A Review of Ethical Consciousness (EC) and Organic food Choice: A Ripe opportunity to communicate with the market

Ethical consumption is a phenomena reflected by consumers all across the world. The issue of sustainable development and sustainable living has the idea of sustainable or ethical consumption at its core. Organic food is an important constituent of the "ethical basket". Consumer attitude towards Organic food has been found to be generally positive but there is an attitude-behaviour gap as the adoption of Organic food is very slow in India. This study explores the crucial role of Ethical Consciousness in influencing the consumer choice. Explaining the discrepancy in consumers behaviour it is stated that the many individuals, especially the more rational ones negate their attitude without guilt (by denial of responsibility/denial of harm or benefit/condemning the judges or have some other priority), consequently not buying ethical products. They face some cognitive, behavioural and motivational obstacle as well. Thus, even with a positive attitude their behaviour remains latent. Based on the extant literature review the study proposes that there should be effective communication to convey the benefits (harms) of using (not using) organic products. The "responsible-ethical" trend is relatively new and requires efforts and time from all the stakeholders (consumer associations, public authorities, producers, distributors etc.) to coordinate, evolve and disseminate a more comprehensive and coherent information for the consumer. So, marketers need to connect messaging with the causes that matter most to consumers.