Thuy Le

VEGAN TREND IN CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR

VEGAN TREND IN CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR

Thuy Le
Thesis
Spring 2019
Degree Program in International
Business
Oulu University of Applied Sciences
ABSTRACT

Oulu University of Applied Sciences

Degree Program in International Business

Author: Thuy Le
Title of Bachelor´s thesis: Vegan Trend in Consumer Buying Behaviour
Supervisor: Taina Vuorela
Term and year of completion: Spring 2019 Number of pages: 81 + 9

Veganism is a growing trend with a lot of business potential for new ingredients. In preparing for
the vegan cosmetics market, the Arctic Berry Wax needs to prepare to fulfil the market
requirements. Due to the lack of understanding of the veganism consumer, this thesis work aims
to discover the motivators and barriers in daily life. The main subjects are young female (18 – 35
years old) vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian consumer in Finland (n=8). The research method is
combined semi-structured interview, non-experimental observation and narrative background story
to provide a more comprehensive perspective about the consumer experience. The framework of
the Theory Planned Behaviour and Emotion has been applied to provide a deeper understanding
of veganism consumer behaviour and their intention to use vegan cosmetics.

In general, a veganism consumer still has a lot of barriers due to the lack of understanding of
veganism in social interaction and an official vegan standard in the consumer goods sector. The
core of veganism is still mainly applied in daily meal practice, where the family is a strong influence
on subjects’ adolescence diet. The social relationships have an important influence on subjects’
emotion and attitude toward their perception of their diet and other diet groups.

In reading the product label, the participants tend to search for a vegan indicator and use their
brand belief to give the conclusion of whether the product is vegan suitable. Their ability to detect
original animal ingredients is limited. Among the self-proclaimed vegan indicators and a certificated
vegan indicator, the certificated indicator proves the strength of a familiarity indicator. The result
shows the role of vegan indicator in the vegan product label.

Based on these findings, a marketer in cosmetics companies may apply this insight of vegan
consumers to enhance their shopping experience by consumer-centric label design, consider the
need to register their product with a reliable vegan certification organisation and proceed further
consumer research in the vegan market segment.

Keywords: veganism, vegan cosmetics, consumer behaviour, the theory of planned behaviour,
emotions.

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CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 7
2 VEGAN TREND IN MODERN SOCIETY ............................................................................. 10
2.1 Definitions of related concepts to the vegan trend: ................................................... 10
2.2 Veg*an consumer profile .......................................................................................... 12
2.2.1 The reasons for going veg*an .................................................................... 13
2.2.2 Veg*an attitude and public judgements ...................................................... 13
2.2.3 Veg*an movements .................................................................................... 15
2.3 Vegan certification and labelling in Europe............................................................... 16
2.4 Lush Cosmetics: the naked packaging and its sustainable goals ............................. 18
3 CHARACTERISTICS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR ......................................................... 20
3.1 Consumer buying behaviour..................................................................................... 20
3.1.1 Decision-making process ........................................................................... 20
3.1.2 Gender buying behaviour ........................................................................... 22
3.1.3 The role of product label in consumer buying behaviour ............................ 23
3.2 Theory of planned behaviour .................................................................................... 24
3.3 Emotions in the Decision-Making Process as an Unconscious Mind factor.............. 27
3.3.1 Forms of Emotions ..................................................................................... 27
3.3.2 Characteristics of emotion.......................................................................... 28
3.3.3 Emotion in the Decision-making process and support TPB ....................... 29
3.4 The Theory of Planned Behaviour as a framework for studying veg*an consumer .. 31
4 EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF VEGAN CONSUMERS IN MARKETING................................... 32
4.1 Research Design ...................................................................................................... 33
4.1.1 Theme interview development ................................................................... 33
4.1.2 Non-Experimental Tests in Packaging ....................................................... 33
4.1.3 Test in Cosmetics Service Situation ........................................................... 36
4.2 Data collection .......................................................................................................... 37
4.3 Data analysing.......................................................................................................... 40
4.4 Findings .................................................................................................................... 40
4.4.1 The participants’ stories ............................................................................. 40
4.4.2 Veganism food consumption ...................................................................... 44
4.4.3 Veganism cosmetics consumption ............................................................. 51

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 4.4.4 Non-experimental Test in Packaging ......................................................... 54
4.4.5 Vegan Consumer Profile ............................................................................ 59
4.4.6 Summary.................................................................................................... 61
5 CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION ..................................................................................... 68
5.1 Conclusion................................................................................................................ 68
5.2 Discussion ................................................................................................................ 70
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 72
APPENDICES .............................................................................................................................. 82

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TABLE OF FIGURES

Table 1 Participants' Age and Year of the transition period and practice Veganism diet ............. 39
Table 2 The number of owned vegan cosmetics.......................................................................... 53
Table 3 Vegan Indicator description............................................................................................. 55
Table 4 Test B result - Lush product Vegan recognition .............................................................. 58
Table 5 Veganism grouping by diet.............................................................................................. 60
Table 6 Vegan consumer profile in cosmetics.............................................................................. 60
Table 7 Summary of TPB in participants’ diet .............................................................................. 64
Table 8 Summary of TPB in Cosmetics ....................................................................................... 66

Figure 1 Vegan Certification - The Vegan Society & The V-Label ............................................... 17
Figure 2 Cruelty-free certifications - PETA Bunny & Leaping Bunny ........................................... 18
Figure 3 Stages in the decision-making process.......................................................................... 21
Figure 4 Theory of Planned Behaviour with emotion ................................................................... 25
Figure 5 A Model of Emotion and Reason in Attitude Formation ................................................. 30
Figure 6 Product no.4 listed as 'Suitable for Vegetarian' on Mark & Spencer website ................. 56

APPENDIX
Figure 7 Product 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - Front label .................................................................................... 85
Figure 8 Product 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - Back label .................................................................................... 85
Figure 9 Product 5 - 6 - 7 - Front label ......................................................................................... 86
Figure 10 Product 7 - Back label .................................................................................................. 86
Figure 11 Product 5 - Back label .................................................................................................. 87
Figure 12 Product 6 - Ingredient list sticker .................................................................................. 87
Figure 13 Product 6 - Back label .................................................................................................. 87
Figure 14 Product 6 - Ingredient list - Pealed sticker ................................................................... 87
Figure 15 Lush solid body lotion .................................................................................................. 89
Figure 16 Interviewees’ cosmetics collection ............................................................................... 90

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1 INTRODUCTION

This study aims to provide an overview of veganism diet and its connection to vegan cosmetics
consumption. The result is indirect benefit the Arctic Berry Wax as a potential material for the vegan
cosmetics industry. Although, due to the lack of researches in vegan cosmetics, there is a need of
basic understanding the vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian consumers (called as veg*an for all three
subjects) motivations and challenges in their daily encounter.

Veganism is a rising trend in the past 50 years. The increasing of interest in a meat-free, cruelty-
free lifestyle grows stronger through the years with more availability of meat and dairy substitutes
in the food industry. And indeed, Forbes and The Economist magazine has named 2019 as “The
year of Vegan” (Banis, 2018; Economist, 2018). With the rise of concern about the environment,
animal rights and health, the veganism trend does not stop in the food sector. With the
advancement in technologies, biochemical and substitute in materials, the veganism concept has
been adapted in the non-food sector such as clothes and footwear, cosmetics and household
products.

Among the non-food categories, vegan cosmetics is considered as the next spotlight in the vegan
trend movement. According to Orbit Research, the cosmetics industry values USD 532.43 billion in
2017 and expected to growth of 7.14% in the 2018-2023 period, estimated worth USD 805.61 billion
by 2023 (Reuters.com, 2018). To provide the market demand and enhance the vegan cosmetics
recipe, there is a need for new vegan ingredients for cosmetics manufacturers. For that purpose,
the Arctic Berry Wax has the full potential of becoming a new premium vegan ingredient from the
pure natural environment of Nordic countries for the cosmetics sector.

The Arctic Berry Wax is a study subject of the Natural Wax of Arctic Berries as Our Treasure
research project. The main goals are to exploit, and present wild berry wax derived – a potential
new source of valuable wax material to many manufacturing industries. In the scale of the project,
Oulu University of Applied Sciences is responsible for identifying the business opportunity for the
new wax material. In cosmetics field, the project has some findings in the potential of ABW for
business to business in the United Kingdom (Cao, 2018), California, USA (Taskila & Mikkola, 2018)
and natural cosmetics sector (Maharjan, 2018; Schromm, 2018). These researches focus more on
the market requirements and the potential position of Arctic Berry Wax amongst the competitors

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wax material. In a narrower path, it also has the potential of being a vegan ingredient, one of the
recent trends in ethical consumption. Although, there are very few researches about vegan
cosmetics and insights of the vegan consumer. This study aims to fill in the gap and establish some
basic understanding of veg*an consumers for further researches afterwards.

Research Question

Developed from a persona extracted from the Wax Workshop of Cosmetics in Oulu, Nov 2017
(Vuorela, Ahola, Aro, & Maharjan, 2017), the main research subjects are young female (18-35
years old) living in Finland, who practised veganism at different levels (flexitarian, vegetarian and
vegan). The research goal aims to find the connection between their diet habit and vegan cosmetics
consumption habit. At the very beginning of this study, a preliminary dialogue with Lush’s sales
representative was conducted in Sweden on May 2018. The interview provided valuable insight
and contribute to the research design. Based on the preliminary research, the main research
question is:
What kind of challenges does a consumer encounter trying to be vegan?

To answer that question, these are supplementary questions to provide more information in support
of their selection:
1. What factors affect the commitment of veg*an consumer?
2. How young veg*an consumer detect vegan cosmetics?
3. How could veg*an consumers and their buying profile and behaviour be described?

To approach the vegan cosmetics market effectively, the understanding of end consumer is
necessary to present the Arctic Berry Wax with the full feature that appeals the cosmetics
manufacturers. Due to the lack of standard of vegan cosmetics in the consumer goods sector, the
research approach needs to start with the consumer needs before providing any further
requirement for the industry. Hence, in this study, the basic knowledge about the motivators and
barriers that a veg*an may encounter in daily life is the main concern by semi-constructed
interviews in a qualitative approach. Then, to understand the decision-making process of the
veg*an consumer in cosmetics, the non-experimental tests would focus on how young veg*an
consumer detect vegan cosmetics products. The label reading tests are designed based on the
valuable knowledge of pioneers’ expertise in consumer behaviour in the retail sector. A regular
consumer only spends 20 per cent of their time in a retail shop to examine the alternatives of

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product. Hence, informative label design for veg*an products would enhance consumer interaction
greatly. Finally, a similar label reading test and a cosmetic service situation test aim to understand
the advantage and disadvantage of limited packaging method of Lush Cosmetics, a non-traditional
cosmetics brand from the UK. The result, once again, emphasises the importance of a customer-
centric design in vegan cosmetics.

The main framework for this research is the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) of the famous
social psychologist professor Icek Ajzen. His model of planned behaviour explains and predicts the
intention of the subject based on the factors of Attitude, Subjective Norms and Perceived
Behavioural Control. Additionally, to understand the veg*an consumer better, the Emotion is
integrated into this model as a fourth factor, as a few previous types of research has been used
this extension model. It gained some positive result and can predict the behaviour of the subject.

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2 VEGAN TREND IN MODERN SOCIETY

Veganism is a new and developing concept which has its origins in the 20th century. The concept
was deepened based on vegetarianism, known by the practice of Hinduism in the East and Greek
philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras (500 B.C.) in the West (‘History of The Vegan Society’,
2019; Preece, 2008). Despite the long history of the perception of excluding animal products from
daily consumption, the modern society of human in the 21st century still discusses the definition of
the terms “vegan” and “vegetarian” as there are no official legal definitions in EU or on a global
level in the food sector yet. Hence, the label of “vegan” or “vegetarian” on product packaging is
voluntary and equivocal (European Vegetarian Union, 2019). In the scales of this study, the modern
perception of veganism would be the main concern to serve the consumption aspect. Besides,
since the veg*an consumers is a recently developing concept and still growing, it is necessary to
investigate the veg*an diet in-depth analysis and explore its connection to the present habit of
veg*an in cosmetics. Hence, in this chapter, related definitions and an overview of veganism
consumer in 2010s would provide a general understanding of the challenges of veg*an at present
of the research.

2.1 Definitions of related concepts to the vegan trend:

There are many ways to categories vegan diets. Based on the intention of the classification,
different researches, companies, organisations have their definition of veganism.
According to the Cambridge dictionary: (‘VEGAN | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary’,
n.d.)1
• Vegan: A person who does not eat or use any animal products, such as meat, fish,
eggs, cheese, or leather.
• Vegetarian: A person who does not eat meat for health or religious reasons or
because they want to avoid being cruel to animals.
• Flexitarian: A person who eats mainly vegetarian food but eats meat occasionally.
• Omnivore: An animal that is naturally able to eat both plants and meat. In this study,
this term refers to a human who eats plants and meat equally.

1 All the definitions of vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian and omnivore has been retrieved the same day in Cambridge Online

Dictionary

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There are many vegetarian styles which the consumers partly by-products from an animal such as
egg, milk, cheese or honey. In this study, the intention of behaviour is prioritised over details of diet
scheme. Therefore, the author simplifies the classification by focusing on vegan, vegetarian and
flexitarian. Omnivore is not among the subjects in this research. However, the opinion of veg*an on
omnivore would be reflected to observe their attitude towards other diet groups.

Recently, the term “Veg*an” has been adopted by some scholars in their researches that related to
veganism and gastronomy topic to categorise vegan and vegetarian by using one single word. In
this way, the term is shortened, in spite of still distinguishing between vegan and vegetarian (João
Graça, Abílio Oliveira, Maria Manuela Calheiros, 2015; Judge & Wilson, 2019; Rosenfeld, 2019).
In this study, this term would include vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian as an extension concept
to avoid the unnecessarily repeated terms and to separate these diet group from omnivores.

Definition by EU Regulation No 1223/2009 about Cosmetics:

‘Cosmetic product’ means any substance or mixture intended to be placed in contact with
the external parts of the human body (epidermis, hair system, nails, lips and external genital
organs) or with the teeth and the mucous membranes of the oral cavity with a view
exclusively or mainly to cleaning them, perfuming them, changing their appearance,
protecting them, keeping them in good condition or correcting body odours. (Smith, 2015)

Similar to veg*an definitions in the food sector, there is no official registered definition of vegan
cosmetics. Thus, derived from the definition of ‘vegan’ and ‘cosmetics’, ‘Vegan cosmetics’ could
be defined as cosmetic products which do not include any animal or by-products ingredient.
Although, since many companies could proceed with the product testing on the animal, it is not
compulsory for a vegan cosmetic product to also be a cruelty-free product. This is a common
misunderstanding for consumers as they might assume vegan cosmetics are, by nature, vegan-
friendly. (logicalharmony, n.d.) Similarly, ‘Vegetarian cosmetics’ are cosmetics which may include
by-product from an animal such as honey, bee wax, but not dead animal or by-product extract (e.g.
gelatine) and Veg*an cosmetics refer to both vegan and vegetarian cosmetics in this study.

Related to the concept of veganism, the term “Cruelty-free” or “No animal-testing cosmetics”
refers to cosmetic products which have not been tested on an animal with the finished product.
They still may contain animal ingredients or derived-animal ingredients (e.g. colour pigment,
glycerine, etc.) as a non-vegan product. According to the Leaping Bunny Program, a company may
claim “We do not test on animals”, the product itself can contain ingredient tested on animals or the

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product tested by a third-party organisation. (Leaping Bunny Program, 2014b) For this reason,
again, it is a different aspect of humanity in manufacturing. Hence, the concept of “Vegan-friendly”
is a wider spectrum of both vegan cosmetics and cruelty-free. “Vegan-friendly”, by definition is
“made or manufactured without the use of animal products, to be suitable for vegans; also (of a
person, organisation, etc.) adapted to or sympathetic towards vegans.”2 In shopping, vegan-friendly
shop means there is a system or tool to support veg*an in choosing the suitable product (e.g. filter
in the search function in e-commerce website, separate veg*an product area in cosmetics store).
By this combination concept, vegan-friendly cosmetics could be perceived as products containing
animal-free ingredients and not being tested on animals. But according to some beauty blogs,
vegan-friendly cosmetics “means that some, if not most, products or ingredients are vegan.”
(Beauty Bakerie Cosmetics, 2017). In this case, the concept of vegan-friendly has a crack of not
fully vegan as it may be perceived by the consumer and still has a chance of non-vegan ingredient
in the finished product (Bolton, 2018). Hence, the concept of vegan-friendly cosmetics would need
the legal definition to avoid the false concept or the misunderstanding for the consumer.

2.2 Veg*an consumer profile

Veganism is still a new and continuously growing concept over recent decades. The concept of
veganism was invented in 1944 by Donald Watson, the founder of the Vegan Society in the United
Kingdom to end the exploitation of animals for human and by human. (‘History of The Vegan
Society’, cited 01 Apr 2019) This concept does not only tackle food consumption but also extends
in all goods categories, testing on the animal, transportation, entertainment or leisure activities such
as horseback riding, animal circus, husky/reindeer riding, etc. Santa Claus and Christmas time
would not be vegan-friendly activities, under this term. Many traditional races with an animal
contestant could not be considered vegan-friendly either, according to the definition of vegan.
However, not all vegans are agreed on this definition. Many vegans argue that if they respect the
animal and do not stress nor physical abuse, such as not using metal shoes for horse or using
vegan saddles and bridles for them, then the idea of living in harmony with the animal should be
accepted (‘10 Reasons Not to Attend an Animal Circus’, n.d.; ‘How Does PETA Feel About
Horseback Riding?’, n.d.; Vegan Life, 2017). Hence, there is not yet an absolute definition of vegan
as the concept is rather new, comparing to the long history of human dominance over the natural
world. And as the simplest definition of vegan, according to Cambridge English dictionary, the

2 (‘vegan-friendly | Definition of vegan-friendly in English by Oxford Dictionaries’, cited 18 Mar 2019)

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concept of “a person who does not eat or use any animal products, such as meat, fish, eggs,
cheese, or leather” is rather hard to be followed as, still, it is impossible to trace all the animal origin
in our daily consumption, such as crushed animal bones as a replacement material in concrete is
construction industry (Bhat, Qasab, & Dar, 2012).

2.2.1 The reasons for going veg*an

There are many reasons behind the veganism: moral (the injustice towards animal, animal
suffering), health/physiological concern (human dental and digestive system are unsuitable for
meat), food production issue (meat industry has bad effects on the environment), religious/spiritual
(a mean to purify the soul/ control one’s appetites and sexuality, Christian’s encouragement to stay
vegetarian in Past Over period – but not compulsory), the aesthetics/gustatory (“a pejorative
symbolism […] consisting of notions of violence, death and decay”) (Beardsworth & Keil, 1997).
Amongst those concerns, the author expects the interview to enlighten the main reason of being
flexitarian and veg*an in a young group of female consumers, especially in vegan cosmetics, due
to the lack of study in this field. From that place, the consumer goods sector can serve them better.

2.2.2 Veg*an attitude and public judgements

As a growing trend, the media has boomed with numbers of articles, blog posts and discussions to
introduce veganism to the public, or more specific, to omnivores. In term of the attitude toward
veganism, there are plenty of articles which debate on how a vegan diet can be healthy, how
environment-friendly, animal-friendly and supporting for living equality. (Beezhold, Radnitz,
McGrath, & Feldman, 2018; nutriciously, 2017; Ofei, 2017; Scott, 2017; The Vegan Society, n.d.)
The majority of them are trying to be objective with science facts; part of them told their own
experience with a vegan diet to introduce omnivores to veganism. Although, the experience may
be varied as some of the life-long vegans gave up due to health problem and become healthier
with animal protein while many of omnivores switch to veg*an diet and feel better. But as a matter
of fact, the idea of a drastic change in life-long eating habit and label oneself as an omnivore or
vegan can be the major obstacle in supporting the veganism. The transition period is usually not
an easy experience, especially for vegans, because of the anxiety come from the lack of vegan

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standard in the consumer goods sector. That ignorance leads to uncomfortable moments when
some found meat or fish in their food or a leather tag on their jeans.

Accordingly, the question arises of how veg*an consider themselves as well as other groups? In
research about dietarian identity profiles of vegan and vegetarian, vegan is described as “view their
diets as more central to their identity; take more pride in their diets; have stronger dietary
motivations; and judge omnivorous dieters more harshly.” (Rosenfeld, 2019) On the other side, the
attitude of non-vegetarians, in general, were positive toward veg*an, but it was not in favour of
vegans, comparing toward vegetarians. Indeed, in general, vegan’s public image is considered as
‘aggressive, conservative and uncompromising’ towards other diet groups. (Gate, 2018; Higgins,
2018) Most of the public arguments about meat consumption and veganism have a high level of
emotional and provoking behaviours with verbal expressions and actions of disrespectful and
resentment between omnivores and vegans.

Moreover, gender also plays a role in distinct attitude toward veg*an. Several studies found that
male respondents show more negative towards veg*an than female respondents. There are some
researches that show the connection between meat and masculinity drives behind this negative
attitude as vegetarian subjects are perceived as “less masculine” than omnivore subjects. (Chin,
Jr, & Sims, 2002; Rozin, Hormes, Faith, & Wansink, 2012; Ruby & Heine, 2011) Besides gender
as a factor in the negative attitude toward veg*an, non-veg*an may feel the threat of morality
comparison or be judged by veg*an (Judge & Wilson, 2019.). Maybe it is time to reconsidering the
social norm in entertainment and advertising that have been carried the message of “masculinity is
eating meat, not a plant-based diet”. For example, in a recent America TV series named “The
Ranch”, the father character named Beau Bennett is a rancher who always proud about his favour
for steak and expresses his hatred for vegetables. Moreover, he also likes to mock his son’s almond
milk as he considers it is “only for ladies” (Trainer, 2017). It needs to take into consideration the
marketing effect in food industry regarding the masculinity image and its connection to meat
consumption. In favour of meat and alcohol industry, the masculinity image has been shaped into
an unhealthy prejudice how a man should behave, what product he should own. But to erase the
prejudice towards veg*an and meat, it would need stronger movements from the authority
organisations, and a more insightful understanding about vegan’s experience could reveal why it
happens in this direction, where vegan has the sense of being against by other diet groups and
make the situation at ease for everyone.

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Additionally, non-veg*an usually consider veganism as an “All-or-nothing” lifestyle (Khara, 2018;
Leenaert, 2016). There are also some conservative vegans consider that flexitarian is a kind of
“cheating” and not completely committed to the idea, and hence, prejudice emerges. But is the
judgement necessary? The fact that increasing flexitarians or, at a lower level, meat-reducers can
significantly change the big picture of the animal agricultural industry. In the UK, the nation where
the concept of vegan was invented, the significant rising number of flexitarians and meat-reducers
from became a great signal for the potential growth of billion markets (Mintel Press Team, 2019).
The more open and flexible the idea of veganism become; the more positive result will turn out.
Because most of the people cannot have the food choice since birth and the family diet habit
depends heavily on their parents’ or guardians’ choice. Hence, the transition to becoming a veg*an
would need more motivation, social recognition, and support to help them achieve the baby steps,
not to offend them and push them back to be omnivores.

2.2.3 Veg*an movements

The 2019 marks as a year of veganism being a mainstream trend (Banis, 2018; Finnis, 2019). From
being mocked and joking over being vegan in the early 2000s from west to east, a vegan is now
considered not only a healthier person but also giving support for the environment. In late 2018,
Germany has taken a further step to support the vegan community: the German food book
Commission introduced the guideline of manufacturing and commercial practices alongside with
the expectations of labelling meat and dairy substitutes from animal products’ name, such as
almond ‘milk’ (which refers to cow milk), vegetarian ‘salami/sausage/meatball’ (which have meat
as main ingredient originally), and so on (Karow, 2019). Though this is not legally binding, it is a
significant change for veganism followers: they would not feel offended every single time when
reaching out for a meat-substitute product and catch a meat-reminder vocabulary on the product’s
packaging referring to the product they avoided to consume. Besides, the increasing of the variety
of meat and dairy substitutes (bean products, vegan yoghurt, vegan ice cream, etc.) on the market
shows that the veg*an consumer goods sector is no longer a niche market. This move partly reflects
the need of stricter regulation on labelling veg*an product, as the unclear boundary of ve*gan-
friendly and veg*an suitable is very thin and the loophole of the concepts create ambiguous and
anxiety when the consumer detect non-veg*an ingredient in plant-based products (Bolton, 2018).
Despite all those positive moves, there are more veg*an brands appearing in veg*an consumption
market, requiring further attention would need more attention in creating official definitions,

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regulations and reliable statistics on the European level to protect veg*an consumer rights and
support producers and retailers. It seems the European Commission has failed in establish a
standard during the 2010s, despite the calls from European Vegetarian Union due to the traces of
the animal substance in veg*an food (European Vegetarian Union, cited 30 May 2019).

The public supporting veg*an community in media field is a good motivation to encourage
consumer switching their consuming habit, especially from celebrities and influencers, who have a
significant influence on their fans and followers. But is that enough to create a veg*an friendly
environment for everybody? This study aims to investigate what factors motivate and prevent a
flexitarian or veg*an in practising their belief in the most convenient way.

2.3 Vegan certification and labelling in Europe

Even though there are no official legal definitions for veganism concept in EU or global scale, many
organisations try to standardise veg*an products to provide a safe choice for the veg*an community.
To be certified as veg*an or cruelty-free product, it requires a quality assurance process to examine
the ingredients and the manufacturing process, in case the subject is compliant with a specific
standard of the veg*an or cruelty-free organization (The V-Label, 2016a; ‘Vegan Trademark
standards’, n.d.; ‘Which Cruelty Free Bunny Logos Can We Trust?’, 2015). The certificate can be
applied to foods, cosmetics, clothing and some other product categories, even though the accuracy
of each certificate might be different depending on the process of certification. There are plenty of
certifications available on the market, though, in the scale of this study, a few popular certificates
of vegan and cruelty-free are taken into consideration to keep the focus on the consumer aspect.

For veg*an certification, in the Europe market, the Vegan Society Label and the V-label are most
prevalent about the number of registered products. The Vegan Society is the oldest community of
veganism. Founded in 1944 by Donald Watson and other pioneering non-dairy vegetarians, the
term ‘vegan’ has been invented to express the idea of living without exploiting other living creatures
“for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection”. (‘History of The Vegan Society’, 2019) The
Vegan Society Trademark has a reputation and is registered in many influential markets (Europe,
USA, Canada, Australia and India). With over 30,000 products registered in over 53 countries
(‘Statistics - The Vegan Society’, n.d.), Vegan Society Trademark gained international recognition.
The organisation also promotes the trademark products and trademark holders, boosting the

16
publicity of new and small companies in the vegan community. Another common certification, The
V-label, comes from the European Vegetarian Union. The Union was founded in 1985 and used
the ‘V’ logo since then to promote the veganism concept. In 1997, the first meat substitute for
veg*an had been used the V-label for product declaration in Switzerland. Since 2008, the trademark
rights of V-label has been registered with over 10,000 products carrying the label and expanding
to other continents. (‘The history of the V-Label’, 2018; The V-Label, 2016b) Hence, based on the
amount of registered product and the familiarity of certification, the Vegan Society has the
advantage of the popularity in the veg*an community (‘Vegan Certifications, Animal Testing Claims,
and more | Double Check Vegan’, n.d.; ‘Which Cruelty Free Bunny Logos Can We Trust?’, 2015).

Figure 1 Vegan Certification

Left: The Vegan Society; Right: The V-Label
Sources: The Vegan Society and the V-Label website

For Cruelty-free certificates, PETA’S Beauty Without Bunnies Logo and Leaping Bunny are the
most trustworthy on the market (‘Which Cruelty-Free Bunny Logos Can We Trust?’, 2015). With
the advantage of an organisation for animal rights, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA) has a reputation for strongly publicly defending animal abusing in laboratories, factory
farms, clothing trade and entertainment industry since 1980 (PETA, -a, -b, cited May 31, 2019).
Leaping Bunny was formed by eight national animal protection groups in the USA and Canada in
1996. To establish a recognisable standard for the cruelty-free shopping experience, the Leaping
Bunny Logo has become a trustworthy image for the general consumer. (Leaping Bunny Program,
2014a)

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 Figure 2 Cruelty-free certifications
Left: PETA Bunny; Right: Leaping Bunny
Sources: PETA, Leaping Bunny

2.4 Lush Cosmetics: the naked packaging and its sustainable goals

In the veg*an and cruelty-free cosmetics trend, Lush is a speciality handmade cosmetic brand
retailer committed to sustainable environment goals by reducing packaging, using biodegrade and
recycle packaging material. Their method is unique: by integrating different wrapping methods
around the world, Lush promotes a sustainable mindful practice for its customers: reusable tin box,
reusable fabric wrapper (Knot-Wraps) as scarf or gift wrapping in Japanese culture, etc. For liquid
products, Lush uses recycle black plastic container and customers are encouraged to bring back
the containers for a treat from the store. Besides, instead of using plastic foam to secure the product
on delivery, Lush switches to biodegrade material such as popcorn as a loose filler (Sahota, 2013,
p.145-147).

The company was founded in 1995 by Mark Constantine and Liz Weir in Poole, England and
expanded to 44 countries. Considering itself a campaigning company, Lush has many creative
marketing campaigns to draw consumer attention to the environmental issue (for example, ‘Go
Naked’, 2007) and is always searching for a new method to reduce the plastic waste matter. (LUSH,
2018; master_soapmaker, 2014) Hence, the unusual retail method of Lush requires a lot of effort
from the customer service team to explain the concept and their commitment. Although, this method
raised a question to the author as to how the consumer would perceive the product packaging if
there is no further information included. For liquid products, the product is contained in a recycled
plastic package with pre-printed label stickers, including veg*an indicator/ information. But for the
solid bar (soap, moisturiser), the product is wrapped by paper or biodegrade plastic, with a sticker
printed at the point of purchase, including the product description and ingredient list with no further
veg*an indicator or due date. This could be a disadvantage as the consumer need to search for

18
secondary information (by checking the company website) or lack of trust if the consumer does not
familiar with the brand. The author has conducted a shopping experience interview with Lush’s
sales representative in Sweden as a preliminary preparation for research design, later formed as a
non-experimental test. The conducted interview aims to study how Lush overcome customer’s
concern about limited packaging and related inconvenient.

A non-experimental test designed to observe how the consumer in Finland would examine and
categorise a solid bar product from Lush without the help of a secondary information source. Also,
two additional conversations while shopping with Lush’s salesperson would help to discover how
the sales representatives guide the consumer to overcome the minimalised packaging.

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3 CHARACTERISTICS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

To serve 6 billion customers on this planet Earth, a salesperson must understand his customers to
close the sales. Consumer Behaviour is a fascinating study field of human behavioural science and
endlessly growing, across many different scientific fields with an ultimate mission: understanding
what consumer wants, why they think in a specific way and how to sell the product to them. In this
study, consumer behaviour would be approached from a different angle of psychology to provide
the emotional effect of veganism. To achieve that goal, the applicable framework would be
presented in this chapter, includes the decision-making process, the theory of Planned Behaviour
and the role of emotion in the decision-making process.

3.1 Consumer buying behaviour

3.1.1 Decision-making process

The Consumer Behaviour research field has a brief history, starting from the 1930s with the
establishment of the American Marketing Association and the Journal of Marketing. The need for
understanding consumer behaviour in academic discipline increases, followed by interesting trends
of research in psychology and marketing. Both fields have different methods to interpret and explain
why the consumer behaves, what the manufacturer can do to increase their likelihood of
purchasing, and how to achieve that. The term “decision-making” has been adopted by Chester
Barnard into the circle of trading in 1944. Since then, the concept has been studied by numerous
scholars from different fields: mathematics (game theory), sociology, psychology (Theory of
Planned Behaviour), economics), etc. While in the marketing field, the consumers’ external factors
such as culture, social class, or ethnicity are the main subjects to study and exploit, the psychology
field attempts to discover the internal factors, for example, attitude, motivation, perception and
knowledge, and their affection, which lead to the buying decision (Buchanan & O’Connell, 2006.).

In trading and business field, the process is usually treated as a rational process, in which a
consumer will use her or his cognitive mind to evaluate the problem and solve it through actions of
approaching the solution. In an updated edition of his book about the decision-making process,

20
Solomon has referred to this model as a ‘cognitive decision-making’ one. (Solomon, Bamossy,
Askegaard, & Hogg, 2016)

Figure 3 Stages in the decision-making process - (Solomon et al., 2016)

In the decision-making process, there are 5 stages of action: (1) Problem recognition – consumer
has a problem which needs to be solved, either by services or tangible products, (2) Information
search – the needs of solving the problem leads the consumer to the search for available solutions,
(3) Evaluation of Alternative – one or many solutions/products could be available, hence, the pros
and cons need to be analysed, (4) Product choice – the most suitable options are narrowed down,
and the purchase is made, and (5) Outcomes – solving the problem with the product and the
satisfaction of the consumer would decide if the consumer needs to switch to another option, repeat
the purchase or recommend it to a friend. The whole process of deciding could be extended over
time or be impulsive. Although, in this process, the rational thinking is only responsible for a part of
the buying behaviour and applying merely this method in practical research hardly explains the
intuitive behaviour of the consumer (“I do not know why I bought this.”). In the later part, the Theory

21
of Planned Behaviour would be used as the alternative and the main framework to explore the
motivation of veg*an consumer.

3.1.2 Gender buying behaviour

It is a universal fact that women and men do not think and act alike. Men tend not to check the
products they do not need and are not patient enough to read every side of the packaging like
women. On the other hand, women also tend to spend less time in the shop if their companion is a
man and the amount of time would increase in order if they shop alone, with a kid and a female
companion. In-store observations also reveal that men move faster, spend less time looking and
hardly ask for help if they cannot find a product they needed. (Underhill, 2000a)

“Shopping is female.” – Paco Underhill –

Women love to shop. It is undeniable. In one study for his client, Paco Underhill observed that a
high percentage of female consumers read the packaging closely, especially the front label (91 per
cent), and 63 per cent of female purchasers read one or more than one product package. His
compiled database also revealed the variation of time spent on reading package from those who
purchase; they spent from 11 to 13 seconds for most of cosmetics products. (Underhill, 2000) This
behaviour is also reflected in the difference in shopping habit of male and female: while women
enjoy the wandering of watching, reading the label and examining the merchandise carefully, men
have the tendency of narrowing down the options which fit their needs and budget, grab it and go
straight to the check-out counter. The difference in shopping behaviour between men and women
are significant, mostly in the decision-making process and how they analyse information about
alternatives. In another work of research about retailers, the number proved that only 20 per cent
of consumer time is spent on considering products (Sorensen, 2011), which is a low share. In case,
this number is universally applicable in general cases of consumer buying behaviour, combining
the rate of 20 per cent with the time a regular consumer spends in a cosmetics store from Underhill,
which is two minute and thirty seconds for a purchaser, the result is thirty seconds for considering
products to purchase. Within that time frame, one consumer can read a maximum of three products,
based on the measured time of Underhill’s research. Hence, for vegan cosmetics, it is a crucial
element to win over competitors to gain consumers’ attention within the shortest timeframe.
Moreover, it is worth considering that females have a significant connection to veganism and animal
rights progress (Webber, 2018).

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3.1.3 The role of product label in consumer buying behaviour

While exploring a medium-size supermarket in Finland for preliminary research of cosmetics for
this study, the author noticed that the amount of option in cosmetics is enormous. For example, the
shelf of deodorant products contains at least forty different products from seven to ten brands, with
it being only the shelf of non-vegan deodorants. At the time when this research was conducted,
there is an improvement of vegan cosmetics happening in several grocery stores and department
stores in Finland. In the same mentioned supermarket, the number of vegan cosmetics is
increasing. All those vegan cosmetics are displayed in a separate area, which helps the veg*an
consumers to detect easily and compare all the veg*an/natural/bio brands at one spot. That is one
great movement from the retailer, but that instore placement depends greatly on the retailers. From
the perspective of a cosmetics manufacturer, there should be an assurance that their products can
gain the immediate attention of a new consumer.

At this stage, the exposure of many options put the consumer into the step of Information search
and Evaluation of alternatives. This is where the package design means the most in the race of
winning the buyer cart. Within the approximate time of ten seconds, a product package plays many
roles: Attention-getter, Communicator, Image builder, Instructor, Educator besides other physical
functional roles (Stevens,1997 cited in Sorensen, 2011, p.104). For product package design, that
is another field of illustration, marketing and psychology support for every detail put on the label. In
the chapter ‘Reading Consumers – Consumer.ology’, Philips Graves stresses the importance of
understanding consumers’ conscious and unconscious mind, which can help to win over other
competitors. One of the factors, he called “Mental fluency” with the explanation “Easy usually wins”.
The action, once repeated in conscious would shape one’s unconscious actions or usually called
a habit. (Graves, 2010, p. 45) Applied to the context of labelling, where space is limited, and plenty
info needs to be delivered, a logo of familiar certificates could work many mentioned roles in the
shortest time, as the repeated exposure to the consumer becomes the habit or called Brand
Familiarity in Marketing or as Mere Exposure effect in Psychology. Therefore, the existence of
vegan certificates logo on the product label could enhance the attention and brand image for the
product.

