Has the credit crunch killed ethical consumerism?
I received this interesting email from Hitwise; consumers appear to be putting their own personal financial health ahead of their ethics.
“While the troubles facing the finance industry have picked up the headlines this week, the impact of the credit crunch continues to be felt elsewhere in the economy. One assumption people have made is that consumers will be less inclined to make more expensive ethical purchases as their disposable income falls. The recent fall in organic food sales reported by supermarkets seems to back this claim up.
At Hitwise we believe that search behaviour is a great way of tracking consumer behaviour. So, to test the ethical consumption hypothesis we created four search term portfolios: Carbon/Environment (e.g. ‘co2 emissions’, ‘hybrid cars’), Efficiency (e.g. ‘loft insulation’, ‘underfloor heating’), Fair Trade (e.g. ‘fair trade clothing’, ‘charity shops’) and Organic Terms (e.g. ‘organic vegetables’, ‘riverford organic’).The chart on their post illustrates how searches for these four portfolios of terms have fared over the last year.
As you can see, the graph highlights a number of interesting trends. Firstly, the only one of the four to have experienced a significant increase over the last year was the Efficiency portfolio, perhaps not surprising given the rising price of fuel. The others have all declined over the last year, although only slightly. There are also clear seasonal peaks: Fair Trade searches peak at Christmas as people look for ethical gifts; while Efficiency searches increase during autumn / winter.
The table below lists the top sites receiving traffic from Efficiency searches, and these are a combination Government-related sites (e.g. Energy Savings Trust, Government Grants), fuel sites (e.g. Oil Price Check, Fuel Oil Direct), price comparison engines (e.g. uSwitch, Money Supermarket), and retailers that are well optimized for the terms (e.g. BoilerJuice, Screwfix Direct). The appearance of The Pension Service highlights the importantance of this issue to older people.
Concern about energy prices has also led to more people visiting utilties websites, presumable to check prices and change suppliers. As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet traffic to a custom category of electricity and gas suppliers has doubled over the last year.
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