TY - THES U1 - Master Thesis A1 - Beltrán del Aguila, Melissa Adriana T1 - Consumer behavior and ethical consumption: An exploratory study understanding the attutude - behavior gap in fair trade food consumption N2 - In the last 30 years academics were exploring the field of ethical consumption and identified an attitude - behavior gap in the decision making process. Since then diverse studies have been implemented to understand ethical consumers' attitudes, motives and behavior. Parallel to the academic research being developed, there had been an increasing interest from the consumer side in behaving and consuming more ethically. Particularly, consumers have inclined their ethical purchases towards fair trade products. The present exploratory research implemented a quantitative metaphoric method called Zaltman Elicitation Metaphoric Technique (ZMET) to further contribute in the literature of ethical and fair trade consumption. The ZMET in-depth interviews were carried out with 10 German fair trade food consumers during the months of February and March in 2015. The results revealed a connection between participants' feelings, emotions, personal values and fair trade food consumption; likewise the research identified an association of fair trade to sustainability. KW - Fair trade KW - Consumer behavior KW - Ethical consumption KW - Attitude - Behavior Gap Y2 - 2015 ER -