Perceptions about God and Ethical Consumption

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Perceptions about God and Ethical Consumption

By

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Perceptions about God and Ethical Consumption

Master Thesis, MSc Marketing Management

University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

June 17th, 2018

Maria Paschalidou

Student number: S3475158

Address: Antaresstraat 21-33 9742LA Groningen, Netherlands

Tel: +30 6949934697

E-mail: paschalidou2@gmail.com, m.paschalidou@student.rug.nl

First Supervisor:

Assistant Professor Sumaya Albalooshi

Second Supervisor:

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Abstract

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1. Introduction

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"- Plato, Euthuphro

It has been stated that 93% of the current population on earth are believers, having and practicing a specific religion (Keysar & Navarro-Rivera, 2013).It is assumed that religion existed in the pre-historic period were no written archives survived. Religion was originally used mainly to explain different physical

phenomena and how the world was created. Later in time, religious beliefs were used as a mechanism to relieve the pain of a loss, to cope with stress and the anxieties of the modern civilization (Pargament, Ano & Wachholtz, 2005). For example, people went to church and prayed daily for an illness to be cured or for their loved ones to return from war. Some people manipulated this need for a divine presence by using religion as a tool to control the masses and to obtain more power (Donahue & Nielsen, 2005).

Today, religion still plays a major role in our everyday life and decisions. Religion has the power to shape our self-perception and behavior as consumers. For instance, religiosity decreases impulsivity (Saroglou, 2002) and increases

conservatism (Saroglou, Delpierre & Dernelle, 2004). In marketing, studies have focused mainly on religion as a segmentation variable. Moreover, beliefs in heaven and hell create the perception of rewards and punishments that lead in an optimal lifetime behavior (Barro & McCleary,2003). Thus, we can also say that religion prescribes morality. This is, in a broad sense, the relationship this research aims to explore. Whereas dearth of research has explored the positive consequences of religion on consumption behavior, here we posit that consumption of products that have implication for larger ethical issues can be influenced by specific associations an individual has of God. More specifically, we propose that when God is represented as an unforgiving God, consumers are become more cautious of products with ethical issues. On the other hand, a God associated with forgiveness makes consumers more tolerant of consumption of products implicated for its unethical production.

In the following section, the conceptual framework of our model is established. In the first part, we broadly review the literature on religion and

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the hypothesis. Moving forward, you will find an explanation of the research design that we used followed by the presentation and interpretation of the results. Finally, in the last sections of this paper, there is the discussion part including limitations and suggestions for future research. Before going into the literature review, it is important to highlight that the scope of the current research is not to delve into various

manifestations and dimensions of religion and explore how religious

affiliations/beliefs influence ethical behavior, rather we focus purely on how specific representations of God influence ethical consumption.

2. Conceptual Framework

2.1. Religion and Consumption Behavior

Religion is an important societal factor that has a significant impact on people’s attitudes and behavior towards the choice of products and overall consumption. Religiousness is defined in terms of religious beliefs and emotional attachment to religion as they reflect one’s behavior (Barnett, Bass & Brown, 1996). Existing literature that examines the relationship between religion and actual consumer behavior is limited and only recently has begun to receive attention (for review see, Mathras, Cohen, Mandel & Mick, 2016). Hirschman (1983) identified possible explanations for this limited focus of consumer researchers on religion. The first, is that researchers are not aware of the connection that religion might have to

consumption context and the second reason includes the fact that religion is still a very sensitive subject, in many cases a “taboo”, that many researchers avoid to further investigate.

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studies in marketing research related to segmentation, show that often products are offered to satisfy the religious beliefs of various religious affiliation such as products that cater to Jews or Muslims consumers due to kosher and halal religious laws (Ahmad, Rustam, & Dent, 2011; Alserhan, 2010). Mokhlis (2009) found that price and quality consciousness and impulse buying are three factors that are tightly related to religion. Religious consumers tend to be more motivated by value shopping, according to which they search for the best deals and offers, and they look for high quality products. Also, they are less likely to engage in spontaneous and impulsive consumption. Moreover, religion can influence product innovativeness and

information seeking (Hirschman, 1981).Catholic, Jewish and Protestants use different criteria to evaluate their product choices (Hirschman, 1983), with Jewish consumers being more innovative and less brand loyal (Hirschman, 1981). Moreover, since Jewish people are less likely to believe in the existence of life after death in

