Potentially Ethically Troublesome Practices in the Retail Food Industry: Relationship Between Intentions and Perceived Frequency of Occurrence Among Future Retail Personnel

Over the past few decades, retailing has become increasingly competitive (Berner 1996b). Within this highly competitive climate, consumers are faced with greater choice – they often have a wide number of retailers from which to make their selection of shopping destination. With this increased choice, consumers often have the ability to enforce higher expectations on retailers since, if a particular retailer does not adequately meet their expectations, there are several other retailers who may. This environment has directly affected retail operations, with the significance of the decisions and actions of retail employees taking on new meaning. A decision or action on the part of a single employee, for instance, has the potential to alienate customers who, as a result, may choose to patronize alternate retailers. As can be expected, the decisions and actions of store employees who are in direct contact with customers have the greatest potential to endear customers or to alienate customers from that retailer (McIntyre, Thomas and Gilbert 1999). Consequently, over the past few decades, there has been growing attention placed on the ethical perceptions of retail salespersons and those with whom they interact (e.g., Babin, Boles and Griffin 1999; Dubinsky and Levy 1985; DuPont and Craig 1996). Such attention appears deserved since decisions and actions which may be ethically questionable may result in less-than-desired service to customers. The same level of attention has not been focused on retail employees who work primarily “behind-the-scenes” with little direct contact with customers (Robicheaux and Robin 1996). The decisions and actions of these individuals, such as retail buyers, however, can also directly affect the degree to which a retailer’s customers are satisfied. In addition to increasing costs, ethical problems in retail buying can also lead to higher priced merchandise available to consumers as well as the possibility of less attractive merchandise assortments. The issue of ethical perceptions of individuals in the buying function, however, has received only minimal research attention (e.g., Arbuthnot 1997; Burns and Arbuthnot 1998). (This unbalanced coverage of ethics is similar in other areas of business. For instance, ethics in industrial selling situations has received a significant amount of research attention (e.g., Dawson 1997; Wotruba 1990), whereas the ethics in industrial purchasing situations has received some (e.g., Flanagan 1994; Haynes and Helms 1991), but relatively little attention). Most of the research on ethics in retail buying has focused on the ethical perceptions held by retail buyers (e.g., Arbuthnot 1997) or by individuals who would shortly become retail buyers (e.g., Burns and Arbuthnot 1998). The reason for this focus on ethical perceptions is in part a result of the difficulty inherent in predicting ethical behavior (Weber and Gillespie 1998). Ethical perceptions are usually implicitly viewed as an indicator of future activity. The focus of this study, however, will be on intentions. Specifically, this study examines the intentions of future retail buyers to engage in potentially ethically troublesome buying practices in the retail food industry, and relates these intentions to their ethical assessments and to the perceived frequency by which these practices occur in the industry. First, ethics in retail buying will be explored. Second, the Theory of Planned Behavior will be reviewed to provide a theoretical basis for examining intentions. Finally, intentions to engage in potentially ethically troublesome retail buying practices are related to ethical evaluations of these practices and the perceived frequency that these practices occur.