Resumo

Concerns with the environment, health and animal testing have generated a demand for more ethical attributes in cosmetic products, apart from the traditional concerns with efficiency, brand reputation and price (Connelly, 2013), indicating that consumers are starting to pay attention to the ethical attributes behind the products they buy. Those attributes include organic ingredients, no harmful substances, no animal testing and re-usable or recyclable materials in packaging (Euromonitor, 2018).

Because Brazil is privileged with an abundance of natural resources (Fonseca-Santos, 2015), there is a proliferous environment to promote and empower social engagement in more sustainable and ethical alternatives of production for beauty industry. For such task, however, it is necessary to provide more data on Brazilian ethical consumers to obtain a clarification on what customers expect from an ethical product in terms of attributes. Therefore, our research problem involves understanding what consumer prefers in ethical cosmetics and what personal values lie behind those choices.

We based our study in Keller’s (1993) product related attributes (PRA) and non-product related attributes (NPR). The first are related to intrinsic characteristics of the product (e.g. ingredients) while the other consists of more subjective aspects that surround it and need to be efficiently identified in order to establish successful marketing strategies. The four types of NPRA according to Keller (1993) are: (1) price information; (2) packaging or product appearance information; (3) user imagery (i.e., what type of person uses the product); (4) usage imagery (i.e., where and when).

Our research had a qualitative and a quantitative phase. In the qualitative phase, we reviewed the literature on attributes in the ethical cosmetics market as a starting point. Then, we interviewed 30 individuals (15 manufacturers and 15 consumers of ethical cosmetics) looking for confirmation of the previous studies’ conclusions. Found attributes were tested in an online survey using Best-Worst Scale. The survey also contained a demographic questionnaire and the 35 items of VALS. Our chosen platform to display the questionnaire was Qualtrics and a total of 302 respondents participated.

BW scores demonstrated that “The product really works” was considered the most important attribute, followed by “The product does not contain animal origin ingredients or has been tested on animals”, “The product and its residuals do not present harm to the environment”, “The product does not contain ingredients that present risk to my health” and “The product has not been tested on animals”. The least important attributes were "The product is valued in my social group" and "The product contains seals and certificates in its package.". Main consumer values were theoretical and experiential.

Dynamics of production should consider ingredients that are acceptable for the maximum number of consumers, which means avoiding substances from animal origin as much as possible and be careful about providing information on the usage and limitations of the products. As certification was not considered by our sample as an imperative feature, manufacturers could look for less expensive alternatives for attesting the reliability of their products. . Marketing strategies should consider that consumers in our sample were mainly intellectual, experiential and with a tendency to be inquisitive.

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