comparison to other religious groups, they are prone to express greater death anxiety (Cohen & Hall, 2009). Consumers that have a fear of death showed a higher

preference for high status products and brands and a tendency towards materialism and greed (Heine, Harihara & Niiya, 2002; Kasser & Sheldon, 2000). In relation to Catholicism, research elucidates that Catholic consumers are more influenced by mood, price and location in decision making for entertainment products compared to devout Protestants, who are looking for products on sales, they do not tend to believe in the relationship between price and quality and they prefer informative forms of advertising (Hirschman, 1982; Sood & Nasu, 1995). Catholics are also less informed shoppers in contrast with Hindus consumers that appear to be rational shoppers and Muslims that are neither informed nor risky shoppers (Bailey & Sood, 1993). More recent studies have also found that religion, independent of individual religious affiliation and by merely making the presence of God salient to consumers made consumers less responsive to fear appeals in advertisement because consumers feel protected (Wu & Cutright, 2018) and tend to avoid temptations in the environment from the fear of retribution (Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2012).

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with the different perceptions consumers may hold about God regardless of their religious affiliation and we will try to examine how these representations of God influence ethical consumption behavior.

2.2. Religion and Ethical Behavior

Ethics is a set of moral principles that guide a person’s behavior in his daily life. Ethicality becomes relevant to the consumption context when consumers are exposed to products with ethical attributes such as environmental, labor practices, and animal treatment (Reczek, Irwin, Zane & Ehrich, 2017). The term of ethical

consumption can be referred to consumption that makes a difference in the world (Irving, Harrison & Rayner, 2002). It is not a rare occurrence for a consumer to encounter products in the marketplace that have implications for larger ethical issues, for instance use of palm oil in products, manufacturing of products in countries implicated for child labor and so on. It becomes the responsibility of the consumer to identify an ethical dilemma and to reason through several courses of action and eventually choose the right decision. In such cases, it is expected that consumers will punish a product with unethical components by not purchasing it (Folkes & Kamins, 1999). However, that may not always be the case. It has been suggested that although consumers exhibit high concern for ethical consumption, many of these unethical practices go unnoticed and have little impact in the market place and consumer consumption decisions (Ehrich & Irwin, 2005).This may be due to the attitude-behavior gap, but consumers in their final decision making, care more about the product’s quality and price than the way it was produced. In this work, we examine societal factors that may contribute to the discrepancy between consumers’ ethical concerns and purchase decisions. More specifically, we suggest that even if

consumers are concerned about ethicality of products they are likely to discount this concern because of their religious beliefs.

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studies that related gender with ethical behavior, found an overall tendency of women to behave more ethically than men (Betz, O’Connell & Shepard, 1989), and others showed no significant difference between women and men towards ethical

consumption activities (Witkowski & Reddy, 2010). Moreover, it has been suggested that individuals in a positive mood state can easily identify an ethical dilemma and dissolve it according to their own prescriptive ethical judgments (Gaudine & Thorne, 2001). On the other hand, since some authors could not find a significant correlation between demographic factors and ethical behavior, they suggest that these factors are poor predictors of ethical behavior and they are insufficient in predicting and/or identifying an ethical consumer (De Pelsmacker, Driesen & Rayp 2005).

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to engage in a pro-social behavior and thus more likely to purchase fair trade products (Doran & Natale, 2011), while Catholics tend to engage in a more pro-environmental behavior especially after making a green confession (Mathras, Mandel & Cohen, 2016). Furthermore, the study of Farah and Newman (2010), showed that religion, in general, may result in participation of boycotting brands and companies that engage in unethical practices. It can be argued that highly religious people behave more ethically because they perceive an unethical practice as a sinful one (Singhapakdi, Marta, Rallapalli & Rao, 2000). Magill (2002) finds evidence that the theological dimension of ethics provides “motivation for moral action”. On the contrary, Vitell & Paolillo (2003) found that religion negatively correlates with consumer ethics. Finally, the study of Witkowski and Reddy (2010) that was conducted among German and American consumers, showed that religiosity has a weak impact in ethical

consumption.

To recapitulate, the relationship between religion and ethical behavior is rather inconsistent, where sometimes it is positive and other times it is negative or neutral (Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger & Gorsuch, 1996). We, however, believe that those mixed findings may be due, in part, to the fact that another important component of religion was not taken into consideration in relation to ethical behavior and that is, the

representations of God.

2.3. Perceptions about God

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God will lead them to eternal hell and punishment (Gorsuch, 1968). The fear in Gods was always used as a mechanism that obliged believers to act according to the laws of society and consequently, the laws of morality (Robertson, 1889). Johnson and

Krüger, (2004) state that supernatural punishment leads to a system of cooperation through traditions, taboos and mythology, which enforces the threat of revenge of the divine. Punishment is indeed more powerful than rewards in providing people with the incentive to act good and, throughout the ages, it has been a successful method of inducing cooperation. As Voltaire said, ‘if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Religious people, therefore, feel guilt when faced with a sinful practice (Geyer & Baumeister, 2005) and fear that they will get caught on the act (Conroy & Emerson, 2004). As a result, religious people tend to be more conservative in their actions (Bader & Froese, 2005) as they see God as a judge who sets strict rules on how one should live his life (Soenens et al., 2012)

Drawing a parallel between unethical consumption and immoral behavior as prescribed by religion, the current research will focus on the extent to which certain representations of God will facilitate or impede ethical judgment and consumption. An angry God is a powerful and daunting figure, so people will go by His rules in fear of upsetting Him (Bader & Froese, 2005). In the study of Shariff and Norenzayan (2011), the results show that images of a punishing God lead to lower levels of

cheating, while levels of religiosity had no significant effect on the cheating behavior. Thus, we hypothesize that a view of God as less than forgiving will tend to compel consumers to disengage from consumption of unethical products as compared to consumers who view God as forgiving. More formally,

H1: People who perceive God as less than forgiving will devalue an unethical product more than would people who hold forgiving images of God.

2.4. Operationalization of Variables

2.4.1. Products with Unethical Implications: Animal Testing

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between consumers’ behavior and ethical/unethical marketing practices found conflicting and controversial results. Ethical marketing activities include among others, fair trade, experimentation on animals and use of sustainable methods.

According to the study of Carrigan and Attalla (2001), animal testing was found to be the highest ethical priority among respondents. More specifically, they rated animal testing higher than deforestation and poor working conditions which means that consumers care about more certain kinds of ethical issues. Also, experimentation on animals and particularly exploitation of dolphins, was the factor that actually

influenced consumers’ purchase behavior even more than human exploitation. This study aims to focus on animal testing as representative of the unethical practice, mainly because it is one of the very few issues that is unanimously condemned and opposed by consumers. Our goal is to examine whether consumers with different images of God, actually evaluate differently such a strong ethical issue.

2.4.2. Religious Priming

Priming is the method of activating a concept in consumers’ minds that has a direct impact in their behavior without them understanding any influence (Fennis & Stroebe, 2010). Priming in the religious context is a relatively new method, but a quite promising tool to address the possible effects of religious thinking to people’s

behavior. Religious priming in effect allows research to directly manipulate the salience of religious thinking here and now, allowing for random assignment to different groups in which the desired aspects of religion are or are not made salient. Specifically, in consumer behavior, religious priming has been found to be a

specifically powerful tool to test the causal effects of religious thinking on relevant consumer outcomes, and disentangle them from myriad other characteristics that covary with personality dimensions, and demographic background (Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2007).

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loyalty when judging a service failure (Hyodo & Bolton, 2015). Moreover, priming religious concepts affects consumers’ pro-social behavior such as cooperation and generosity (Willard, Shariff & Norenzayan, 2016) and priming a supportive God reduces receptiveness to fear appeal (Wu & Cutright, 2018). Work by Shariff and colleagues (2016) found that highly religious people appear to be influenced in a greater level from religious primes than people that score low in religious affiliation or people that are non-believers. However, on the other hand, there are a number of studies that find that religious primes are so powerful that induce the desired concept regardless of individual pre-existing religiosity (e.g., Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2012; Kupor, Kristin Laurin, & Levav, 2015; Wu & Cutright, 2018).Given that in this research participants will be randomly assigned to the predefined experimental

conditions, thereby controlling for individual participant characteristic such as pre-existing religiosity and demographics, we still account for these characteristics in our research design as discussed next.

3. Methodology

3.1. Method

Two hundred and twenty six participants were recruited to partake in this study. The study uses a 3 (representations of God: unforgiving versus forgiving versus control) x 2 (product type: unethical versus ethical) between-subjects design.

