Investigating the relationship between consumer societal knowledge and the purchase of socially-conscious products: Testing the assumptions of the societal marketing concept

Societal marketing - marketing based on socially or environmentally conscious attributes, has for many years been considered an accepted chapter of marketing theory. However, consumer response to many socially-conscious products never met expectations - prompting marketing researchers to re-examine the assumptions underpinning the societal marketing theory. One such assumption is that, given consumer concern for environmental and social issues, there is a positive, significant relationship between consumer societal knowledge and the purchase of socially-conscious products. However, the few studies which have examined this relationship have failed to provide consistent results, and thus the nature of the relationship remains unclear.It is argued within this thesis that the equivocation of results may have been a methodological artefact, as investigations often used general rather than specific measures and excluded moderating variables from their theoretical models. Adopting a mixed-method approach, this study first used qualitative interviews to identify moderating variables which may impact the relationship between the knowledge and purchase. The identified potential moderating variables were then incorporated into quantitative, survey research which was used to examine the nature of the relationship between consumer societal knowledge and the purchase of socially-conscious products.The study found that the relationship between the variables is both positive and significant, but weak. The results revealed that one contextual variable, Health, moderated the relationship between knowledge and purchase. The results also suggest the more traditional product attribute of price remains the most significant predictor of purchase - far greater than the consumers' societal knowledge.