The connection between marketing and ethics is becoming extremely important to companies today.  Consumers now care about how the company goes about its business, and the implications the business processes has on people, animals and the environment.

Let’s examine a topic about companies marketing their products as being “ethical” products such as Fair Trade stamps, or environmentally friendly packaging.  Companies will attempt at ensuring that the processes that go into creating a product are ethical, and the company will market the product reflecting these “fair” processes.  Since these measures cost the company more money, the firms are hoping that “ethical” consumers will respect the companies more and therefore purchase a marked up product.

But as this Wall Street Journal article examines, are consumers willing to spend the extra cash to “reward” these ethical companies?  Summarizing the Journal’s experiment, they found that consumers are willing to pay a slight premium for an ethically made product.  However, consumers are also willing to purchase a non-ethically made product if it’s offered at a great discount.

So, it seems as though a completely ethical product won’t necessarily win consumers over.  As the article also suggests, if a company demonstrates a slight effort into making its product or service ethical then this could be enough to draw consumers’ attention.  So this also raises the question for companies attempting to go “all in” with ethical production, is it worth it?

Sure, company executives may have it in their heart to want to show consumers that their company produces fairly made products.  But in the end it all depends on the bottom line, and how it affects their year-end bonus.  I think if you use this study as a base, spending just a little extra on ethical production is enough.