The principal results showed that ethical consumption doesn´t have a certain semantic field
among the interviewed students and various students approach ethical consumption in their
own way. Ethical consumption appeared to have connections with rational consumption, environment-friendly consumption and fair trade. The respondents opinion about relevance
of this subject in Estonia divided into two: half of the respondents considered it to be an
actual problem and the other half less actual. Nevertheless ethical consumption was seen more
as a positive ideology directed to helping developing countries. But there were also brought
out several problems which associate with ethical consumption. The most important one is
lack of information about ethical consumption the interviewees found, that larger
informative work would be necessary. The other problem was that there is a need to deal with
other more important questions in Estonian society and before we start to think of the others,
we need to take care of our own welfare.
The interviewed students were mostly aware of different unethical ways to manufacture but
there were still no signs of ethical aspects in their choices in consumption. For example, fair
trade and manufacturers ethical reputation were mostly less important factors in their
decisions. The only factor, on which students seemed to pay attention, was preferring
Estonian products, which can be related to political consumption. But the respondents
themselves didn´t see preferring to buy Estonian products as political consumption.
Current bachelor´s thesis gives a synopsis of how young mature consumers understand ethical
consumption, how they have had contacts with it and how it influences their habits in
consumption. Ethical and political consumption should certainly be explored in the future,
because the subject is becoming more and more actual. Also, the chosen method of research
didn´t enable to make representative abstractions. Current work is mainly a pilot study, which
may give material to further researches.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd