Browsing by Subject "Ethical consumption"
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Item Open Access Consumption of counterfeit designer brands : reasons, practices and consequences(Bilkent University, 2005) Akkoç, Ali UtkuThis thesis examines the consumption reasons, practices and consequences of nondeceptive counterfeit designer brand clothing, which has been becoming rampant in Turkey as stressed by diverse resources. Utilizing qualitative research methods, the study was conducted through interviewing twenty counterfeit designer brand consumers nine of which additionally possessed the authentic items. Three consumers who solely consume the authentic items were also included in the sample. Findings suggest that consumers prefer counterfeit designer brand clothing not only for economic reasons, but also for symbolic reasons such as ardent desire, reference group influence, experiential fulfillment, nostalgic appeal as well as perceivably unfair prices of authentic items. Consumers selectively display the counterfeit items in different public domains and selectively disclose information about their consumption to avoid social anxiety and embarrassment. As a consequence, consumers authenticate an otherwise strange identity through such consumption practices. It is not only fantasy and real that commingle, but also fake and authentic, which mesh through a process of authentication as determined by the desires of the consumer. The study has implications for the literature on counterfeit consumption, price fairness, symbolic consumption as well as postmodernism and concludes with a discussion of limitations and opportunities future research.Item Open Access How do consumers self-license themselves in the context of ethical consumption?: a qualitative approach to moral self-licensing(Bilkent University, 2022-07) Çelik, HafizeEthical decision making processes of people have been a locus of research across disciplines because morality is considered as an important yet complex tenet of social life. The research to date has aimed at exploring the inconsistency in ethical decision-making processes of individuals to comprehensively apprehend the issue. A research stream on moral self-licensing (ML) effect has revealed that individuals are more likely to follow an amoral behavior if they established moral behaviors earlier. Since the ML phenomenon has been investigated mainly via the experimental approaches, the nature of ML has been almost exclusively explained by a single empirical model, called moral credits model, and therefore, the ML effect has remained rather underexplored. As such, the main objective of this thesis is to explore ML in the context of ethical consumption in which the ethical decision-making processes are at the forefront. With a methodological shift from the dominant research stream on the ML effect, this thesis embraces interpretivist approaches based on consumers lived experiences and accounts about moral dilemmas during the ethical consumption behaviors by interviews and projective methods. The findings of the thesis suggest that there are alternative models of moral self-licensing: reversed moral credentials, moral supplement, moral societal position, and moral systemic position. These findings not only expand the definition of ML but also inform some neglected aspects of the attitude behavior gap in ethical consumption. The findings of the thesis are expected to set a scholarly dialogue to enhance the growth and expansion of ethical markets.