Index

Abstract

Consumer complaints are continuously growing in Thailand; although consumer protection laws protect the Thai people while the current situation differs. Therefore, this research investigated the marketing ethics of consumer products from the perspective of Thai consumers and suggested the development of marketing ethics strategies for Thai businesses. This quantitative research used a questionnaire to collect data from 400 Thai consumers, which focused on personal factors, consumer buying behavior, problem & solution requirement, and satisfaction towards the marketing ethics of consumer products. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation, and inference statistics to test the research hypotheses. The research results showed that the buying problems were high prices, deceptive advertising, selling prices over the price tag, defective/expired products, and below specification. Meanwhile, consumers required product replacement or money refunds as their preferred solution choices from producers at most. The hypotheses testing found that differences in personal factors (age and marital status) resulted in different preferences on marketing ethics of consumer products satisfaction, but the gender factor showed no differences. Meanwhile, consumer behavior factors (product type buying and buying frequency) and problem-solution requirement factor (no-any-action) resulted in different preferences on marketing ethics of consumer products satisfaction at a statistically significant difference of 0.05.

Keywords: Consumer complaint, Consumer product, Consumer perspective, Consumer protection, Marketing ethics, Marketing management, Thai consumer.

Received: 12 February 2022 / Revised: 29 April 2022 / Accepted: 20 May 2022/ Published: 31 May 2022

Contribution/ Originality

This research reveals the perspective of Thai consumers toward the business ethics of consumer products which is presented in few studies; therefore, this research will benefit the entrepreneurs to guide ethical marketing in line with consumer expectations.

1. INTRODUCTION

The world’s industrial production has the highest proportion of consumer demand (UNIDO, 2019), affecting people’s well-being. The right of the people is necessary to protect; therefore, Thai consumers are protected by the Consumer Protection Act. 2522, Amendment (No. 2), BE 2541 under five laws: (1) the right to receive adequate descriptions of the goods or services’ quality, (2) the right to freedom in the selection of goods or services, (3) the right to safety in the use of goods or services, (4) the right to obtain fairness of the contract agreement; and (5) the right to be considered and compensated for damages. Thai consumers’ duty before buying goods or services is to take reasonable precautions (OCPB, 2019) and in buying products or services, to check the accuracy of label, quantity, and price. Consumers should carefully find out more about the products’ quality, attributes, and origin. They should also not trust advertisement without careful consideration whether it is confirmed as advertised or not, and consider carefully whenever in doubt or unsure. OCPB (2021) reported that the total complaints number in 2008-2020 was 116,008. The complaints were continuously growing in 2020, with the highest complaints of 22,246 issues, out of which there were 10,199 of product issues (45.85%), followed by 8,723 of services issues (39.21%), 3,281 of real estate issues (14.75%) and 43 of miscellaneous issues (0.19%). The main problems that consumers complained were mostly about commercial contracts, labeling, advertising, direct sales, and direct marketing respectively. Thereby, the entrepreneurs could prevent the mentioned problems by dispatching products or services of the standard quality, run a business under marketing ethics, and respond quickly to consumers’ claims. When complaints affected the complexity of the issues, the entrepreneurs might also be responsible for damages or legal action.

Thus, this research aimed to identify the effect of personal factors, consumer buying behavior, and problems and solution requirement towards the marketing ethics of consumer products and suggest strategies to develop the marketing ethics of consumer products for Thai businesses. There is a dearth of research studies on the marketing ethics of consumer products in Thailand and those which collect data from Thai consumers. Therefore, the current research on marketing ethics of consumer products will benefit entrepreneurs to guide the ethical market in line with consumer expectations. Furthermore, it will increase the image of consumer products from the perspective of consumers and achieve consumer complaints reduction in the future.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

The essential content of concepts, theories, and studies related to the current research are summarized in four parts:

2.1. Concept of Marketing Ethics

Business ethics represents the intention of parties to treat each other rationally and trust each other in doing business (Nash, 1993). If a firm shows dishonesty to its stakeholders, employees, customers, vendors, shareholders, or competitors, it will be unethical business practice (Lawrence & Weber, 2017) . In addition, good ethical practice is the foundation of sustainable marketing. Unethical marketing is detrimental to customers and society, as it ultimately damages the reputation, effectiveness, and possibly the viability of the corporate. In the long term, sustainable marketing goals, consumer loyalty, and business revenue can be achieved through ethical marketing (Kotler & Armstrong, 2016). Agreeing to the ISO 26000 standard, social responsibility alludes to an organization’s obligation for affecting its choices and implementation on society and the environment through transparent and ethical behavior (Britel & Cherkaoui, 2022).