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respondents indicated that they are Christians, 26.5% Atheists, 8.8% belong in Islamic group, 0.4% Hindus and the last 23.9% choose the “other” option in which most answers stated Agnosticism that was followed by Buddhism. Finally, 32.3% of the sample indicated that they do not believe in any God. Of those 226, 13 responses were excluded from the analysis because they failed to follow instruction of the experiment and/or comply with the requirements of the experiment. Moreover, the manipulation of the independent variable, in this case the representations of God, influenced rather implicitly the participants’ minds. Participants were asked, beforehand, to complete two different and unrelated parts of a study. The goal was to minimize concerns regarding the purpose of the study. Thus, they completed the two parts of the study without acknowledging that the first part is the actual determinant of the second part.

3.2. Perceptions about God manipulation

The study begun with the participants completing a writing task, which is the manipulation of the different representations of God. The measures have been extracted from the study of Wu and Cutright (2018). According to this study, a writing task was given to respondents that primed certain characteristics of God. The outcome indicated that making God salient, is powerful enough to shape people’s behavior. This effect is not influenced by either an overall belief in God or specific religious affiliations. The writing task consisted of interpretation and commenting on a quote. In the “unforgiving God” condition, participants were asked to respond to a quote from the Bible that highlights the avenging and angry characteristic of God: “Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for the iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless”. In the condition with the forgiving God, the quote that was presented for interpretation, emphasized the benevolent trait of God: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of His heritage; You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy”. Last but not least, in the neutral (control)

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3.3.Unethical product manipulation

After the completion of the writing task, participants were given a description and a picture of a facial cleansing gel alongside some questions to answer regarding that product. They were informed that this part of the study was related to a marketing survey of a product that would be launched soon in the market and the manufacturer was interested to gain insights on the product from potential consumers before launching the product. For each condition, half of the participants received a

description for a gel that has the “no animal testing” stamp on it (appendix 1a.) and the other half received a description of a gel that has been tested on animals (appendix 1b.). Animal testing was chosen as representative of ethicality because previous

research has shown that consumers are highly sensitive towards that particular practice and are inclined to reject products that originate from that corporate behavior

(Carrigan & Attalla, 2001). Participantswere asked to read carefully the description and then answer the questions related to product evaluation. The questions were formed on a 7-point Likert scale and were based on the study of Laroche, Bergeron and Barbaro-Forleo, (2001) measuring consumer evaluation of a product. Participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they like the product, if they think it is a good choice and what is their attitude towards that product. The scale appears to be positive and reliable (Cronbach’s Alpha=0.960) and therefore, it was averaged to measure the overall product evaluation. Finally, we asked participants to what extent they would buy the product and how much money they would pay for it.

3.4.Demographics and control variables

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4.

Results

4.1.Evaluation

Results of a 3 (representations of God: unforgiving versus forgiving versus no God) x 2 (product type: ethically produced product versus unethically produced product) ANOVA on product evaluation revealed a main effect of product type,

F(1,207) = 29.27, p = .000, η2_{p = 0.124. There was no main effect of representation of} God, (F(2,207) = 0.05,p = .948, η2_{p = 0.001). Moreover, the predicted interaction} effect was not statistically significant, (F(2,207) = 1.42, p = .244, η2p = 0.014).

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Figure 1.ANOVA between Representations of God, Product Type and Evaluation

4.2.Willingness to buy

The second variable that was measured in order to find the effects of the image of God on ethical consumption, was consumers’ willingness to buy the product. Respondents answered this question in a 7-point Likert scale in which the value 1 represented the not-at-all choice and the value 7 indicated a very high willingness to buy the given product. The main effect of product type was significant, (F(1,207) = 21.97, p = .000, η2_{p = 0.096). However, consistent with our previous results}

representations of God was not significant, (F(2,207) = 0.29, p = .742, η2_{p = 0.003).} Moreover, the interaction between representations of God and product type was not statistically significant, (F(2,207) = 1.10, p = .333, η2_{p = 0.011). In more details, by} running a contrast analysis (Figure 2), we found that in the control condition, in which God was not made salient in any shape, evaluation of ethical (M = 4.846, SD = 0.474) and unethical product (M = 3.743, SD = 0.501) did not yield significant differences (F(1,207) = 2.55, p = .111, η2p = 0.012, 95% CIMean-Differences = [-0.256, 2.463]). Furthermore, the “forgiving God” condition appears to be significant while the

willingness to buy the ethical (M = 5.531, SD = 0.524) and the unethical product (M = 2.971, SD = 0.501) did differ significantly (F(1,207) = 12.48, p = .001, η2p = 0.057, 95% CIMean-Differences = [1.131, 3.988]). The “unforgiving God” condition, also, yields

