The purpose of this research is to examine the effectiveness of egoistic and altruistic claims in organic cotton apparel advertising. We examined how those claims can influence attitudes toward the product, attitudes toward the brand, and purchase intentions.

The purpose of this research was to examine consumers from distinct cultural groups and examine similarities and differences in their green purchase behaviors. The sample consisted of consumers from U.S.A. and South Korea and the theory of planned behavior was used as a theoretical framework to test the influence of diverse constructs on consumers’ purchase intentions toward organic cotton apparel. A total of 334 participants (164 for U.S.A. sample and 170 for South Korea sample) were recruited to examine purchase behaviors toward organic cotton apparel. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the relationship between the TPB constructs and compare the results between the two country groups. AMOS 24 and SPSS 24 were used to analyze the data. For both countries, perceived behavioral control (PBC) and descriptive norms were strong predictors of purchase intentions and injunctive norms strongly influenced attitude formation. However, the two groups showed different results regarding attitude-purchase intention, descriptive norms-attitude, and injunctive norms-purchase intentions relationship. For example, while attitude was the strongest predictor of purchase intention in the U.S.A. group, it had an insignificant effect in South Korea group. For South Korea group PBC had the strongest effect on consumers purchase intention. Multi-group SEM results showed that the difference in the chi-square statistics between the two models was significant. Significant differences were found in two structural paths: attitude → purchase intention and PBC → purchase intention. TPB provided a useful framework for explaining green purchase behaviors in both countries as PBC and descriptive norms strongly predicted consumers’ intention to purchase. However, South Koreans were more affected by the social pressure: their purchase intention were strongly influenced by both injunctive norms and descriptive norms which was in contrast to the findings from American consumers. Injunctive norms were an insignificant predictor of purchase intentions in the U.S.A. group. Injunctive norms reflect individual’s perception of whether the behavior is approved or disapproved by others while descriptive norms involve individual’s perception of whether the behavior is typically performed by others. Therefore, when Korean consumers perceive that others believe it is a good idea to purchase organic cotton apparel and when they actually see others purchasing the product, they will feel more inclined to purchase the product themselves. This result is consistent with previous research that suggest conformity is a crucial factor for people belonging to a collectivistic culture (e.g., Hofstede, 1980; Kitayama et al., 1995).

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.