The code of ethics is further a guideline to help marketing managers and other employees make better decisions and effectively control internal behavior over external controls by government regulations. The ethical formulation process facilitates debate among employees about right or wrong and ultimately leads to better decision-making (Lamb, Hair, & McDaniel, 2016). For these reasons, professional marketers might avoid or omit harmful actions, sustain trust in the marketing process (product design, pricing, communication, and delivery of distribution), and patronize ethical values by affirming honesty, responsibility, fairness, respect, transparency, and citizenship on multiple stakeholders (American Marketing Association, 2019).

2.2. Consumer Behavior

Consumers make multiple buying decisions every day, which are the cornerstone of a marketer’s efforts. Most large corporations analyze consumer buying decisions to understand the consumer behavior as to what they buy, why they buy, where to buy, how to buy, how much, and when to buy. The consumers often do not even know what influences their buying decsions (Kotler & Armstrong, 2016). Consumer behavior analysis means studying related activities of buying and consuming goods or services and the disposal or disposal of the used ones. Studies have investigated why they choose to buy a product or brand. Businesses can apply such data to understand consumer insight and devise operational strategies to win consumers’ hearts more efficiently and effectively (Armstrong, Kotler, Trifts, & Buchwitz, 2018; Blackwell, Miniard, & Engel, 2006; Lamb et al., 2016; Schiffman & Kanuk, 2010).

2.3. Consumer Satisfaction Perspective

Consumer satisfaction means evaluating whether the output of goods or services meet consumers’ needs and expectations. If product outcomes do not meet consumers’ expectations, the result is dissatisfaction (Lamb et al., 2016; Marshall & Johnston, 2015). Furthermore, consumer satisfaction comprises three components: consumer expectation, perceived quality, and value. Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty; dissatisfaction leads to customer complaints (American Customer Satisfaction Index, 2019). Like or dislike effecting is best measured in product features or benefits. Consequently, the marketing manager must define and develop the measurement for each attribute important to consumer satisfaction (Smith & Albaum, 2013) . In addition, the study of Mustikowati, Sarwoko, Arief, and Nurfarida (2021) revealed that entrepreneurs should strengthen the implementation of customer relationship management (CRM) to achieve business performance. For example, retailers with a competitive advantage must arrange suitable product or service quality and offer superior services more than competitors.

The marketing mix elements, such as price, affect consumer usage levels and consumer satisfaction over time. These differences determine consumer added value and total consumer value to create four aspects: product value, services value, personal value, and image value (Bolton & Lemon, 1999) . Moreover, Intezar (2017) mentioned that consumers’ perception of a company and brand is a synthesis of bundles of messages through all brand or company contact sources. For example, teenagers’ buying decisions in marketing ethics are increasingly concerned with brand ethics, and product value is still the most critical factor. Consumers’ ethical product issues on ethics of the production must not be testing products on animals, environmentally friendly products, and corporate responsibility (Krichefski, 2018).

2.4. Consumer Protection Issues

Contemporaneously, government agencies protect the consumers under consumer protection law, which is a form of government regulation to protect consumers’ interests and support the consumer protection organizations’ establishment categories (OCPB, 2021; UNIDO, 2019). The consumer protection laws focus on various issues such as product liability, privacy rights, unfair business practices, fraud, misrepresentation, and consumer or other business interactions (Majtán & Dubcová, 2013) . Therefore, consumers nowadays easily reach manufacturers for feedback or social media communication even if they are satisfied or unsatisfied after product consumption. However, if consumers do not get any positive response from manufacturers or intermediaries, they may contact the government agencies for protection.

3. CONCEPTUAL AND HYPOTHESES FRAMEWORK

This research aimed to focus on three independent variables, which were (1) personal factors; gender, age, education level, profession, monthly income, and marital status, (2) consumer buying behavior; product types (food or non-food products), buying frequency, spending amount per time, and buying sources (store or non-store platform), and (3) problem & solution requirement; buying problem issues, consumer action when facing the problem issues, and consumer problem solution requirement. The dependent variables were the satisfaction on marketing ethics of consumer products: Product (Products - Packaging & Label), Price, Place (Channel - Logistics), Marketing Promotion (Advertising & Public Relations - Sales Promotion - Personnel Selling - Direct Marketing), and Research & Others (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Conceptual framework and hypotheses.

Therefore, the hypotheses could be summarized as follows.

