How do chocolate lovers balance taste and ethical considerations?

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how chocolate lovers balance taste and ethical considerations when selecting chocolate products. Design/methodology/approach – The data set was collected through a survey at the 2014 “Salon du Chocolat” in Brussels, Belgium. The authors distributed 700 copies and received 456 complete responses (65 percent response rate). Choice experiments were used to estimate the relative importance of different chocolate characteristics and to predict respondents’ willingness to pay for marginal changes in those characteristics. The authors estimate both a conditional logit model and a latent class model to take possible preference heterogeneity into account. Findings – On average, respondents were willing to pay 11 euros more for 250 g fairtrade labeled chocolate compared to conventional chocolate. However, taste clearly dominates ethical considerations. The authors could distinguish three consumer segments, each with a different tradeoff between taste and fairtrade. One group clearly valued fairtrade positively, a second group valued fairtrade to a lesser extent and a third group did not seem to value fairtrade. Originality/value – Chocolate can be seen as a self-indulgent treat where taste is likely to dominate other characteristics. Therefore it is unsure to what extent ethical factors are included in consumer decisions. Interestingly the results indicate that a significant share of chocolate buyers still positively value fairtrade characteristics when selecting chocolate varieties.