Impact of Ecological Awareness on Consumer Attitudes in Front of Products and Brands

Abstract

Environmental concern is a continuous and relevant theme to business and society, not only because of the increasing demands of governments through legislation and specific rules, but by market forces coming from consumers who are becoming more informed and are demanding environmentally conscious products and services. This study measures the degree of consumers’ environmental consciousness. This descriptive, exploratory study used questionnaires based on the Likert scale to measure the degree of environmental awareness of students from the first to eighth semester of a private university located within the State of Sao Paulo. One hundred and fifty questionnaires were administered to day students in the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth semesters and night students in the fifth and seventh semesters. For data analysis, we used the software Statistic / Data Analysis (STATA). Based on this study we propose six other factors to measure ecological consciousness: the impact on the environment, individual consumption, recycling and utilization, consumer type, product specifications, and commitment consumption. The results of this study showed evidence that environmental awareness can be measured in accordance with the consumers’ values and beliefs. Also, it showed that organizations should pay attention to the characteristics of the subgroups described, since they point to new policy alternatives that companies can use, in order to meet the needs and communicate with their target audience.