KOREASCHOLAR

Lack of knowledge is reported to be the main reason that consumers do not buy products with ethical certifications. More than half (59%) of respondents from a study indicated that they had never considered buying such products due to insufficient knowledge about them (Demeritt, 2002). The purpose of this research is to provide a clear overview about the influence of product knowledge on consumer behavior and to develop a typology of fair-trade consumers. An online questionnaire in which respondents self-report their responses was developed to measure the constructs used for the study: self-perceived knowledge, purchase experience, demographic data (age, gender, education level, and income), psychographic data (attitudes and moral norms), and behavioristic data (purchase intentions of fair-trade apparel and willingness to pay more for fair-trade apparel). Data were collected using a web-based survey with 250 U.S. residents. Two-step cluster analysis was used to classify respondents into sub-groups based on their level of self-perceived knowledge and previous purchase experience of fair-trade apparel. In addition, ANOVA was used to test the predictive validity of the cluster solution. A three cluster solution was suggested by the results: 1) Less familiar and less experienced: This group was the largest among the three clusters (40.4%). It mostly consist of people with low level of self-perceived knowledge and low purchase experience related to fair-trade apparel. 2) More familiar and more experienced: This group consists of 30.8% of the sample and has moderate level of self-perceived knowledge and several experience related to fair-trade apparel. 3) More familiar but less experienced: This group was the smallest among the three clusters (28.8%). People from this group feel fairly knowledgeable about fair-trade apparel but have low experience with purchasing the product. Regarding demographic data, ANOVA results showed that there were significant differences in consumers’ income level (F=5.77, p=.004) across groups. Tukey’s HSD post hoc test indicated that the more familiar and more experienced group had higher income levels than the other two groups. Examining psychographic data showed that attitudes toward fair-trade products (F=7.42 p=.001) and moral norms (F=11.66 p<.001) significantly varied across groups. More familiar and more experienced group had more positive attitudes and higher level of moral norms than the less familiar and less experienced group. In terms of behavioristic data, groups differed significantly in both purchase intentions (F=18.16 p<.001) and willingness to pay more (F=5.02 p=.007) for fair-trade apparel. That is, more familiar and more experienced group was willing to pay significantly more and had higher purchase intentions for fair-trade apparel than the less familiar and less experienced group.

• Tae-Im Han(Old Dominion University, USA)