Ethical Consumerism

Microsoft is a company that deals with the manufacture and sale of computer related products including hardware and software. The Microsoft Windows operating system is the most widely used operating system of computers all over the world. Due to the vastness of the Microsoft’s business, there is also a need for ethical consumerism in order to maintain and expand the current customer base. The characterizing properties of global activism are delineated with cases one main campaign against Microsoft: the consumer backing effort. This is the result of insufficient ethical consumerism in Microsoft’s business policy. According to the case study of Microsoft, it can said that although Microsoft promotes ethical consumerism, it still requires to invest more in the same field in order enhance the already existing customer base.

In this report, the ethical consumerism aspects of Microsoft have been discussed in detail.

Ethical consumerism is defined as the business with the consumers by ensuring the maintenance of ethical values and moral for the project team. Microsoft is one of the companies that have strict policies of ethical consumerism in the recent years. In a recent survey conducted worldwide, Microsoft has been named as one of the most ethical business organizations that are running successfully at the moment. Along with ethical consumerism, there also comes Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that promotes the growth of the ethical consumerism of the company (Carrington, Neville & Whitwell 2014). While CSR likely has significant implications for promoting ethical consumerism in business, for example, publicizing and marking, there is much obscure about its consequences for customer basic leadership. Corporate activities that address an organization’s social and ecological effects that go past lawful or administrative prerequisites are regularly commenced on an apparent “business case” in which consumer recognitions and requests drive corporate obligation and maintainability systems (Khan, Rodrigues & Balasubramanian 2017).

Microsoft is a company that deals with the manufacture and sale of computer related products including hardware and software. The Microsoft Windows operating system is the most widely used operating system of computers all over the world. Due to the vastness of the Microsoft’s business, there is also a need for ethical consumerism in order to maintain and expand the current customer base. The characterizing properties of global activism are delineated with cases one main campaign against Microsoft: the consumer backing effort. This is the result of insufficient ethical consumerism in Microsoft’s business policy. According to the case study of Microsoft, it can said that although Microsoft promotes ethical consumerism, it still requires to invest more in the same field in order enhance the already existing customer base (Solomon 2014). The case analysis of Microsoft clearly depicts the actual condition of ethical consumerism in Microsoft’s business. Research analyses by different researchers demonstrates that dissident systems utilizing marked correspondence procedures can support long haul political activities that have significant effects on the ethical consumerism of different companies including Microsoft (Carfagna et al. 2014). During the initial years of foundation, Microsoft was known as “evil empire” as the company then mainly emphasized on rapid growth of business. As a result, Microsoft rapidly grew and the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, quickly grew to become the richest man in the world. However, there was no role played by ethical consumerism in such a rapid growth of the company. The main reason for the growth was that the company provided a unique and efficient product no other company was able to provide. There were other operating systems like Linux, Ubuntu and others but none of them were so versatile, efficient and attractive like the Microsoft Windows. However, with time, Microsoft understood the value of ethical consumerism in business. With rising competitors in the same field of business (Android, Mac to name a few), Microsoft felt the need to apply ethical consumerism in business in order to maintain and expand their customer base. Microsoft has implemented several steps in order to ensure ethical consumerism is maintained in the business including the retailers and third party distributors. According to a recent report published, Microsoft is currently on of the most ethical companies in the world. This is the sole reason why Microsoft’s business has not taken much dip in spite of presence of a number of competitors in the market (Khan, Rodrigues & Balasubramanian 2017). Although Microsoft has faced some challenges in the mobile phone operating system market, ethical consumerism does not have any role in it. It is recommended that Microsoft should emphasize on ethical consumerism even further in order to further develop business and stand tall against all other competitors in the market.

Company Review

The survey was conducted on 7 people who regularly use Microsoft products. The survey results are as follows.

According to the survey results, it can be seen that the responses are diverse in nature and most of the people have opted to support the questions asked. Hence, based on the majority, Microsoft still has long way to go in order to achieve the goal of ethical consumerism. While CSR likely has significant ramifications for promoting exercises, for example, publicizing and marking, there is much obscure about its consequences for customer basic leadership. In additionally contemplates a work in progress, researchers are examining the limit states of the corona impact: how and when it works. Corporate activities that address an organization’s social effects that go past lawful or administrative prerequisites are regularly commenced on an apparent “business case” in which consumer recognitions drives corporate obligation and maintainability systems. However, in-depth analysis and research activities on the business case for CSR as well as surveys of research concerning buyer impacts propose that the impact of CSR on customers is profoundly unexpected. As more researchers are analyzing the effects of ethical consumerism on the business of a company, it is evident that most of the consumers emphasize on the fact that they will prefer companies with more ethical consumerism than others. According to the survey conducted against Microsoft, most people generally think that it is an ethical company that values its customers and the ethical part of the business. However, as Microsoft grows and continues to face strong challenges against other similar and rising companies, the ethical consumerism is slowly beginning to diminish as the company is aiming more on the profits from the business rather than keeping pace with ethical consumerism. Hence, it can be concluded that in spite of strong rivalry in market, ethical consumerism will help Microsoft to maintain and extend the business in the long run.

Conclusion

In this report, the ethical consumerism aspects of Microsoft have been discussed in detail. Microsoft is a company that deals with the manufacture and sale of computer related products including hardware and software. The Microsoft Windows operating system is the most widely used operating system of computers all over the world. According to the survey results conducted during the research, it can be seen that the responses are diverse in nature and most of the people have opted to support the questions asked. Hence, based on the majority, Microsoft still has long way to go in order to achieve the goal of ethical consumerism. While CSR likely has significant implications for promoting ethical consumerism practices, for example, publicizing and marking, there is much obscure about its consequences for customer basic leadership. In additionally contemplates a work in progress, researchers are examining the limit states of the corona impact: how and when it works. As Microsoft grows and continues to face strong challenges against other similar and rising companies, the ethical consumerism is slowly beginning to diminish as the company is aiming more on the profits from the business rather than keeping pace with ethical consumerism. Hence, it can be concluded that in spite of strong rivalry in market, ethical consumerism will help Microsoft to maintain and extend the business in the long run.

The recommendations are as follows:

• Microsoft must emphasize on ethical consumer behavior in order to ensure the success of the company.
• The company must have more strict policies regarding ethical consumerism.
• The company should strongly detest against any unethical behavior or usage of copyright materials by consumers and other groups.
• The company should emphasize on inclining more towards ethical consumerism rather than profit-based consumerism.
• Since Microsoft deals with softwares products, it should release ethical and fair use policy in order to expand their ethical consumerism. Softwares are subjected to high rates of piracy and breach of copyright attacks. Hence, unethical use of these softwares further harms the ethical consumerism. As a result, these unethical uses must be stopped. 

References

Carfagna, L.B., Dubois, E.A., Fitzmaurice, C., Ouimette, M.Y., Schor, J.B., Willis, M. & Laidley, T., 2014. An emerging eco-habitus: The reconfiguration of high cultural capital practices among ethical consumers. Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol 14. Part 2, pp.158-178.

Carrington, M.J., Neville, B.A. & Whitwell, G.J., 2014. Lost in translation: Exploring the ethical consumer intention–behavior gap. Journal of Business Research, Vol 67. Part 2), pp.2759-2767.

Khan, Z.R., Rodrigues, G. & Balasubramanian, S., 2017. Ethical consumerism and apparel industry-towards a new factor model.

Pecoraro, M.G. & Uusitalo, O., 2014. Conflicting values of ethical consumption in diverse worlds–A cultural approach. Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol 14. Part1, pp.45-65.

Solomon, M.R., 2014. Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being. Vol. 10. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.