5,974 4,876 6,656 4,152 6,333 4,259 0,000 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 Ethical

Attribute UnethicalAttribute AttributeEthical UnethicalAttribute AttributeEthical UnethicalAttribute

Control Forgiving God Unforgiving God

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significant results and willingness to buy the ethical (M = 4.972, SD = 0.494) and unethical product (M = 2.917, SD = 0.494) significantly differed from each other (F(1,207) = 8.66, p = .004, η2p = 0.040, 95% CIMean-Differences = [0.679, 3.432]). From the figure below, it becomes clear that participants in the God conditions, chose the ethical product in almost the same amount of times or higher than in the control condition but the rejection of the unethical product was quite higher in the former conditions than in the latter one. Hence, presenting God in any form, affects the willingness to buy ethical or unethical products.

Figure 2.ANOVA between Representations of God, Product Type and Willingness to Buy

4.3.Willingness to pay

The last variable that was used to measure the potential influence of the representations of God to ethical consumption, was the willingness to pay for the given product. A scale was given to the respondents which varied from ‘not at all’ to ‘very much’ with the lowest value being 0 and the highest value being 50. The prices that were given were measured in Euros. Participants answered how much they would pay for the product based on its description and a photo that was given to them. There is no main effect in the model and none of the variables is significant. In details, the main effect of the product type was not significant (F(1,207) = 0.25, p = .613, η2_{p =} 0.001) and the effect of the representations of God is also not significant (F(2,207) =

4,846 3,743 5,531 2,971 4,972 2,917 0,000 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 Ethical

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0.82, p = .440, η2p = 0.008). It is also clear, that there is no relationship between God and the product type, hence, the interaction effect between these variables is

insignificant (F(2,207) = 1.86, p = .158, η2p = 0.018). Furthermore, based on the contrast analysis (Figure 3), the different conditions for the manipulation of the independent factor, which are the representations of God, appear to yield insignificant results. Specifically, the control condition is not statistically significant and

willingness to pay for the ethical (M = 7.205, SD = 0.896) and the unethical product (M = 5.286, SD = 0.945) are statistically different from each other (F(1,207) = 2.17, p = .142, η2_{p = 0.010, 95% CIMean-Differences = [-0.648, 4.487]). The conditions in which} the image of God was presented to the participants, do not yield significant results. In the “forgiving God” condition, willingness to pay for the ethical (M = 7.688, SD = 0.989) and unethical product (M = 6.857, SD = 0.945) did not differ from each other (F(1,207) = 0.36, p = .545, η2p = 0.002, 95% CIMean-Differences = [-1.867, 3.527]). The condition of the unforgiving God is once again not significant (F(1,207) = 1.44, p = .231, η2p = 0.007, 95% CIMean-Differences = [-4.182, 1.016]) and willingness to pay for the ethical (M = 5.389, SD = 0.932) and the unethical product (M = 6.972, SD = 0.932) did not show substantial differences from each other.

Figure 3.ANOVA between Representations of God, Product Type and Willingness to Pay

7,205 5,286 7,688 6,857 5,389 6,972 0,000 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000 Ethical

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4.4. Controlling for Variables

As far as the demographics and control variables are concerned, we performed multiple analyses to see whether they influenced our manipulation of product. In order to find whether age influenced the product type, we performed a regression analysis, in which age was regressed on product. The regression analysis was not significant (R2 = 0.003, F(1,212) = 0.70, p = .405). Hence, the age of the respondents

did not influence the product, (B = -0.010, t = -0.834, p = .405). Furthermore, for examining whether gender influenced our product variable, we ran an independent samples ttest with gender and product that was found to be insignificant (t(211) = -0.082, p = .935). Thus, the overall evaluation of product type for men (M = 0.49, SD = 0.503) did not differ from the overall evaluation of product type for women (M = 0.50, SD = 0.502). Moreover, in order to examine how the state of mood influenced the evaluation of product, we performed an ANOVA, which turned out to be

