Ethical Consumption in China

Everyday there are 1.3 billion people planning on spending their money to consume food or other goods in the markets in China. With this huge amount of consumption, it is obvious that the retailers in China stand in a place of consequence that affecting the economic development and environment protection. A lot of developed counties have started the ethical consumption to lead the consumers to “Green”. It is shown that the ethical consumption may help to develop the ethical industry and provide better environment protection; however, ethical consumption also could limit the economics development between different regions by demoting the business interaction.

Firstly, ethical consumption will develop the ethical industry and eventually benefit the consumer with both lower price and greener products. Smithers. R & Hickman L. mentioned this in their report, “Price was an issue for most shoppers, with many people on limited budgets wanting a greener choice.” (6 Nov 2006) To achieve the lower prices for green products, the retailers are the key characters. By promoting the ethical products, consumers are apt to purchase ethical goods with lower prices compared to other products, which results the lager amount of product needs in ethical products. Certainly, the retailers are urged to work on searching more ethical resources, such as local, organic and seasonal food. Thus, in the first place the retailers should promote the ethical consumption to motivate the development of ethical industry, and eventually benefit all the consumers.

Secondly, ethical consumption shows the power on protecting the environment. By promoting ethical consumption, it will avoid long distance goods transportation. The retailers will source the products from local suppliers. At the same time, the consumers will start to change their eating habits by choosing the natural and organic food. Further more, the retailer can contribute to ethical consumption by persuading customer to have better consume habits, such as change to reusable bags instead of plastic carriers. Typically, in China, the “White Pollution” is so critical that retailers should avoid using the plastic bags. Hence, it is time for the retailer to have the concept of “ethical consumption” to contribute to the environment protection.

However, ethical consumption may also bring negative effects to the economic growth in some ways. It could limit the economics development between different regions by demoting the business interaction. Business interaction is limited in small region, which will eventually result certain level of economic recession. For example, it will result the higher price of out-of-town food, such as Cabbage from Beijing might be three times higher than in Shenzhen. Although we try to reduce the transportation, but in the end, it will just make it more expensive because of the competition. And eventually, it will be difficult to have material exchange. So at the beginning stage of promoting the ethical consumption, we can get the retailer to open a wider range of sustainable recourses, to build up the foundation of ethical consumption for future.

In conclusion, by looking at the positive effect in majority, the ethical consumption should be promoted by the retailers in China. And people should be urged to change the way they eat and consume. Retailers should work more on sustainable sourcing, season-ability, and reduction of waste on plastic carriers. By taking care of the negative effects of the ethical consumption, people live in China should be able to achieve a better way of consuming goods.


Reference:
Smithers. R & Hickman L. (6 Nov 2006). Are supermarkets sweeping up? The Guardian.