H1: Different personal factors result in different preferences on marketing ethics of consumer products.
H2: Different consumer buying behavior factors result in different preferences on marketing ethics of consumer products.
H3: Different problem& solution requirement factors result in different preferences on marketing ethics of consumer products.

4. METHODOLOGY

4.1. Population and Sample

This research focused on Thai consumer complaints in 2019This research focused on Thai consumer complaints in 2019 (OCPB, 2019) which numbered 21,090 complaints. First, the researcher selected the population living in ten provinces with the highest complaint issues, covering the four regions of Thailand. Table 1 shows the calculating total of 20,726 complaints from top ten provinces, numbering 98.27% of complaint issues in 2019. Next, the sample size was calculated with a confidence level of 95%, leading to a sample size of 384 people (Cochran & Cox, 1957). However, for the convenience of data analysis, the researcher decided to use a sample size of 400 samples, exceeding the mentioned criteria (Silpcharu, 2020). After defining the target sample quota method in each province, the researcher employed convenience sampling in 2020.

Table 1. Population and samples.

Region	Province	Number of Complaints	Percent of Complaints	Number of Samples	Percent of Samples
Central	Bangkok	12,605	60.82	243	60.75
Central	Nonthaburi	2,457	11.85	47	11.75
Central	Pathum Thani	1,523	7.35	29	7.25
Central	Samut Prakarn	1,428	6.89	28	7.00
Eastern	Chonburi	790	3.81	15	3.75
Central	Nakhon Pathom	453	2.18	9	2.25
Northern	Chiangmai	448	2.16	9	2.25
North-eastern	Nakhon Ratchasima	423	2.04	8	2.00
Eastern	Rayong	314	1.52	6	1.50
Central	Ayutthaya	285	1.38	6	1.50
Total of top 10 provinces complaints		20,726	100.00	400	100.00

4.2. Research Instrument

Concepts-theories and relevant studies review were studied to construct the questionnaire. The questionnaire had five parts: Part 1 - Personal Factors with eight items of multiple choices questions. Part 2 - Consumer Buying Behavior with five items of multiple choices questions. Part 3 - Problems Solution Requirement with four items of multiple choices questions. Part 4 - Satisfaction on the marketing ethics of consumer products by nine aspects with 57 items of the five-levels-Likert scale (Likert, 1932 cited by Sekaran and Bougie (2010)). Part 5 - Additional advice for developing marketing ethics of consumer products with an open-ended question.

4.3. Validity and Reliability

The questionnaire constructed for ths study was sent to five experts to consider the validity, suitability, and content accuracy. After receiving the recomemndations, the the modified questionnaire was pilot tested on 30 participants (Silpcharu, 2020). The pilot test result of 57 items of Likert’s’ scales reliability was statistically evaluated at 0.981 (accepted at >0.80), according to the reliability from Cronbach’s Alpha (Engel & Schutt, 2017).

4.4. Data Analysis

The data collected through 400 questionnaires were processed using statistical software. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation, and inference statistics to test the hypotheses (Adams, Khan, Raeside, & White, 2007) . The inference statistics consisted of a t-Test and a One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). In finding differences with statistical significance, the researcher investigated them in pairs with a significant level of 0.05 using Fisher’s least significant difference test (Kirk, 1995).

5. RESULTS

According to the data analysis, the result of the research could be summarized as follows.

5.1. Personal Factors

A large portion of respondents was female (66.00%), aged 21-30 years (27.00%), single status (48.00%), bachelor’s degree (50.00%), private company employees (29.00%), average monthly income not over 15,000 baht (36.00%), and 3-4 family members (58.00%).

5.2. Consumer Buying Behavior

Most of the respondents bought food and beverage products (80.50%) 3-4 times/month (38.50%), not over 2,500 baht/time (57.00%), and they made decisions by themselves (57.00%). Group of respondents bought the products from store retailing (88.50%), preferred discount stores (28.20%), convenience stores (22.60%), and traditional shops (22.00%). Moreover, a few selected non-store retailing (11.50%), others preferred the online platform as the marketplace-Lazada, Shopee, JD Central (67.40%), social media-Instagram, Facebook, and LINE (19.60%), and the manufacturer’s website (13.00%), respectively.

5.3. Problem Solution Requirement

The respondents who expressed dissatisfaction about the buying found that most of the issues were related to price not matching with quality (15.00%), misleading/deceptive advertising (14.00%), selling price over the package label (12.00%), low product quality (11.50%), respectively. When considering, the problem-solution most consumers wanted the replacement or refund (56.50%), followed by discontinuing the product (22.50%), ignoring and did not want to take any action (18.00%), and sent complaints to the relevant agencies (3.00%), respectively. Finally, if they made a claim, they required a replacement (72.50%), a money refund equal to the product price (22.50%), and compensation beyond the paid product (1.50%).