Cosmetics is an essential part of the female. In general, they start to take care of appearance since
adolescence with a humble budget, cheap brands to achieve a youthful, attractive look; then move
to more expensive, high-end brands when their income allowed and later seeking for an anti-ageing

23
product before the wrinkle appears. Therefore, to understand better the majority of the cosmetics
market segment, this study focuses mainly on female shoppers.

3.2 Theory of planned behaviour

In the psychology field, the attitudes had been studied in an increasing number of researches since
the 1970s. The Theory of Reasoned Action work by Fishbein and Ajzen (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)
stood out, which lead to the influential Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) later (Ajzen, 1991). In
the TPB, the individual’s intention to accomplish a particular action is the main element to measure
how likely the individual will act. The stronger the intention of one’s action, the more likely the action
will be performed. This study of Ajzen in psychology field became one of the important tools to
predict the consumer intention in taking an assumption action and has been applied in plenty of
fields and sectors with high accuracy. Although the TPB criticised mainly focus on the conscious
mind of the consumer, it excluded the unconscious mind, which includes emotions and past
behaviour into consideration. A few scholars start to integrate these determinants in their
researches with the increasing of variance at some level (Cho & Walton, 2011; De Pelsmaeker et
al., 2017; Jones, 2010). Some scholars argue that this overly used theory should be “retired” after
almost three decades of dominance, due to the finding being based on the hypothesised of attitude
and subjective norm, and the theory becomes less accurate in the extensive study (Sniehotta,
Presseau, & Araújo-Soares, 2014). Nevertheless, their call has been objected as the theory is “alive
and well” (Ajzen, 2015) and should be “extending not retiring” (Conner, 2015)

24
 Figure 4 Theory of Planned Behaviour with emotion

According to Ajzen, the theory of planned behaviour suggests three self-reliant determinants of
intention: The Attitude of oneself towards the behaviour, The Subjective Norms as the social
environment factor and the Perceived Behavioural Control as one’s ability to perform the behaviour.
From that place, the Intention formed as the result of the three factors mentioned previously, leading
to the practice of the behaviour. The Intention of performing an action includes one’s Attitude toward
the action’s theme itself (how one thinks about vegan – positive/negative – personal perspective
on the veganism), then be supported by their social connection circle’s opinion – Subjective Norms
(how many and how strong one’s family, friends, colleague, doctor share a similar/opposite idea
about veganism) and finally, one’s Perceived Behavioural Control – their ability and confidence of
performing the action will encourage them to perform the action or not (budget for diet, cooking
habit, availability of vegan ingredients, digestive acceptance, etc.)

The attitude toward the behaviour reflects the level of favourable or unfavourable appraisal of the
person to the behaviour. The attitude can be inferred from verbal on nonverbal responses toward
the object in question. (Ajzen, Attitude structure and behaviour, 1989) It may form by subjective
beliefs and the experience of the subject toward the behaviour. A positive attitude toward veganism
would draw a person closer to act if he/she receives encouragement from their social relationships
and could execute it at their convenient level. It may begin with reducing the meat consumption,

25
joining them over a plant-based meal, choosing a vegan-friendly product instead of a non-vegan
product. The attitude also reveals the personal concern toward the external world issue:
environmental, animal rights, health concern, aesthetic etc. Although, it could not be aligned to their
action if the belief is not strong enough or supported by subjective norms or perceived behavioural
control. Subjective norm refers to the perceived social pressure to perform or not to perform the
behaviour, in which, the subject receives the encourage or discourage from the external
environment: family, friends, colleagues, social media, etc. In the scale of the vegan trend, diet
plays a major role in daily consumption. Hence, the meals become a part of necessary social
etiquette: how to eat, what to eat, and whom to share. Different social groups would have different
food culture based on their ethnicity and preference. In a smaller scale, family food culture would
affect one’s eating behaviour tremendously from their childhood. (Wit et al., 2015) The perceived
behavioural control refers to the perceived ease of difficulty of performing the behaviour, and it is
assumed to reflect experience as well as anticipated impediments and obstacles.

Among those factors, Subjective Norms has a strong effect on human behaviour. An Aristotle
statement described this fact well: “Man is by nature a social animal.”(Loos, 1897) The social
opinion has the power to shape, maintain and against/support one’s idea. In contrast, a singular
being is also seeking the sense of belonging in a ‘tribe’, the approval of a community. Therefore,
the reference of a close social relationship has a strong position in the formation of the Intention.
Although, these factors affect each other’s constantly and the intention of engagement to the action
could be varied throughout the period before it being taken.

Applied to this study, the author expects that the more committed the subject shows towards
veganism, the stronger they will intend to choose vegan cosmetics in their daily practice. Though
in reality, many barriers may prevent them from extending the concept of veg*anism further than a
diet. The acknowledgement of these potential barriers could help marketers, especially in the
veg*an cosmetics industry, to navigate and provide suitable products, bringing veg*an cosmetics
closer to the consumers.

In the research field, the Theory of Planned Behaviour is mainly applied in quantitative researches
with the result being the variance of performing the target behaviour. Hence, there are few studies
adopted TPB in qualitative research with very little detail about the process. (Renzi & Klobas, 2008)
Although, in the field of studying consumer behaviour, many eminent scholars announced that the
understanding of the market researchers come from interviewing shoppers in their environment –

26
supermarkets. (Sorensen, 2011; Underhill, 2000a) Against the odds, this study could be the
preparation for quantitative research in studying veg*an consumer toward beauty products
category.

3.3 Emotions in the Decision-Making Process as an Unconscious Mind factor

Emotion is always a part of a human being. However, the role of emotion in marketing applications
was not noticeable until the 1980s. This could be explained by the challenging in measuring,
evaluating the emotion. (Chaudhuri, 2005) Although, with the advanced technology of brain
mapping in the neuroscience field, the vision of measuring emotion in consumer behaviour is not
far from the present. The only doubt for this technique is the ethical of marketing in the future as
this valuable knowledge could be used to manipulate consumer behaviour on a mass scale. (Rose,
2014)

According to Gerald Zaltman, 95% of human thoughts happen in the part of our unconscious mind,
and while emotions also belong to that part (Zaltman, 2003), the non-verbal gesture can express
undermined thinking of one’s opinion where their conscious minds cannot recognise the existence
of this factor on their rational decision. Hence, to support the other factors of the Theory of Planned
Behaviour, the Emotion factor is considered to provide an extent of understanding the connection
and the affection of TPB factors on the subjects.

3.3.1 Forms of Emotions

Emotions are existent in many forms and types, which are classified in different ways. Based on
studies of Buck ((Buck, 1985, 1988, 1999) cited in (Chaudhuri, 2005, p.4-5)), emotion has been
classified into three forms:
• Emotion I (EI), includes physiological responses: heart rate change, blood pressure,
sweating, etc.
• Emotion II (EII), includes expressive behaviour: facial expressions, gestures, posture, etc.
This form of emotion could be different under the affection of display rules, cultural rules,
gender, etc. (for example, how a man or woman should behave)
• Emotion III (EIII), includes joy, sorrow, fear, envy, anger, pride, disgust, etc. This form is
the normal thinking of emotion and may include EI and EII in expression.

27
In this study, the term ‘Emotion’ refers to Emotion III as the main factor that affects the consumer
decision-making process. The micro-expression, such as facial expressions, gestures, etc. during
interviews, if necessary, would refer to EII. Due to the lack of physical measurement method, EI is
not included in this study.

3.3.2 Characteristics of emotion

According to Zajonc (Zajonc, 1980), Emotions are primary (first response and affect the
decision/action based on like/dislike); basic (the universal of emotion among animal species,
independent from language); inescapable (one may hide the emotion but cannot avoid feeling it);
irrevocable (what we feel is what we believe. When one dislikes a person, the feeling will hardly
ever change); implication of the self (the state of one mind related to the object); difficulties to
verbalize (the expression of emotion heavily depends on nonverbal channels such as facial
expression, heart rate); may exist separated from content and still remain (the lingering feeling
caused by a book or movie may stay even though the content is forgotten).

Among these trails of emotions, the independent existence of emotion from origin content is the
most important to form the trigger of emotion. In an experiment of seeking the “independent nature
of affective judgement” (Moreland & Zajonc, 1977), the result (0.96) proves the independence of
emotions from cognition. A blur memory can trigger the same emotion as one experiment with the
original content and becomes emotionally attached to the object. For example, a vegan may feel
disgusted toward meat in general because of an image of slaughtering scene they experienced
years ago. It does not require the exposure to the same content (the visual scene) to trigger this
emotion, but the idea of consuming a product from a negative scene, which stays in their
unconscious mind, is enough to retrieve the emotion back to the surface of cognition.

According to TPB, measuring the attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control can
predict how willingly subject will take action. Human behaviour, however, is heavily affected by
unconscious minds, which cannot be determined or declared clearly by the conscious mind. Part
of the decision could be the result of firms’ marketing tactics, the consumer’s culture (external
influences) or personal perspectives and habits in shopping (internal processes) or the emotion(s)
of acquiring the product. Emotions, considered as a strong trigger by the unconscious mind, which

28
is widely and heavily applied in advertising to create a positive feeling when purchasing or
consuming the product for recent decades. Amongst of the listed emotions, disgusting is a strong
one and veganism is commonly related to this emotion.

3.3.3 Emotion in the Decision-making process and support TPB

Since 1991, a number of researchers expanding the Theory of Planned Behaviour by integrating
emotion as a factor in the researches. By treating emotion as a factor affected on variances and
testing through hypothesis (1) TPB’s factors only; (2) emotion factor only and (3) combined TPB’s
factors and emotions, there is a significant increasing variance in the intention to participate in an
activity (Cho & Walton, 2011). Although, it is a challenge to measure emotion in many cases, which
underlies cognition and normally belong to unconscious minds (‘I don’t know. I just make the best
out of it.’, ‘I just know it.’). It would take a lot more research to confirm the importance of emotion
and how much it can contribute to the TPB model, but at the current position, emotion, as a factor
beside TPB’s, could increase the predictive power for the TPB model. (De Pelsmaeker et al., 2017)
This has been confirmed in previous literature that emotion is an essential part of the decision-
making process in studying consumer buying behaviour (Bagozzi, Dholakia, & Basuroy, 2003). In
this study, although there is no specific method to measure the subject’s emotion, the scale of
emotion used in Bagozzi’s research would be used as a reference frame for observation. The scale
includes seven positive emotions and ten negative emotions as followed:
• Seven positive emotions: excited, delighted, happy, glad, satisfied, proud, and self-
assured;
• Ten negative emotions measured were angry, frustrated, guilty, ashamed, sad,
disappointed, depressed, worried, uncomfortable, and anxious.

29
 Figure 5 A Model of Emotion and Reason in Attitude Formation (Chaudhuri, 2005, p.43)

To understand the effect of emotion on brand evaluation, the model of Emotion and Reason in
Attitude Formation from Chaudhuri consider the two types of evaluation, which are rational and
emotional and the interaction between the factors. In this model, the Utilitarian Goods are goods
providing practical functions (e.g. a table or a chair) and the Hedonic Goods served for amusement
and enjoyment (e.g. movie or book). Nonetheless, distinguishing these characteristics depends on
the consumer’s perspective, and one product can own both. The model draws two paths of
consumer perceptions on the product type, beliefs, evaluation of the brand and the familiarity as a
support factor. If a consumer recognises a product type in the category of utilitarian goods (e.g.
facial powder), the process will consist of the tangible or rational brand beliefs (smoother facial
skin), then goes through the rational brand evaluation (matching skin’s shade colour) and utilitarian
brand attitude (“This brand is trustworthy”) to form the purchase intention (“I need one facial
powder”). In the case of the customer considering the product to be a hedonic good, the process
may be combined with the emotional brand evaluation (“This brand is luxury”) and strengthened by
the emotional brand attitude (or effective brand attitude, according to Chaudhuri’s definition) (“I feel
good when I use product from this brand”) to form the final intention: Willingness to pay. The
purchase intention may not be strong enough, but if a specific product comes from a familiar brand
and some emotion attachment (childhood memories – “My mom used this brand when I was a
child”), the motivation to purchase the product is solid. For a mere hedonic good in the consumer
perspective, the process mainly contains emotional brand evaluation, brand attitude and familiarity.

30
Besides, past behaviour is also a factor that contributes to notable variance in the intention, which
can help in explaining the pattern of the repetitive attempt the intention (Jones, 2010). This is
considered as a minor factor to understand the participant self-reflection of being vegan. (“Have
you failed as a veg*an before?”) The self-evaluation of the consumer depends vastly on their
perspective on commitment at times. Hence, past behaviour would be considered if the interview
flow allows, but it is not the main concern in this study.