insignificant (F(6,212) = 0.09, p = .997), meaning that the product was not influenced by whether participants were feeling happy or sad. Moving to religion variable, we performed an One-way ANOVA to see whether evaluation of the product differs per religion. The analysis was not significant (F(4,212) = 0.44, p = .775), so religious affiliation does not have an effect on product. We also performed an ANOVA, to analyze whether the degree to which people believe in God actually influenced the overall evaluation of the product. The analysis was not significant (F(10,212) = 0.66,

p = .758), thus the extent of believing in God did not have an effect on product. Last

but not least, we ran an ANOVA analysis to investigate whether the degree of religiosity influenced the product evaluation. The results were not significant

(F(10,212) = 1.72, p = .077) which means that the overall preference for the product was not influenced by the degree of respondents’ religiosity. Then, in order to control for these variables, we performed an ANCONA analysis with the control variables as covariates. We found that even after controlling for age, gender, religious affiliation, religious inventory and current affective state, the interaction effect between

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4.5.Discussion

The insights that we gathered from this research endeavor were quite important. The hypothesized relationship was not supported as the different representations of God did not appear to yield significantly different effects in the evaluation of the ethical and unethical products. Thus, we reject the hypothesis that, priming an unforgiving God will result in people choosing the ethical product over the unethical one, while in the “forgiving God” and “no God” conditions, the evaluation of the two products would not be significantly and statistically different. Nevertheless, the outcome of the analysis showed another important piece of information. In the “no God” condition, the evaluation of the ethical and unethical products did not differ significantly, but the differences in the evaluation of the products along the other two conditions were greater than in the “no God” condition and similar to each other. This proves the fact that priming an image of God in general, does influence consumer evaluation of ethical and unethical products, while priming a certain image of God does not have any influence at all. People primed with the image of God tended to evaluate the ethical product quite higher than the unethical one. People that were not primed with an image of God did not evaluate the ethical product a lot better than the unethical one. Thus, God plays an important role in product evaluation, regardless if he is being presented as an unforgiving or a forgiving God.

The results of willingness to buy are consistent with the results obtained from our main dependent variable, product evaluation. It is clear that the initial hypothesis could not be supported. As it seems, the different images of God do not play an important role in the final decision making of consumers on whether to buy the product or not. Portraying an unforgiving God will not lead consumers to choose the ethical product over the unethical one by fearing God’s anger and punishment. Rather, portraying a God to consumers, actually influences decision making about products.

The difference between the two God conditions is not very significant,

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buying it. Although, in the other two conditions, in which respondents were primed with an image of either a forgiving or an unforgiving God, the difference between the two products was greater. It does not make a significant difference whether

consumers believe in a forgiving and understanding God or in a wrathful and

punishing figure, as long as they have the image of God in their minds before making a decision.

In terms of, willingness to pay, it becomes clear that the willingness to pay for the product is not influenced by either the different conditions of God or the different products. The results vary in each different condition, but they also show that

respondents would pay more for the unethical product in the two God conditions than in the “no God” condition. This may seem bizarre, but if we investigate all the

responses individually where we asked people to write about what they dislike in the product, we can conclude that people wanted to punish the unethical product in the God conditions more than in the control condition by setting a higher price so that it would be expensive and no one would eventually buy it. Some respondents indeed stated that they would like the unethical product to have the highest price just so no consumer would choose to buy it. Overall, we cannot establish any concrete

relationship between our dependent variable (willingness to pay) and the two independent variables (representations of God and product).

5. General Discussion

Through the last century, many researchers tried to study the role of religion in modern society and how religion affects consumers’ daily behavior and decision making (Saroglou, 2002; Rest et al., 1986). They saw religion as a societal

phenomenon capable of shaping each society according to the norms and values that each religion can identify with. Affiliation with a God appears to be an important determinant of how a person can and should live his life (Barro & McCleary,2003; Pargament & Park, 1995). Religion sets the unwritten laws of morality, of what is right and wrong and people abide by these rules in a way that their consumption behavior is also affected (Rest et al., 1986; Smith, 2010).

