The evolving passage of consumer ethics research: a systematic literature review

Purpose - As a crucial counter-equivalent to business ethics, consumer ethics has emerged as a promising research domain for practitioners and academicians alike. Despite its pertinence for both industry and academia, little is known about the existing state of consumer ethics research. To address this limitation, a systematic literature review was conducted to identify key research themes, gaps in the extant literature and set the agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach - This literature review is based on a sample of 81 research articles drawn from Scopus and EBSCO host databases and analysed on different classification bases, covering a period from 2004 to 2019. Findings - The results reveal that pro-social behaviour has gained recent attention in consumer ethics research. Moreover, there has been a renewed focus to understand and mitigate the attitude–behaviour gap in ethical consumption. The authors also found that majority of the studies have been conducted in Europe and North America, in a single country context. Research limitations/implications - Consumer ethics has significant economic and social consequences worldwide. Consumer ethics insights can help marketers and practitioners to devise strategies that minimize business losses due to unethical consumer behaviour, incentivize ethical consumption and align corporate social responsibility initiatives that draw consumer support. Originality/value - To the best of our knowledge, this is the first major (systematic) review on consumer ethics after Vitell’s review of 2003. This review provides valuable directions for future research to carry this domain forward.