3.4 The Theory of Planned Behaviour as a framework for studying veg*an consumer

Even though the non-motivational factors may be varied, the extensive understanding of the
common veganism consumer challenges may help the manufacturers, suppliers and marketers
provide suitable optimised products to the manufacturers and end-consumers, enhancing the
consumer experience. In the humble scale of this research, the author aims to explore how
veganism consumers intend to expand the practice into other categories of goods, especially in
cosmetics, via semi-constructed interviews. As a growing market segment, vegan cosmetics can
become a successful business to support veganism, not only suitable for the committed vegan, but
also for semi-vegan and other omnivores, aiming to reduce their animal consuming in daily practice.

31
4 EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF VEGAN CONSUMERS IN MARKETING

From the preliminary research about the veg*an consumer, there are certain challenges that one
can encounter in daily life. To enhance the veganism consumer experience better, the
understanding of veg*an motivators and barriers is vital to improving the veg*an standard and
regulation in the consumer goods sector. Hence, the main research question of this study is: “What
kind of challenges does a consumer encounter trying to be vegan?” By using the factors of the
TPB, the author expects it would reveal the factors that affect the commitment of veg*an consumer
and what could be done from the manufacturer perspective. Also, due to the characteristic s of the
persona and the recognition of the potential of vegan cosmetics market share, the young female
veg*an is the most potential target consumer for the vegan cosmetics segment. Hence, it is
necessary to understand this target group buying behaviour. For a better shopping experience, the
non-experimental tests would examine how the young veg*an consumers detect veg*an cosmetics
when reading the packaging. Hence, based on the finding from TPB and non-experimental tests, a
clearer profile of veg*an consumer would be summarised for future further research afterwards.

Even though TPB is commonly used with quantitative research, this study aims for qualitative
method due to the unclear potential motivators/ barriers of consuming veg*an cosmetics to create
an initial consumer behaviour understanding. The approach of TPB by the qualitative study has
been done previously and gave a good insight as well as a positive result for the research question
(Renzi & Klobas, 2008). Besides, due to the lack of researches in veg*an consumer, especially in
vegan cosmetics, the author aims to approach multi-sources of data as a combination method to
provide an overview about veg*an’s motivator and barriers in food and veg*an cosmetics
consumption. The data collecting process includes semi-constructed theme interviews, non-
experimental tests with product packaging for interviewees and test in cosmetics service situation
with Lush Cosmetics sales representatives.

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4.1 Research Design

4.1.1 Theme interview development

To form the semi-constructed interview questions, a few qualitative studies which applied TPB in
the qualitative method have been studied. (Renzi & Klobas, 2008; Tan et al., 2016) The participants’
criteria were based on the extraction from a persona of the wax workshop in Business Development
Workshop at Cosmetics at Oulu University of Applied Sciences. ‘Sakura’ is a persona of young
women who interested in fashion, beauty products, and frequently update the newest trends of
ethical consuming and natural cosmetics (Vuorela et al., 2017). Therefore, the interviewee criteria
have been generalised aiming at female consumers, 18 – 35 years old, English speakers, living in
Finland and has practised veganism at some level. Their origin nationalities are different (Finnish,
German, Brazilian) to provide a wider perspective of veg*an consumption in Finland.

The interview theme questions are developed based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, to
explore interviewee’s Attitude, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioural Control and Emotions
factor in their veganism practice, mainly focus on food and in the extension of vegan cosmetics and
other vegan/animal-related products, if the conversation flow allows proceeding. In Attitude, the
interviewee needs to describe her diet, the benefits gaining from the diet and her perspective about
other groups of diet (vegan, vegetarian, omnivore). In Subjective Norms, the questions aim to study
about the interviewee’s family dining habits, the inspiration of being veg*an, the dining situation
with different social groups (relatives, friends, colleagues) and the opinion/ reaction of social on the
interviewee’s diet. During the interview, the interviewer depends on the flow of the conversation
and how open the participant expresses, a request of observation interviewee’s cosmetics products
is raised. This could happen before or after the tests. Hence, most of the interviews (6/7) have
proceeded at interviewee’s residence both for observation purpose and creating a comfortable
environment. The full questionnaire can be found in Appendix 1.

4.1.2 Non-Experimental Tests in Packaging

To explore consumer behaviour in reading packaging, observation is a common method in

consumer behaviour research. The non-experimental research is a research designed to observe

33
and examine the causes of an outcome. It requires none of control or manipulation to the variable
and a good fit for this research. (Kumar, 2019)
In this non-experimental study part, the interviewer observes how the interviewee read the product
label, listens to their concern and based on the verbal expression, conduct some conclusion/
interpret subject’s behaviour/ about the interviewee process of reading a label and what factor helps
in the task of distinguish a vegan and non-vegan cosmetics products without the support from any
sources of information.

According to a shopping study for an unnamed cosmetics retailer, it revealed that the amount of
time a regular consumer spent in the cosmetics area is about two minutes; additional extra thirty
seconds for a successful deal. In a consistent pattern, the rate of average sale has a direct
connection to the length of a visit and the chance a shopper can meet a salesperson or a staff
(Underhill, 2000) The distinction in time is rather small, and a shopper normally shop under the
pressure of plenty of options in the market without the assistance from the staff. Hence, the label
and packaging become the first and most important impression to consumer. The clearer the label
can speak for themselves, the easier for the veg*an consumer to detecting a veg*an cosmetics
product. This label reading test aims to study about how consumer distinguishes veg*an products
from products’ label and their impression on these types of indicators: ingredients, self-proclaimed
vegan text and vegan certificate.

For building the non-experimental tests, the following question has been considered:
• How easy to detect a veg*an cosmetics product? (Time, indicators)
• Does one need to learn about veg*an ingredients to ensure a product is veg*an?
• How to enhance the veg*an buying experience by packaging label? (time, indicator,
indicators’ trustworthiness)
• Whether there is a need of veg*an certification to enhance the consumer experience in
detecting veg*an cosmetics?
• What is the reliable indicator a veg*an can depend on cosmetics label to classify veg*an
and non-veg*an cosmetics?
• What type of indicator could enhance the reading label time of cosmetics? (text, text mark,
logo mark)

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In the spirit of being a vegan, doing research and mindful about what to take in is an endless job.
To avoid the trap of “vegan-friendly” unknown brands, veg*an consumers needs to train
themselves, if not exaggerated, become veg*an specialists. It is common for the veg*an consumers
that they must search for a detailed guideline on how to avoid derived animal ingredients which
may found in cosmetics. In a blog post about vegan-friendly cosmetics guidance, many of the
ingredients revealed under their scientific name, and some of them used to be trendy in the past
to enhance the skin shade, appearance and anti-ageing purpose. Most of the consumers are not
mindful about the origin of the ingredients and hard to tell the difference of those if there is no
certified vegan indicator (Woodman, 2017). Based on that fact, the Test of Vegan Product
Recognition (hereafter ‘Test A’) was built with a time constraint to observe the way consumers
detect a vegan cosmetics product.

In this experiment, the interviewee has two tests. In test A, the participant needs to examine a set
of 7 product’s label; the participant needs to give a conclusion whether a product is
vegan/vegetarian suitable or non-vegan/vegetarian suitable in a given time frame and the time
would be measured. The participant can freely discuss their concern about the product but do not
have any affirmation from the interviewer. In the case the participant cannot give any certain
conclusion, the result is marked as ‘Not sure’. Test B – Test of Lush’s Product Recognition –
requires the participants to proceed the same task in Test A with a product from Lush Cosmetics.
(See Appendix 5 for product pictures)

Test A:
The interviewer provides seven cosmetics products (See Appendix 1 and 2 for Product list and
Product pictures) for interviewees to categorise the non-veg*an and veg*an products in a limited
time, 30 seconds per product. This test aims to test how quick and easy a consumer can detect a
veg*an product based on the packaging label. Among four samples of veg*an products, there are
three samples which claimed to be vegan by text (VEGAN, ‘This product is suitable for vegan’,
100% Vegan) and 1 sample with Vegan Society Trademark logo (sunflower logo and text VEGAN).
The order of products is mixed in random order, except the product with Vegan Society Trademark
has been placed at the last product to observe the interviewees’ reaction with the logo.

Discussion questions (optional):

• Why do you conclude this product is vegan/non-vegan?
• How do you trust these claims/ signs/ logos?

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Not all these products have been certificated as vegan or vegetarian. Can you tell these products
whether they are vegan by reading their ingredient list?

Test B:
Interviewer provides one Lush product (Lush’s solid body lotion). The product has wrapped at the
point of purchase by the salesperson with a layer of biodegrading plastics and placed a sticker with
product information, including product name, a short description and ingredient list is written in
Finnish and contained in a paper bag. The interviewee needs to analyse the product packaging
and give the conclusion whether the product is vegan, or vegetarian or none of those.

Discussion question:
Can you tell this Lush product whether they are veg*an by reading the label and the ingredients
list? How much do you know about Lush? Have you used their product before?

These additional questions aim to discover the factors that lead the participant to the conclusion
and what factors could drive the purchase decision quicker. This evaluation of alternatives stage is
an important one in the decision-making process of the consumer as most of the cosmetic products
serve as functional goods and possibly also as hedonics goods. While hedonic factor depends
greatly on emotional, personal preference, storytelling in branding and may cost a certain budget
in marketing, the rational brand evaluation can be enhanced by customer-centric packaging design
and credible veg*an indicator.

4.1.3 Test in Cosmetics Service Situation

To support test B in the previous part, the interviewer uses a designed case to ask for the staff
assistance in two stores of Lush in Finland for further information about the lack of some information
on Lush’s product packaging (Ve*gan indicator and due date). This scenario interview called as
Test C from this point onwards. The scenario includes the buyer, who needs to pick a product as a
gift for a vegan friend, who concerns strictly of her veganism consumption. The expecting result is
getting their consultant and explanation about Lush’s veg*an certificate and how the recipient can
assure the suitability of the product when the product packaging does not include any veg*an
indicator.

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An interview in a Lush store in Sweden was conducted in May 2018 as a preparation for these
interviews in Finland. In this rehearsal interview, the buyer asked freely about the brands,
certificates and how the buyers could distinguish products in solid bar shape when they do not have
own packaging and label, for example, shower soap, hand soap, massage bar, etc.

4.2 Data collection

The semi-structured interview is the main method to collect data for this study. Most of the
interviews last about forty minutes to an hour depends on the answers of the interviewees. In the
purpose of observation individual cosmetics choice of the interviewees, most of the interviews are
conducted in interviewees’ apartment. This choice of location requires openness from the
interviewees. Thus, the interviewees were mainly contacted through the interviewer own social
relation and via introductions. Due to the length of the interview and the requirement of location, it
is a challenge to gain enough qualified interviewees. There is also a difficulty in reaching out for
vegan interviewees. But later, the participation rate was improved, and the vegan number has
outnumbered, due to a double interview. During the analysing process, there is some distinction in
emotion and behaviour in the vegan group. Hence, based on the main reason for being vegan and
the similarity in the emotion of vegan group, the participants are divided into four groups with the
characteristics as followed:
• Flexitarian (n=2): have a loose concept of veganism, food waste concern and compromise
the concept for saving food from wasting.
• Vegetarian (n=2): have a higher commitment, easy to adapt to a new social environment
in finding suitable food.
• Vegan: have no food compromising, keep the diet stricter. Based on their concerns, this
group is divided into two groups: Environmental vegan and Ethical vegan
o Environmental vegan (n=2): are mainly practice in food, “Food is our ethics”. They
occasionally use honey and some other animal-derived products. For example,
clothes, shoes or accessories are acceptable when purchasing from a flea market
or as a second-hand product, recycled items or due to the cultural background
(traditional costume).
o Ethical vegan (n=2): uncompromised on their diet, do not use other animal
products (leather/wool/fur clothes or shoes) or try to minimise gradually. They have
strong emotional words and reactions (“disgusting”, “threatened”, exhaling,

37
 clicking tongue when mentioned unhappy memories); anxiety toward some
subjects (“share my anxiety”, “stressful subject”) and received many judgements,
prejudices, very strong and negative comments from others. They also owned a
humble attitude toward the number of vegan cosmetics they owned, but the
number is impressive (8 items for light makeup user and 16 for heavy makeup
user).
The chosen interviewees are young female veg*an from 18 to 32 years old, studying or working in
many different fields (high school student, BA student, MBA student, MBA graduate working in the
marketing field, fitness instructor). Six of them are Finnish citizen, one German and one Brazilian
both lived in Finland over two years. There are 4/8 participants have started to practice their veg*an
diet since underage, and all participants have practice time from 3.5 years to 13 years and have
some time for the transition period. 7/8 participants started their transition period when they were
underage from 12 to 17 years old (the other one started at 18 years old) and the transition last from
1 to 4 years when they reduced meat consumption or being vegetarian before being full-time
vegetarian or vegan (except for flexitarian group as they cannot recall the transition period). This
age aspect may show that in the young adult, the need to contributing to their idealistic and shaping
the identity are noticeable.

