Consumer Behavior

INTRODUCTION

This research project is about to study on consumer ethics in Malaysia. According to dictionaries, ethics means principles, morals, beliefs, moral values and etc. Meanwhile, consumer ethic means the morals that consumer show or display in doing for purchasing, using and servicing. This research paper had narrowing to the segmentation of consumer in Malaysia which to see how their react towards ethics in their daily life.

As for the Malaysian consumer, the ethical disciplined is more in the line of Islamic perspective and their culture itself. For example, the problems of halal product, this is clearly shown that the Malaysian consumer is really aware with it which shows the good ethical conduct. As for the other races, their ethical is shown when it comes to the problems of the product itself such as price and the quality.

From the Western perspective, the ethical conduct is more on individualistic behavior that is really cross culture with the Malaysians behavior. However, all the principle of Western and Malaysian is actually can influenced to the customer in Malaysia by having a different knowledge of studies and ethical conduct.

IMPORTANT AND SIGNIFICANT OF THIS RESEARCH PAPER

Firstly, the most importance of having this research paper is to create awareness to Malaysian consumer towards developing of good morals and behavior. Depending on the research, we can see the need and the behavior by having the questionnaires given to them. As we stated in the introduction, consumer ethics is study about their behavior, moral and beliefs, it is clearly shown why we having this research paper.

Secondly, the importance of this research paper is to give knowledge to consumer what is ethics all about and how to react to it. Even in Islamic teaching itself stressing about the use of ethics in daily life. This is because; ethics can lead a consumer to behave in a right behavior.

Thirdly, as we can see in the set of the questionnaires, we had asked about their personal details whether female or male, this is to find a differentiation of ethics between them. Who is more ethical?

OBJECTIVE

Ð'„X To examine the Malaysian consumers with regard to their perceptions of various

potentially unethical consumer behavior.

Ð'„X To know how knowledgeable consumer about ethics

Ð'„X To know the attitudes of consumer in Malaysia

Ð'„X To show how consumer in Malaysia react with ethics

Ð'„X To investigate whether the income is in line towards the ethical consumerism

Ð'„X To see the differentiation between gender

LITERATURE REVIEW

Ethics is one of the fundamental in doing business transaction. According to Lewis et al. (2004), ethics can be defined as the established customs and moral and fundamental human relationships that may vary throughout the world. Ethics can guide our action and determine whether every decision we take is right or wrong. In business world, however, ethical conduct is not always clear especially when organization are operating in an international environment. Researchers have pointed out that business ethics is not a special set of ethical rules that differ from ethics in general. Business ethics is the application of the general ethical rules to business behavior (Goodman et al. 2004). If a society deems dishonesty, unethical and immoral, and then anyone in business who is dishonest with employees, customers or competitors is acting unethically and immorally.

According to the ethical behavior, Ethics has been variously defined as a system of moral principles, rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human behavior, values relating to human conduct, the rightness and wrongness of certain actions, and "just" or "right" standards of behavior between parties in a situation. Translating the concept of ethics into a research procedure, we subscribe to the definition of ethics as the rightness and wrongness of certain actions by the parties involved. Doing the right thing may therefore be equated to behaving in an ethical manner. It does not mean doing what is legal; rather it presupposes legal conduct and requires behavior which is morally correct. Of course, the dilemma is that what is ethical is not necessarily congruent with a firm's often-stated objective of maximizing profits, especially in the short run. Also problematic is the fact that there is no universal agreement on exactly what constitutes "the right thing".

Every year, there are many billions of dollars that has been spend by the people to buy contraband products even though there are many strict rules that has been create by the government to prevent this kind of trading to be expand (Albers-Miller,1999). According to it, the purpose of her writing is to determine why people make the decision to purchase illegal goods by using four-predictor measure such as product type, buying situation, perceived criminal risk and the price. In addition, this kind of analysis had using conjoint analysis in order to obtain individual main and selected interaction effects on the willingness of consumers to purchase illegal goods. Nowadays, there are many opinions about the purchase of illegal goods among the consumers where cluster analysis had been adopted to segment the consumer. Furthermore, according to (Albers-Miller, 1999), discriminate analysis had been used in order to assess the important of variable. Nevertheless, the result of analysis is varied even though the overall model has shown the positive success in the process of analysis. However, the main effects of product type, buying situation and price were all significant predictors of willingness to buy.

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In addition, the consumers are also relying on ethical norms or perceived consequences of behaviors in determine their judgment and action in situations that involving ethical issues. By doing this kind of analysis, three studies should be adopted in order to obtain the result in the analysis. Firstly, the study is taken the sample of adultÐ'ÐŽÐ'¦s consumers where the consumers are rely on the ethical norm rather than perceived consequences in forming their judgments. More over, the analysis also indicates that consumers are more depend on the ethical norms in determining their