Consumer Behavior on Fair Trade Products in Turkish Market

Two subjects at VŠE, University of Economics, Prague, namely Ethics, Responsibility and Sustainability in Business and International Marketing aroused the author´s interest to the topics of consumer behavior and Fair Trade and this interest created the basis for the master thesis. The goal of the master thesis was to focus and understand the Turkish Consumers’ Behavior on Fair Trade Products. The study aimed at exploring the key factors and motivations which drives consumer purchases towards Fair Trade products as well as examining how ethical obligations influence consumer decision-making process on purchasing Fair Trade products from Turkish market point of view which is an emerging market for the Fair Trade concept. A literature review was made in the first chapter and an online survey with 121 participants from Turkey followed. The results of the master thesis are that only 14% of the Turkish participants of the online survey are aware of the concept of Fair Trade which is compared to developed countries quite low. Furthermore, the main factors for the Turkish participants who did not know Fair Trade before to buy a product are quality, price and taste. In contrast, those participants who already knew Fair Trade give more importance to moral principles, support of poor workers, and quality as well. Motivational factors for Turkish participants to buy Fair Trade products would be better product visibility in shops and better explanation of Fair Trade products. In the results one can see that in Turkey contributive factors to buy Fair Trade products would be to place the concept of Fair Trade in the main stream media, education in schools and also sell these products in popular stores to reach more Turkish people with the concept of Fair Trade.