Ethical and Sustainable Customer Culture

Running head: ETHICAL AND SUSTAINABLE CUSTOMER CULTURE
Ethical and Sustainable Customer Culture
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ETHICAL AND SUSTAINABLE CUSTOMER CULTURE1
Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Literature Review...................................................................................................................2
2.1. Viewpoints on the definition of Sustainability................................................................2
2.2. Ethical Consumerism......................................................................................................3
2.3. Ethical Consumerism and Cultural Capital.....................................................................4
2.4. Customer Choice Criteria................................................................................................5
2.5. Problems of ethics and sustainability in Consumer Society...........................................6
3. Summary................................................................................................................................7
References:.................................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
The study of ethical consumption is growing through various literature. Customers
today have become highly health conscious. They expect more than ever before.
Sustainability today is on the radar screen of each essential company or organisation. There
are several organisations all around that have made some significant shifts for redesigning
their operations behind the sustainable principles (Doppelt 2017). They are the sustainability
leaders and some of them to mention are Unilever, Interface and Patagonia. Similarly, the
importance of ethics could never be overlooked or overemphasised in all walks of life. It is
crucial for each and everyone to have some standards and set of moral values and also in the
realm of business dealings. This paper is going elaborate on presenting a narrative review on
the topic of ethical and sustainable customer culture.
2. Literature Review
According to Singh and Stalin (2018), ethics refer to the “difference between what
you have a right to do and what is right to do”. Several people around the globe work for
considering consumer ethics and making ethical customer choices in their daily lives. As per
Davies and Gutsche (2016), these people do this in response to the challenging conditions
that plague the human-made crisis of climate and the global supply chains. For approaching
such issues from the sociological viewpoint, one can see that the customer choices matter as
they have some sweeping political, economic, environmental and social implications that
reach far beyond the context of the daily lives.
2.1. Viewpoints on the definition of Sustainability
As claimed by John and Narayanamurthy (2015), sustainability refers to the process
of maintaining a change in a well-balanced environment in which the direction of
investments, exploitation of the resources, the orientations of the institutional change and

ETHICAL AND SUSTAINABLE CUSTOMER CULTURE3
technological development are all in harmony. It is widely claimed to be enhancing the
current and the future potential of a company, product or goods to meet the aspirations and
needs of human beings. Diemont and Toland (2019) have regarded sustainability as a broad
discipline and provides an insight into most of the aspects of the human world right from
business and technology to environment and social science. In recent years, with the growing
concern for environment and society, the skills of sustainability along with environmental
awareness is considered to be a priority in several corporate sectors and businesses as they
seek for adhering to the new legislation. The main aim behind sustainable practise as opined
by Geissdoerfer et al. (2017) is that of meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the well-being of the future as he defined it as “meeting our own needs without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
It is also to mention that the term sustainability is often considered to be as the way
how biological systems endure while staying productive and diverse. However, in this 21st-
century world, this definition of sustainability has gone far beyond such a narrow criterion. In
present days, it is referred to the vitality of developing sustainable models that are required
for both the human beings and the planet Earth to survive well. According to Olsen (2018),
sustainability is a balancing act. As per the “Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development: Our Common Future” of United Nation’s 1987, sustainable
development has the potential to meet the needs of the present while keeping secured the
well-being of the future (Imperatives, 1987). This concept has continuously expanded in
terms of its scope. In the year 2000, this definition was broadened by the Earth Charter that
included the concept of a global society- “founded on respect for nature, universal human
rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace”.