The order of interview is mixed according to the convenient time of the interviewees and depend
on the time of contact in order. Hence, for presenting the data in a logical system, the interviewee
number has been arranged according to the diet group: Flexitarian (F1, F2), Vegetarian (Vg1, Vg2),
Environmental Vegan (V1, V2) and Ethical Vegan (V3, V4). Within these groups, V1 and V2 are
cohabitants and have shared similar shopping experience. The testing part has been conducted at
the same time with both to record their concern at most based on their verbal expression.

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 Table 1 Participants' Age and Year of the transition period and practice Veganism diet

Interviewee code F1 F2 VG1 VG2 V1 V2 V3 V4

Diet group F F Vg Vg V V EV EV
Age (present) 26 25 24 32 22 20 23 18
Age started the
- * 12 18 16 14 17 13
transition
Years of transition - - 4 1 2 2 2.5 1
Age started to be
16 20 16 19 18 16 19.5 14
Veg*an
Years of Veg*an
10 5 8 13 4 4 3.5 4
practice
Total years practice 10 5 12 14 6 6 6 5
Note: ‘-’ the interviewee cannot recall the info;
‘*’ The interviewee answered ‘underage.’

In the non-experimental tests, the interviewer tries to eliminate giving any hints, cues, only guideline
and in case the participant takes too much time for a conclusion, an affirmation question would
enough to demand the participant giving their final answer. The time limit, as mentioned,
encourages the participants to have a reference timeframe and helps to let the top concern revealed
themselves under pressure. The recorded time plays as a reference because each participant has
a different response to the test. Some do the test themselves without discussion; hence, the
observant need to ask about the indicator on the products after the test. A few times, this question
leads to the changing of answer from the participants as they did not see the indicator for the first
time. Some participants started to talk to the observant when they feel confused, and one
participant cannot give a certain answer for many products without checking more information from
the Internet. In the following part, the analysing would be present by product and by the character
of each participant and groups. The recorded timetable can be found in Appendix 4. For the test in
Lush’s store, the interviewer visits the stores and raises the concern as a shopper to the sales
representative and recorded the conversation. The Lush product in Test B has been purchased in
these visits.

All interviews conducted in English, which is not the mother tongue language of both interviewers
and interviewees. But all participants have efficiency level to communicate, working or studying in

39
English daily. There are few times that interviewees cannot find the exact word to express their
opinion in English, but with a little further effort to clarify their ideas, the interviews are all successful
in gaining the participants’ insights.

4.3 Data analysing

This study has been conducted as a study case due to the expansion of interest in the research
design stage. Hence, there is a complexity in data analysing with the semi-theme interviews and
the non-experimental test. For the interviews with veg*an consumer, the audio files are transcribed
into text and went through a process of content analysis. It includes coding data by identify the
main theme in interviewee’s answer and highlight some notable verbal expression. All the coded
data are transferred to a spreadsheet and classified under a master list of discovered themes. From
that table, the data have been compared, and the main themes are integrated into the results report
in the next chapter. For the non-experimental tests, the time result has been recorded in the table
(Appendix 4), and the verbal expression is treated by content analysis.

4.4 Findings

In the purpose to understand the interviewees’ stories situation and their experience, this chapter
starts with the summaries of participants’ stories present their background and veganism
experience. Next, the finding based on TPB factors and Emotion would be presented in common
themes in diet and cosmetics respectively. After that, the result of the non-experiment test

4.4.1 The participants’ stories

The interviewees’ identity is confidential. Hence, to keep the distinguish and present the data
comprehensively, the interviewees are marked by their diet group and an identification number. For
diet group, F stands for Flexitarian, VG for Vegetarian and V for Vegan.

Flexitarian no.1 – F1
The participant is a 26 years old Finnish. She is a Master student in Art, single and been a flexitarian
for 10 years. She describes her diet as “mostly vegetarian and even vegan” but she still consumes
food with meat or fish in some unavoidable situations to avoid wasting food. The global

40
environmental issues brought her to this diet path with some level of empathy for animal rights. The
transition to veganism to her is “easy” with the support from her family and social network. It started
since she was “admiring” her cousin, who was a vegetarian. Her mom also used to be a vegetarian
when she was young. Hence, the supports from her parents were strong although they had some
concerns at the beginning when she was underage. In the present days, they would prepare
vegetarian food and join the same vegetarian meals when she visits them. She feels there are no
barriers for her to find vegetarian food, with options from school restaurants, grocery stores, café,
etc. and she can cook her own food or asking for custom-made vegetarian food when she was
travelling.
For cosmetics, she knows one brand of vegan cosmetics. Due to her skin sensitiveness, she needs
to use some specific drug-store brands and there is no indication of regard to their veganism. But
if she could, she would choose ‘Animal-friendly’ cosmetics brands.

Flexitarian no.2 – F2
The participant is a 25 years old Finnish. She is single, working in the health care sector and she
has been flexitarian for 5 years. Even though her mother is a vegetarian, she did not have the
support to be a vegetarian when she was underage because of the nutrition concern. Although,
she thinks that her mom gave her “another perspective […] to be a vegetarian”. With the climate
concern together with her occupation, they influenced her “to eat healthier to avoid all the illnesses”.
Occasionally, she still consumes fish and meat to avoid food waste. In cosmetics, she does not see
any connection between consuming vegetarian food and using vegan cosmetics. She heard about
vegan cosmetics but has no interested and did not use any products before.

Vegetarian no.1 – VG1

The first vegetarian is a 24 years old German who lived in Finland for two and a half years. She is
single, owns a master’s degree in business and working for a local company in Finland. She fully
became vegetarian when she was 16 years old because of environment reason and she never
liked the taste of meat. She tried to be vegan a few years ago, but it was very difficult for her to find
vegan meal options during working time and her mother had not supported her to be vegan. She
commits to the environmental protection by reuse leather products which she got from family
members, choosing local products over imported. The variety of products and the popularity of
veganism are higher in Germany than Finland, she compared.
In cosmetics, she has knowledge of vegan cosmetics, ingredients and ‘No animal testing’ concept.
She uses some vegan cosmetics in German before and has three vegan cosmetics products at the

41
time of interview. She has positive feedback on vegan cosmetics because of its natural smell and
not causing irritation like some non-vegan products. When talking about brand image, she would
support brands with a supportive movement toward the environmental issue and against animal
testing.

Vegetarian no.2 – VG2

The second vegetarian is 32 years old Brazilian. Her daily job is a fitness/lifestyle instructor. She
has her own studio in Finland. She is married and has one kid, lived in Finland for about four years
with her family. She was vegetarian for over 13 years since she carried her child. Her husband
became vegetarian a bit earlier and that inspired her to change. Naturally, her child has become
vegetarian since toddler as she did not want to introduce him to meat. But that decision is
confronted by her parent objection because of their concern over nutrition for him. It took a lot of
time for her to prove her son’s growth and wellness despite the lack of meat to her parents. Being
vegetarian means a lot to her. It reflects her thought about the environment, ethics, wellness and
lifestyle.

“The way that I eat is influencing everything. My lifestyle…it is connected to

the way that I behaved in everything that happened in my life.”

She thinks it would be amazing to have more vegan options in cosmetics. But she has not paid
much attention to the ingredient list of the product. While shopping and being overwhelmed by the
number of options, she would pay more attention if the product labels have any indication of
“organic, vegetarian or vegan” with a reasonable price.

Vegan no.1 and no.2 – V1 and V2

In this interview, the participants are a cohabitant couple. V1 is 22 years old, Saami person and
studying culture in a master’s degree. V2 is 20 years old Finnish, studying in the education field.
Their stories share many similarities in the journey to become vegans. Both have been vegan for
four years with two years transition from a vegetarian diet and they started the transition since their
adolescent. They had support from family to choose their own diets. The environmental issues are
the main concern that encouraged them to become vegans. They have a flexible concept of
veganism. In diet, they use honey occasionally and mindful about the origin and labour working
condition of the food product they consume. For other product categories, they are willing to shop
and use second-hand products, also include leather product, due to the traditional costume of

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Saami and recycling goal. For V2, she also feels the ethical reasons and lactose intolerant
motivated her further.
In daily beauty routine, both are minimalism and only do makeup occasionally. Their cosmetics
collections focus more on skincare. Although they were not considered themselves as vegan
cosmetics users, we found 3 vegan products in their cosmetics. Their choice also reflects the
concern of environment: choosing soap bars over liquid products, purchasing local products, vegan
and animal-friendly brands. Even though these actions are very positive, the couple treats them as
a very normal routine in their daily life and did not see them as a noticeable thing.

Vegan no.3 – V3
The third vegan is a 23 years old Finnish. She is studying media and in a relationship. She has
been vegan for three and a half year with two years in transition. The ethical reason is her biggest
concern. She describes that the thought of supporting animal husbandry makes her feels
uncomfortable and consuming vegan and vegetarian food made her feel good. It started during
high school years when she consumed less meat in school lunch. Then she only eats non-
vegetarian food when visiting her parents due to the convenient and stopped to compromise when
she feels “disgust” about animal products. From the family side, she has her mother support and
she also became a flexitarian but on the other side, she still copes with her father’s disagreement
in being vegan. Her boyfriend is not vegan or vegetarian, but he is flexible to find substitute meals
and supportive by making sure the processed food he purchases are vegan for her. But being a
vegan is not always easy for her. There are times that the lack of knowledge about veganism put
her in awkward social situations. She received curious and tricky questions from her network asking
about the ethical side or economic sustainability of veganism or a bit of pressure to refuse the non-
vegan food from senior relatives.
Her commitment to the veganism is noticeable when she shares her cosmetics products. She is
rarely makeup, so she still owns some of her mom old makeup products, which are not vegan. But
in skincare and other hygiene categories, there are plenty of vegan brands and products that she
owns (8 products). She is humble about the number of vegan cosmetics she has and thinks she
should use them more than present.

Vegan no.4 – V4
The fourth vegan is 18 years old, Finnish. She is single and a high school student. V4 has been
vegan for four years and a year of vegetarian. She strictly follows a vegan diet, without using honey
and animal leather product. The idea of being vegan came to her from Youtubers, from whom she

43
got the information about the concept and linked to other websites about vegan nutrition. Her
younger sister joined her to be vegan not long after her, and that created some difficulties for their
parents at the beginning.

“It was such a new concept for them. But eventually, they understood what
we were saying and why we wanted to do this. They are now very supportive,
and they are all like to eat vegan meals in restaurants [with us].”

Her family was supportive of her diet and lifestyle, but it is not always the same for her social
network. Being the first vegan among her social groups, she faced many circumstances of
discrimination because of her diet and the negative public image of vegans. Although she feels
good being vegan, she feels that it is unnecessary to mention her diet due to social judgements.
With the commitment to avoid any husbandry industry, she extends her veganism in other product
categories: clothes (no leather and down jacket), vegan leather watch, vegan cosmetics. She tries
to use as many vegan products as she can find in the local stores, except for some special products
that vegan products cannot be as good as non-vegan ones. She usually read through the ingredient
list thorough and study the origin of the ingredient closely from different sources on the Internet to
make sure she does not use any animal-derived products. It became a routine step in her shopping
habit.

4.4.2 Veganism food consumption

Attitude
As proved in a huge number of previous researches, the TPB provides a positive result in predicting
one intention to perform a behaviour based on the theory’s elements. In this study, by qualitative
method, the TPB factors gained the insight of veganism practitioners. When being asked “What is
the reasons you become veg*an?” the most common reasons are an environmental issue, personal
health concern and animal rights. The less common reasons are “professional knowledge” led to
the desire of eating healthier (F2, VG2) and “the vegetarian food options were better” for the subject
(V2). All these reasons are matched with the common reasons for being veg*an that Beardsworth
& Keil has described.

Environmental issue: Most of the interviewees mentioned this concern as one of their main reasons
to practice veganism at their level (7/8 participants). The concern is repeated throughout some
interviews with more explanations and opinions which reflects the common acknowledgement that

44
meat consumption is responsible for environmental issues, and most of the participants feel that
they are “making some contribution” to improve the global situation.