5.4. Consumer Satisfaction

The overall total average satisfaction on marketing ethics of consumer products was measured high (x̅ 3.76). There was also high-level satisfaction in each aspect; Place (x̅ 3.86), Promotion (x̅ 3.79), Product (x̅ 3.72, S.D. 0.726), Price (x̅ 3.72, S.D. 0.755), and Research & others (x̅ 3.70), respectively. In addition, the respondents were satisfied with the factor of ‘the manufacturing and expiration date,’ which was illustrated on the packaging label at the highest mean value (x̅ 4.04). Meanwhile, the respondent evaluated the factor of ‘the manufacturer has to provide information about issues that might occur from using a product’ at the lowest mean value (x̅ 3.36).

5.5. Hypotheses Test

The H1 test discovered that the difference in age and marital status factor affected all aspects of marketing ethics of consumer products satisfaction at a statistically significant difference of 0.05 (Table 2). The single status respondents had more satisfaction in all aspects than the marriage and divorce status. In addition, those over 20 years old had more satisfaction in all aspects than the other age group.

Table 2. Hypotheses test results of different personal factors resulted in different preferences on marketing ethics of consumer products.

Marketing Ethics Factors	Gender	Age	Education	Profession	Income	Marital Status
Product	0.952	0.007*	0.062	0.407	0.125	0.000*
Price	0.733	0.000*	0.038*	0.233	0.000*	0.001*
Place	0.117	0.032*	0.021*	0.207	0.001*	0.000*
Promotion	0.133	0.000*	0.013*	0.025*	0.003*	0.000*
Research & Others	0.220	0.000*	0.174	0.030*	0.211	0.000*

Note: *Significant level at 0.05.

The H2 test found that the difference in product type and buying frequency factors affected all aspects of marketing ethics of consumer products satisfaction at a statistically significant difference of 0.05 (Table 3). The non-food products buying type were higher satisfaction than the food & beverage products in all factors. Meanwhile, the buying frequency of 3-4 times/month had more satisfaction at almost all aspects, except the research and other factors which were measured 5-6 times/month at the highest level.

Table 3. Hypotheses test results of different consumer behavior factors resulted in different preferences on marketing ethics of consumer products.

Marketing Ethics Factors	Product Type	Frequency	Spending Amount	Source
Product	0.005*	0.007*	0.953	0.476
Price	0.044*	0.012*	0.230	0.035*
Place	0.005*	0.009*	0.017*	0.791
Promotion	0.028*	0.007*	0.107	0.006*
Research & Others	0.022*	0.017*	0.230	0.505

Finally, the H3 test indicated that the difference in consumer action requirement factors affected all aspects of marketing ethics of consumer products satisfaction at a statistically significant difference of 0.05 (Table 4 ). Interestingly, the ‘No-any-action’ choice was the factor that resulted in the outstanding satisfaction level in all aspects.

Marketing Ethics Factors	Problem Issue	Consumer Action	Solution Requirement
Product	0.016*	0.027*	0.138
Price	0.020*	0.003*	0.029*
Place	0.037*	0.000*	0.000*
Promotion	0.278	0.008*	0.073
Research & Others	0.280	0.027*	0.005*

Note: *Significant level at 0.05.

In addition, the correlation was analyzed to understand the relationship between aspect factors of marketing ethics of consumer products (Table 5) —the value of correlation between aspect factors resulted at a statistically significant level of 0.001. Interestingly, the ‘Promotion’ and ‘Research & Others’ aspects were the highest involvement at 0.813.

Table 5. Correlation matrix of marketing ethics of consumer products.

Marketing Ethics Factors	Product	Price	Place	Promotion	Research & Others
Product	-
Price	0.757***	-
Place	0.792***	0.748***	-
Promotion	0.756***	0.806***	0.808***	-
Research & Others	0.724***	0.692***	0.735***	0.813***	-

Note: ***Significant level at 0.001.