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is represented in consumers’ minds. Accordingly, our line of work differentiates itself from the past, as it does not encounter religion as a single and absolute factor but as a variable that is comprised by the different perceptions people hold about God. Our focus is on two different and opposite representations, the unforgiving and the forgiving God. Based on the study that was conducted with students from the University of Groningen, we cannot support our hypothesis. Thus, we can reject the hypothesis, as the responses of people primed with a less forgiving God did not differ substantially from the responses of people that were primed with the image of a forgiving God. Different representations of God do not influence consumers’ choice on ethical products. In particular, the image of God did not affect neither the overall evaluation of the given products nor the willingness to buy or to pay for these

products. Nevertheless, in the evaluation and willingness to buy variables, we noticed something different from our initial expectations. Respondents in the control

condition, in which there was no image of God, did not seem to take into account the ethical or unethical attributes of the product, thus their answers were not substantially different. However, the respondents of the other two conditions seemed to care more about the ethicality of the products, so they tended to highly reward the ethical product and punish the unethical one. Despite how people perceive God, we can assume that the image of God is enough to shape consumers’ ethical behavior. Priming God may have an effect on ethical judgment regardless whether God is perceived as forgiving or unforgiving. By making God salient to consumers, the norms of morality become equally salient and this may have a direct influence in the everyday consumption.

Moreover, since one third of the respondents indicated that they are atheists or agnosticisms, we can assume that priming the image of God has an influence on people that are also not religious. No matter how involved people are with a particular religion or the extent to which they hold religious beliefs and practice religion, the image of Him, still, can influence a part of the decision making when it comes to ethical consumption. Based on the study of Willard, Shariff and Norenzayan, (2016) religious priming has some positive effects under certain circumstances and when used in certain methods. They propose that priming the image of God better

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unexpectedly contribute to the research mentioned above, as it indicates that the priming that we used for the manipulation of God conditions has a positive and significant effect on the ethical judgment of products.

5.1.Limitations

After an extensive analysis and interpretation of the data, we found that the hypothesis of the model could not be supported. Thus, we reject it by saying that priming specifically an unforgiving God does not result people in choosing the ethical product over the unethical one. Also, in contrast with the hypothesis of the model, when the “unforgiving God” condition is compared to the “forgiving God” condition, it does not yield significantly different results. But in order to find what is wrong with the formulation of the hypothesis or the design of the study, we have to start from the beginning.

To begin with, consumer’s behavior is very complex and requires extensive knowledge of consumer psychology. Even when knowing the principles of consumer psychology, it is not completely sufficient to predict people’s decision making and behavior. Consumers’ behavior, when it comes to consumption, may be too

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Moreover, as the relationship that we tried to establish is too complex and unpredictable, we could include in the model other factors that we believe that influence the final outcome. One factor that we could include as a moderator variable is the level of involvement with God. Product involvement in general, is a very important factor that shapes and predicts consumers’ intention towards consumption. It is common knowledge, that people behave differently when it comes to products of high or low involvement. People that are highly involved with God, responded differently than those who score low at the level of involvement. More specifically, respondents that are highly involved in their religion may have considered the quote that was presented to them about an image of God, more seriously and literally than people who have a low involvement with the divine figure. So, if we could make this distinction at the beginning of the study and we included the level of involvement with God as a moderator between perceptions about God and ethical judgment, then the outcome could be different and maybe we could support our hypothesis.

Another factor that, if included in the model, could lead to different results, is focusing on specific religions and respondents from these religions. In that way, we could find a religion portraying a God that many people find unforgiving and wrathful and compare this condition with a religion that portrays a God who is forgiving. We would measure how believers from these specific religions behave in ethical

consumption, by taking under consideration the fact that God is portrayed differently in each religion and hence, He imprints different messages in people’s minds. The model would indeed be different and probably we could not conclude the proposition that priming God affects consumers’ ethical judgment, but we could possibly see how representations of God independently and differently influence ethical consumption.