Health concern: Some interviewees have lactose intolerance (referred as “stomach-ache”), and
some can see the improved digestive system when their diet excludes dairy and meat (“feel lighter”,
“my tummy works better without meat”, “body takes a long time to digest when eating meat”). V4
shared that she had bad acne condition during her puberty, and her skin became clearer when she
became vegan.

Ethical – animal rights: The participants feel that “animal should not be suffered”, “don’t feel good
to support animal industry” or “dairy industry” or even implied toward meat as a symbol of death.
This concern appears consistent in all diet groups at different levels. The concern is milder in the
flexitarian group, increasing in the vegetarian group and reach the highest peak in some vegan
participants. This concern is also lead to a strong emotional reaction in some participants,
especially to some vegans. As there is a connection between ethical reason and emotion, the vegan
group is divided into sub-groups: environmental vegan (V1, V2) and ethical vegan (V3, V4). It
could also be applied to the vegetarian group, but since the sample is small (n=2) and the
differentiation is not clear, the vegetarian group would remain as a single group in this study.

Subjective Norms
Family is a strong support factor in adopting veganism. The commitment of participants is stronger
and easier for those who have support from the parents by preparing or enjoying veg*an food in
social dinners, visiting, in restaurants, family events together. Most of the participants (5/8) grow
up in a family with neither parent being veg*an. F1 has her mom used to be a vegetarian while F2’s
mom is a long-term vegetarian. VG2’s parents are omnivores, but she has a husband and son both
are vegetarians. VG1, V1 and V2 are the only veg*an in their families. V4 is the first vegan in her
social group, and her younger sister also follows a vegan diet not long after her. Although, most of
the parents have a similar nutrition concern for their underage children, despite being vegetarian
themselves or not. The acceptance does not come easily in some case. For VG1, even though her
mom is a vegetarian, she did not have the support in participating the veganism, due to the nutrition
concern, and she only became flexitarian later at 20 years old. For the rest of the participants, some
have initial hesitation from their parents due to the lack of information about veg*an diet and/or the
nutrition matter (“First they were a bit like hmm…”, “When I was younger, she was like “No you

45
can’t be a vegetarian.””) But with time and the proof of maintaining being healthy, they became
supportive in preparing some veg*an options for the family meals (F1, VG1, VG2, V1, V2, V3, V4)

“Mom cooks vegan food for me” – V3

“Mom cooks meat at side dish, and food was separated.” – VG1

“Parents cook vegetarian food when I visit, and we eat together” – F1

“We enjoy vegan meals together in restaurants” – V4

Otherwise, VG1 got some comments from her mom while trying to be vegan (“When I was trying
to eat only vegan food, she was a bit concerned. She thinks it is a bit exaggerated.”) and V3 father
does not approve and cooperate in preparing vegan ingredients for her (quoting her father words:
“I do not get it, why you cannot eat meat? Look, and why do you have to make everything so
difficult?”).
During the interviews, interviewees’ moms have been mentioned as the main person who concerns
about their health. This could be explained as feminine are usually the one who shop and cook for
the whole family regularly, so nutrition balance became their natural responsibility. In the special
case of VG2 who raised her kid became vegetarian from very early, her parents had no opinion
when she changed her diet, but they disapproved of the idea of raising a toddler being vegetarian.
She explained that “We are vegetarian then he will grow up being vegetarian”, similar with the way
she has been raised: her whole family has been an omnivore and then when she turned 18, the
choice is hers to make. Her kid will have the same freedom when he grew up. It took her quite a
long time to prove her kid diet plan is balanced and healthy, gave him a better immune system than
another family member who has the same age as him. The family meal culture is strong and being
different from their parents’ diet is a challenge to persuade and arrange daily family meals. In the
research over European countries about the effect of family meals, practices and values on young
people, John B.F. de Wit and his colleagues have good results to affirm that the family meal culture
can build the young people’s eating behaviours, including both the practices and values. (Wit et al.,
2015) In this case, most of the interviewees have the inspiration of practising a healthier diet from
their friends from an early stage of the adolescent period (12-18 years old) and brought the new
concept into their family where most of their parents are not familiar with the concept of veganism
(VG2, V1, V4). Therefore, the achievement of being veg*an could show their commitment to the
ideals they believed. Besides, it is noticeable that 3/8 participant have moms are or used to be

46
vegetarian and that partly “gave another perspective about food” to them. By this incident, it shows
that the veganism may connect to the feminine factor.

Social groups and social dinner interaction play an important role in encouraging the subject to start
and continue to practice the diet and has a strong influence on Emotion. The flexitarians in this
research scale have many veg*an friends while in the vegetarians’ and vegans’ groups, the number
is decreased, except for the pair of environmental vegans. In the ethical group, V3 only knows 1-2
vegan or vegetarian while V4 is the first vegan in her social circle (in early years), and later the
number of her vegetarian friend growth.

For the flexitarians, social dinners have no role as a barrier for them. The concept of consuming a
plant-based diet becomes natural and normal. For these subjects, when being asked “What are the
barriers of being veg*an?”, there is no barriers come in their minds. This experience happens mainly
among Flexitarian, Vegetarian and Environmental Vegan (at some level) where the practice
concept is loosened, compared with Ethical Vegan. 3/8 respond that it is easy to find veg*an food
(F1, F2, VG2, V1). F2 thinks that it is harder to find vegan food, and when the vegetarian food is
not tasty or provide enough protein, she would compromise to have a non-vegetarian meal. VG2
does not need to announce her diet to new acquaintances and treats it as normal, easy to find a
way to adapt in new places, even when travelling. For V1, she has her friends willingly help her find
vegan food, and in case it could not be done, she will skip the meal. F1, V3 and V4 deal with the
issue by preparing food or snack themselves: cook in the rented apartment when travelling (F1),
while going out with friends or family or skip the meal (V3), prepare some simple food when
travelling in a big group (V4). In the case of VG1, she feels “does not want to make a big scene”
and due to the convenient and time restraint when having lunch with new colleagues in a new city,
so she moved from trying to be vegan back to a vegetarian diet. For V2, she feels normal to have
a meal with vegan friends, but when the social group consists of the majority of non-vegan or
vegetarian, she feels “being a burden for them” because others have to follow her choice, so it is
difficult for them to find a place where everybody can eat. The theme of social meals revealed the
need for being invisible, feeling more “ordinary” while not assimilate themselves to the majority.

To support this reasonable need, better availability of veg*an options in public restaurants would
help to solve the problem of compromising between the veganism, the convenient and the taste.
Based on the participants’ experience with the option available in a restaurant, most of the
restaurants in Finland would have at least one vegetarian option, also in high school and

47
universities campus. But the availability also depends on the local demand. For example, in an art
campus of a university in Helsinki, there are two vegetarian restaurants for students to serve the
high demand while when travelling to the north of Finland cities such as Lapland, Tornio, etc., the
vegetarian and vegan options become limited.

While close social groups play a vital part to in veg*an practice, there is not much of influence from
public figures, bloggers or celebrities (or called as “influencers” in modern social vocabulary) to
their intention of practising veganism in flexitarian and vegetarian group. Most of them refer to
friends, cookbook or Internet as the general source of information. On another side, in the vegan
group, there are at least one or more influencers that they are followed for a long period. They are
vegan blogger Chocochili who provides recipes and opinion about vegan topic, Youtuber Freelee
TheBananaGirl who talks about diet, fitness, vegan lifestyle and debate about arguing topic of
veganism and the famous entertainment couple Lisa and Paul McCartney who are vegetarians,
owning a vegetarian frozen meal and appeared in an episode of The Simpson Family TV Series
(Kirkland, 1995). The common theme revealed these vegans found in influencers the sympathy,
the openness in the discussion about the harsh of animal rights, modern consumption habits and
“the right points” that make the vegan group think about their consumption habits, the carbon
footprint and the animal rights. That awareness motivated them to devote to the veganism as a
better way to contributing to human, animal and environmental. As a side effect, this recognition
made V3 feels lonely as being the minority in their social group. With the growth of multi vegan
Facebook groups specialised in different topics, there are platforms where she can “sharing the
anxiety” a vegan can face in daily life such as a bad dish in a restaurant or discuss the newest
vegan products, which help vegans having the companion they need.

Perceived Behavioural Control

The Perceived Behavioural Control of the interviewees has a constant effect on the Attitude and
Subjective Norms. Half of the participants answer that they do not have the craving feeling for meat
or do not like the taste of them and that is one of the motivators made the practice easier to follow
(F1, VG1, V1, V2). VG2 expresses that she cannot stand the smell of meat. This could consider as
a good and natural self-motivator for veg*an. Although, for vegan, it is quite uncomfortable for them
when they must refuse homemade food from senior family members or similar, either a savoury
pie or non-vegan dessert due to the strict diet (V2, V3). For V4, she has a minor craving for dairy
products such as cake in café or chocolate. There is almost none to very few options available now

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in restaurant and café and vegan chocolate quality, although improving, still not as good as the
non-vegan products.

For external motivators, 5/8 think there is a significant improvement in food availability in grocery
stores in Finland for the last couple years (from one to four years). There are many options and the
extension of product categories, especially in dairy substitute (vegan plant-based drink, yoghurt,
ice cream, etc.). Besides, there are more restaurants, and café shop provide veg*an options for
their customers, even in some unexpected places. The appearance of milk substitute itself in café
is a good improvement, it is even better when the customers now rarely must pay extra for the
vegan option they choose, compare to a few years ago. Since nut drinks price is much higher than
dairy milk, this is a good point to attract veg*an by making them feel vegan style become an ordinary
choice. Also, from the own participant experience, the veg*an options when travelling or living
abroad depend heavily on the food culture of the destination countries. Most of the participants
overcome the difficulty by prepare food themself in a rented apartment, prepare simple food
themselves in the hotel (lack of options and support in restaurants) or asking for a customised meal
where suitable. For expats, living in a country where non-vegan friendly can be a barrier to continue
the practice as the social connection and the facility does not support veg*an diet (restaurant menu,
grocery store). For example, London “is a vegan city”, while suburban of France, Italy or South
America are not.

Emotions
In general, strong emotion appears consistently in the ethical vegan group; it appears lesser in
Flexitarian group and inconsistently in the vegetarian and environmental vegan group.

In the purpose of understanding one’s emotion toward the different aspect of veganism, it is
impossible to separate the emotion factor to others mentioned factors of Attitude, Subjective Norms
and Perceived Behavioural Control. The other factors have a role as the triggers for Emotion to
express the state of mind when the participant recalled their experience. The non-verbal expression
of the participants showed very subtle expression (raising eyebrows, clicking tongue, raising
shoulders, smiling) to more obvious expression (long exhale, frowning, chuckle, laughing). The
verbal expression contains a variety of vocabulary, from positive (‘pleasurable’, ‘incredible’,
‘amazing’, ‘feeling good’) to negative (‘disgusting’, ‘judging’, ‘anxiety’, ‘threatened’, ‘suffering’).
Especially, VG2 has a symbolic image when referred to meat as a sign of death (“I do not want that
dead [thing] in my house”). To her, food represents the nurture symbol, and she only wants to feed

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her kid what nurture him. V3 puts her emotion toward meat into words: “I were thinking of meat is
kind of gross because of all the blood and vessels […] and it (meat) just like disgust to me.”

When being asked “How do you think about other diet groups?”, most of the participants have a
neutral attitude toward them. The common answer implied a neutral attitude on others’ diets and
“feeling happy” or encouragement if someone joins their diet or reduces meat consumption at any
levels. But under the surface of ‘feeling normal’ or calm, some expressed their uneasiness for the
prejudices and judgements from other groups. For example, VG1 has the impression of some
vegans are “trying to blame other people for eating meat, even blame vegetarian for drinking milk
or eating eggs.” V3 feels “kind of scared what they are going to say to me” when the social
conversation turned into diet topics. The questions she had from others are not easy to perceive,
such as “if they go out and shoot up rabbits, will I be able to eat it?” or “Do not you support Finnish
agriculture?” (she directly quoted the questions). V4 feels “threatened” by some people when she
happened to reveal her diet and received judgement reactions and comments from them as if she
judged them because she is a vegan (“Ew”, “What the hell?”, “Are you dumb?”, “I eat meat, and
you cannot do anything about that!).” There are a lot of emotions triggered by social reactions to
their diet practice. It is noticeable that V4 received these reactions from young male persons, and
she has a guess on being manly has related to the image of eating meat and drinking beer. Also,
as mentioned, V3’s father does not approve of her vegan diet. These circumstances and the
number of participants having vegetarian mothers are solid proofs for the social norms of veganism
and masculinity.