6. DISCUSSION

The unsatisfied buying problems, which Thai consumer-faced are like a case study of small cloth shops as was studied in a study in Ethiopia, where existed unethical business practices in product marketing and pricing. However, consumers still bought items even if the seller’s behavior was unethical (Abdulnasir, 2015). At the same time, the problem with direct selling business is that scammers often create fraudulent businesses to lure members with high-yield businesses. When members sign up and raise an enormous volume of funds, they will shut down (Galasintu, Supanit, & Chaiittivej, 2018). Most consumers select the standing-store type as their favorite buying source more than non-store. Consequently, Sukhawatthanakun, Ansanun, & Roobkom (2021) discovered that consumers who buy processed products, they  pay high opinions on product distribution channels through the offline or convenience store; though, the online platform is more critical today.

In addition, consumers concern much about data privacy, personal data collection, authority to access the data, erroneous personal data, and improper access to personal data (Sarma, 2018). Consistently, the five factors of online retail ethics that affect future rebuy intentions of online shoppers are security, privacy, not deceit, credibility, and corporate social responsibility (Agag & Elbeltagi, 2014). A similar study was carried out in Egypt where buyers’ perceptions of the ethical building of SMEs operating e-commerce businesses comprised six dimensions; namely security, non-deceit, trust, problem-solving, shared value, and communication (Agag, 2019). Nevertheless, different corporate sizes face similar ethical issues (Sroka & Lőrinczy, 2015).

The hypotheses test result reported that the different personal factors, behavior, problem, and solution requirements positively affect the marketing ethics of consumer products. Several review studies support these results as follows; the product fairness and the price aspect of the facial care category positively correlate with Malaysian. The attitude and perception of the consumer will be a factor influencing the intention to consider the company’s ethics while anticipating a buy, so offering a safe product must be appreciated (Kumar, 2016). While ethical salespersons practice low-pressure sales approaches significantly influence customer satisfaction and positively affect customer loyalty (Pezhman, Javadi, & Shahin, 2013). When consumers evaluate the information on food product labels, they are confident that experts can provide the highest reliability compared to other sources, while the trust for manufacturers is high. Nevertheless, food labels illustrated by the maker’s face are less reliable (Rupprecht, Fujiyoshi, McGreevy, & Tayasu, 2020).

In order to increase positive interaction between buyer and producer and level up the communication impact, Intezar (2017) found that the integration of marketing communication through media advertisement, price, packaging design, direct marketing effort, publicity, sales promotion, or website. As a result, the entrepreneur should consider developing the CRM to provide better value to their customers, including business process automation through technology adoption and an analytical perspective on customer data integration to boost customer and company value (Mustikowati et al., 2021).

7. CONCLUSION

The marketer should implement ethical norms in whatever they offer to the consumer in order to sustain trust in the marketing process. Hence, the researcher would like to guideline the marketing strategy under an ethical framework in this session. Entrepreneurs should set up marketing ethics in various fields to reduce problems. For example, (1) Product quality should meet the required standards product condition, check the expiration date, and deliver the products on time. (2) The product price should be set to suit the product quality and display a price tag matching the selling price. (3) Advertisements should be created based on the product’s facts and avoid misunderstandings or exaggerated content to attract consumers to buy products. Hence, consumer products are necessities for daily living; thus, the prices should not be too high nor over the controlling prices of the government. If consumers get problems from products buying, entrepreneurs should do quick replacement to prevent complaints or discontinuance. The entrepreneurs should provide more cautious information about consuming the products. It will make consumers aware of consumption’s impact, which will cause greater consumer satisfaction. In addition, the manufacturer or the entrepreneur should notify the consumer of the change to prevent complaints if the consumer is unaware before buying or consuming. Explicitly, age-wise, the 41-50 years old consumers show more concern for marketing ethics, so they rate low satisfaction on research & other aspects. Therefore, to develop the consumer preference satisfaction level, the marketer (1) should not disclose any confidential consumer information without permission, such as selling consumer information to other companies, (2) should refrain from providing misleading or incomplete research information, and (3) should not use consumer research analysis for own benefit. In summary, the study results insist that business ethics are a crucial factor driving the success and profits of a company and the role of business ethics in the present era. The study is limited to studying the consumer product thus excluding the services that belong to second group rank of complaints in Thailand; thus, further research may consider the ethics of services businesses or compare product and services satisfaction. Recently, structural equation modeling to analyze the relationship between variables is widely used; thence, future research should apply structural equation modeling to consumer satisfaction on marketing ethics of consumer products.

Funding: This research is supported by the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Management Science, Kasetsart University, Chalermphrakiat Sakon Nakhon Province Campus (Grant number: 0513/40401/0922).

Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no competing interests, and this research got permission under Ethics Committees Consideration No. KUcsc.HE-62-003, Certificate of Approval No. COA 03/2562.

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