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Moreover, since the age of the respondents ranged from 18 to 35, we cannot apply the insights we gathered to the entire population. Old people are more

conservative, when it comes to ethical behavior and especially when it comes to their religion. Younger people are presumed to belong in a certain religion mainly due to their culture and social background but they do not actually practice this religion (Day, 2009). We could say that believing in God is something that transcends through generations leading young people to appear as if they belong in a certain religion without choosing it but because their family and their general social environment practices this religion. Thus, we could include in the study people from other generations just to see whether the effects change through different ages. Although age as a control variable did not have an effect on the overall outcome, we can assume that by adding older people in the study we would have different responses and

perspectives, so maybe the results that we proposed would be more concrete. Furthermore, one out of three people that completed the study indicated that they do not belong in any religion or that they are agnosticisms. Although religious beliefs and the extent to which someone believes in God did not affect the results of the model, we are wondering what would happen if the population that completed the study included only religious people. The manipulation of the representations of God could mean more to religious people, because these people probably would see the quote in its literal meaning as they already believe in the existence of heaven and hell. But, non religious people could not care either about the forgiveness or the

wrathfulness of God as they do not believe He exists in the first place. Thus, the manipulation of our independent variable could work better only on people who believe in God, regardless whether they perceive Him as forgiving or unforgiving.

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The manipulation of the independent variable worked as planned according to our data. Participants that were primed with an image of God presented an overall preference for the ethical product compared to the participants in the control

condition, in which the results displayed a small difference between the two products. Although, the representations of God maybe became too salient to respondents’ minds that they failed to provide substantial differences across the two God conditions. Participants focused on the general image of God leading to no distinguishing effects between the “unforgiving God” and “forgiving God” conditions. If the formulation of the independent variable was different, maybe people could focus more on the

different images. For instance, in the question where we asked participants to interpret a quote, we could ask them to provide an example in which the quote could be seen in their lives. In this way, respondents would focus more on the content of the quote and less on the fact that God’s actions appear to be in the center of the given quote. Also, many participants in the “unforgiving God” condition stated that they could not understand the given passage. Although respondents who could not interpret that quote were excluded for the analysis, we could hypothesis that interpreting this quote distracted them from the purpose of the study in a way that they could not focus on the later tasks.

Furthermore, the way we manipulated the dependent variable of the model may have contributed to the fact that the hypothesis could not be supported. Firstly, we created a description and a mock-up photo of a product that would appear as appealing yet neutral to the entire sample. However, many people stated that they did not like the color of the product or that they focused on other attributes of the product such as its matte finish and the removal of impurities. In the condition of the ethical product, no one seemed to notice or acknowledge the “No animal testing” stamp that was on the product. Hence, they may shift their attention to the generic elements rather on the ethical or unethical attributes that were mentioned. Secondly, as mentioned above, the choice of the ethical and unethical practice was not

coincidental. People tend to be more absolute and negative when it comes to the abuse of a helpless being such as an animal. However, in order to draw a general conclusion on the overall ethical consumption, we had to test more conditions of ethicality, such as fair trade and the use of organic components in products.

Finally, for manipulating the “willingness to pay” variable, we asked

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in a scale from 0 to 50. Since we did not give them an average price of such a product, each of them responded very differently in a way that we could not compare the outcome of these responses. So, if we provided an average price of the product maybe then the main effects of the variables would be significant and we could establish a relationship among our variables.

5.2.Further Research

This study did not come to the preferred conclusion as the hypothesis could not be further supported, but it managed to set the foundations for further research. Representations of God is a variable that has not been tested in its full potential and previous research about this issue is limited. Researchers of the past focused more on how people perceive God and less on how these representations affect the overall human psychology. We believe that there are many relationships between the images of God and people’s daily behavior that remain to be investigated, not only in the field of marketing and management but also in social sciences. Researchers should not quit exploring the potential effects of the images of God and they should extent this topic to new territories of research.

Furthermore, as mentioned before, we used experimentation on animals as the unethical practice of our model. Nevertheless, future research should try to include other variables as representatives of ethicality such as fair trade. By doing so, we expect to either establish a relationship between representations of God and ethics or to reject this relation once and for all. Also, further research could experiment more on the distribution of these variables in order to see whether a connection between them exists under different circumstances. For instance the variables could be reversed, meaning ethics could be the independent variable that possibly affects the perceptions people hold about God, or the same relationship to be tested but with more variables as covariates or mediators, such as the level of involvement with God. Finally, the effects of the representations of God on sustainability and

pro-environmental behavior could be further explored.

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7. Appendix

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Perceptions about God and Ethical Consumption

Perceptions about God and Ethical Consumption

By

Perceptions about God and Ethical Consumption

Abstract

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Conceptual Framework

3. Methodology

Results

5. General Discussion

References

7. Appendix