The presumption from the social escalates the anxiety for veg*an and attacks their identity, as most
of them view being veg*an as “very natural to me” or “I do not find any other way [than] tend to be
vegan” and contributing for the environment and animals. As an unavoidable precaution, most of
them try not to mention this topic in the social conversation since it causes so much anxiety for
them. To sum up, VG1 commented: “as long as they do not bother me, I will not bother them”. This
partly matches with the Rosenfeld’s result in the identity profile of vegetarians and vegans. Most of
the participants feel proud of being veg*an and will continue to do so, even would choose to be
vegan over being omnivore again (3/4 vegetarians and flexitarians). Although, it is interesting that,
in Rosenfeld study, the vegans tend to have a more negative attitude toward out-group dieters. And
with the result in this study, it could partly explain that with the heavy criticises vegans received
from omnivores and indelicacy questions around vegan’s motivation and logical in supporting
veganism; omnivores created the antipathy for themselves.

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Although, there are also positive reactions, for example, in the case of F1, F2 or VG2, who have
the support from their surrounding network. F1 said: “Maybe because I live in a bubble of arts and
a big city” implying the difference of attitude due to geography factor. VG2 told that she has a
positive reaction from new acquaintances that they were willing to prioritise their diet and would
pick a more vegetarian suitable restaurant for their family. But she did not feel the need to be treated
as a priority in any way. Hence, there is a strong connection between Subjective Norms’ attitude
on subjects’ Emotion. For subjects’ who live in bigger cities or have the majority of veganism
supporters in their social relation, the diet becomes a social norm and in contrast, subjects’ who
live in Northern Finland or have very few to no veganism supporters, the diet become an extreme
phenomenon.

Other than Subjective Norms, the subjects’ Attitude also contributed to the level of Emotion they
have on the diet. For VG2, food presents of pleasure that she enjoys greatly and they give her
positive emotions. For F1, V3 and V4, ethical play an important role in their veganism concept.
Hence, there is an emotional attachment between meat products and their negative emotions. In
the case of F1, she mentioned a fact that “a pig has brain capacity equally to a three to four-year-
old kid” and that made her think hard about it. For V3, the meat makes her feel “disgusting”, and
the word has repeated many times during the interview. In the emotion scale of Bagozzi, ‘disgusting’
is a very strong emotion and can affect greatly to one’s action. Hence, it becomes a strong source
of motivation to pursuit veganism in a wider extension. That also reflects in the number of their
vegan cosmetics, which would be analysed deeper in the next part.

4.4.3 Veganism cosmetics consumption

In the previous chapter, the motivators and barriers in veganism diet have been discovered. Then,
to extend the knowledge of the subjects’ intention in broadening the veg*an product categories, the
study continues with the second part, exploring the needs in using veg*an cosmetics.

Attitude
From the noticeable themes of the participant's veg*an practice, they gave an extensive
understanding of their motivation of using vegan cosmetics and may predict their future intention

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in spending on them. Although, unlike in the food category, the awareness of flexitarian and veg*an
about vegan cosmetic is inconsistent and weaker than their commitment to food. Most of the
participants are light makeup user with limited makeup routine and mainly maintain basic skincare
routine daily. There are only two participants applying makeup daily (VG2, V4). One used as
moderate level (facial foundation, lipstick) but unfortunately, the observation of her cosmetic
products cannot access due to the interview’s location. The other is a heavy makeup user. She
uses makeup to cover acne scars and for a fresher look (facial foundation, eye makeup and
lipstick). Some of them understood ‘cosmetics’ included mainly makeup product.

Most of the participants have an awareness of vegan cosmetics at some level. When asking some
vegan cosmetics that they know, half of them (4/8) mentioned Lavera (a German cosmetics brand
can be found easily in Finnish market), and half of them (2/4) are using their products. The amount
of mentioned vegan cosmetics brand is quite limited as there are only a few brands are fully vegan
(Lavera, “DM’s in-house brand”, Jeffree Stars Cosmetics, Basic Minerals, NYX), while most of the
brands are only partial or owns a vegan product line (The Body Shop). Vegan cosmetics brand
knowledge is quite a mix because of the complexity of the brand and its parent company owner,
‘No animal testing’ concern and the level of the trustworthiness for them. For example, V1 and V2
do not know NYX is a vegan brand3 as they do not own any vegan certificate or publicly marketing
their products as a vegan brand until 2019. Before that, NYX is a cruelty-free brand with a certificate
from PETA. But for V3, even though NYX answered the consumer that it is ‘No animal testing’, but
since their owner company is L’Oréal which applies animal testing, she does not trust NYX is a fully
vegan brand.

The awareness level raises the highest in the ethical vegan group. They would check the product
origin, each ingredient’s origin by searching over the Internet, vegan groups and vegan websites
for secondary sources. For other groups, one vegetarian is actively following an environment-
friendly brand while the other two environmental vegans are using vegan cosmetics without
realising it as they did not count shampoo and soap as cosmetics. There are total 4/8 participants
do not find the relation between practice veganism and using vegan cosmetics as they are not

3 From 2019, NYX is a vegan-friendly brand (‘NYX Cosmetics is Now Vegan-Friendly! (2019)’,
2018, cited 27 May 2019). Due to limitation in tracing each product manufacturing date and product
line, in this study, all NYX product is considered as non-vegan and treated as separately category
in the report.

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considering food and other product categories belong to the same category. This is a fascinating
discovery as it shows that half of the participants consider cosmetics as utilitarian goods, in term of
veganism, as emotions do not involve in their decision-making process.

Subjective Norms and Perceived Behavioral Control

In Subjective Norms, most of the participants do not share vegan cosmetics with their social
relationships. It seems like a personal preference to use vegan cosmetics. Besides, most of them
also found the vegan cosmetics price is higher than non-vegan cosmetics, and two of them found
the price in Germany is lower, and they have more options. F1, V1, V2 and V4 would like to use
more vegan cosmetics when they have a higher income. F2 is not aware of any benefits of vegan
cosmetics over non-vegan products. Hence, she has no intention to use it soon. VG2 reported she
purchased one vegan cosmetic (hair care product) recently, and she thinks that would be nice if
she could have more options, although she is not aware or seeking for vegan cosmetics. V3 said
she did not pay much attention to purchasing vegan products, as she still owns old makeup from
mom. Although she also may have a misunderstood about cosmetics because she owns plenty of
vegan cosmetics in hair and body care. Based on the number of vegan cosmetics products they
own; it can be concluded that the awareness and consume vegan cosmetics increase directly
proportional to their diet commitment despite their income.

Table 2 The number of owned vegan cosmetics

F1 F2 VG1 VG2 V1 V2 V3 V4
Number of items 0 1 1 3 3 3 8 11

Emotion
There is inconsistent emotion trace toward vegan cosmetics in participants. For VG1 and V4, they
took the initiative to ask if they can reach out to the cabinet. Hence, cosmetics observation proceeds
at the same time. They have the enthusiasm about reading product labels, as ‘No animal testing’
for VG1. In the case of V4, after the interview ended, the author continues to discuss further
veganism as she was happy to share a further idea about vegan life. At the end of the conversation,
she also revealed the vegan leather watch she received as a gift.

To summarise the cosmetics product and similarly discovered during the interviews, there are
mainly four types:

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 1. Non-vegan products: Products do not have any indicators of cruelty-free or veg*an
2. Cruelty-free products: Products own ‘No animal testing’ mark or marketing as a similar goal
(e.g. The Body Shop)
3. Vegan cosmetics without certification or indicator: self-proclaimed vegan products or
products with no clear indicator on the package label, either by text, own vegan mark or
‘vegan recipe’ (e.g. NYX)
4. Vegan cosmetics with certificate indicator: cosmetic products have a vegan mark issued
by an independent organisation with trustworthiness (e.g. Urtekram, Lavera).

This result is only a brief finding based on the cosmetics collection of participants for observation
purpose. In practical, there are many unclear scenarios about indicator on the package label. For
example, the Mango body butter from The Body Shop has claimed to be a vegan product on the
official US website (‘Mango Body Butter’, 2019) but there is no indicator provide this information on
the product label. The lack of vegan indicator on the product label not only could exclude the main
target group, which is veg*an consumers but also raise a question about the validity of the
information.

4.4.4 Non-experimental Test in Packaging

The three tests give a good insight into the process of evaluating product information in vegan
cosmetics. The results would be displayed in the following order:
• Test A: Test of Vegan Product Recognition
• Test B: Test of Vegan Product Recognition – Lush’s product
• Test C: Test in Cosmetics Service Situation – Lush’s store.
In test A and B, due to the similarity of V1 and V2, both participants did the tests together. This
decision was made at the time of the interview to observe their information exchange. Hence,
there are 7 tests for 8 participants.

4.4.4.1 Test of Vegan Product Recognition

In this section, the test result is presented briefly each product respectively to report how easy the
participants read the labels and categorise the products. Then, based on the observation of their

54
reading label habits throughout the tests, the user group profiles reveal the common patterns in
their product evaluation step.

The following table provides the vegan/’No animal testing’ indicators (if available) on the sample
products. All of them were placed in the back label. Full products’ descriptions and images could
be found in Appendix 2 and 3. The reading time record can be found in Appendix 4.

Table 3 Vegan Indicator description

Product
Vegan Indicator description Ingredient list
number
P1 uppercase VEGAN text mark next to the barcode Yes
P2 No indicator Yes
Text description “Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.
P3 Yes
Superdrug is against animal testing.”
P4 Leaping bunny logo No
P5 No indicator Yes
Yes/
P6 100% VEGAN text mark in an oval shape
Under barcode sticker
P7 Vegan society sunflower logo with VEGAN text Yes

P1: Most participants take a long time to detect the indicator. Only 2/7 can detect it under 10s.

P2: 3/7 quickly conclude this as non-vegan, one based on ingredient (gelatine), two based on their
brand knowledge (“I haven’t look, but I know the brand”, “I used this, so I know it quite well”), 4/7
spend 11-24s to conclude it’s not veg*an suitable.

P3: As the indicator in a long text, most of the participants spend time to read through all the label.

P4: The Leaping Bunny logo confused one participant. Most participants take a long time to read
the label and consider the product, due to the lack of the ingredient list.

P5: the most time-consuming and confusing product as the text in the back label is long. Some
participants have the impression that L’Occitane is a natural or vegan/vegetarian brand. But since

55
there is no clear indicator on the packaging, it is a challenge for the participant to conclude whether
it is vegan/vegetarian. The description text is small, displays in many languages (French, English)
and the ingredient list is quite long. These factors could explain why it takes more effort to read the
packaging, and most of the participants give their assumption based on their prior knowledge about
the brand or the general impression. On the main company website, there is no sign or instruction
that this product is suitable for vegan or vegetarian. But in Mark & Spencer (A well-known
department store chain in the UK) website, the product has been listed under the category of
‘Suitable for vegetarian’ product.

Figure 6 Product no.4 listed as 'Suitable for Vegetarian' on Mark & Spencer website
(‘L’Occitane Beauty | M&S’, 2019)

P6: 4/7 can find the mark easily. 3/7 need about twenty seconds to observe the packaging. Like
most of the other cosmetics brands, the mascara packaging has limited space for the ingredient
list, so it was placed under the barcode sticker. (See Appendix 3 for details). None of the
participants notices the ingredient list label. Lumene is a cosmetics brand in Finland, all the
participants aware of the brand name, although some do not have any impression that Lumene has
their vegan product line.

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P7: 7/7 concluded this product is vegan under 10 seconds, based on the Vegan Society logo, which
described as “common mark” due to the popularity in the food industry also.

Grouping veg*an consumer

Based on the verbal expression and support answer from the participants, the reading label process
can be categorised as follow:

Group 1: Low cosmetics user (F2, VG2). The participants in this group have limited knowledge
about cosmetics ingredient. First, they search for an indicator or quickly conclude the result based
on the previous impression of the product without further investigation. In the case of P2 – both F2
and VG2 answered P2 is a non-vegan product without reading further information, used their brand
belief to give the conclusion without further proof. For other products, the text and self-proclaimed
vegan marks are not easy to detect if they are not familiar with the brand in advance. For unfamiliar
non-indicator products, they have difficulty in giving a conclusion and take a longer time to read
every text line (F2, VG2).

Group 2: Basic knowledge cosmetics user (F1, VG1, V1, V2). They scan the whole product label,
seeking for an indicator. If the indicator cannot be found, they would read the ingredient list and
look for obvious animal origin element, such as honey, gelatine, etc. The brand belief based is
appeared infrequently and not heavily affect the final answer, like in Group 1. In this group, the
concern of ‘No animal testing’ is noticeable. Although for P4, F1 has a misplaced concept as when
she saw the Leaping Bunny logo, she immediately answered it was vegan but quickly feel confused
about that and led to an unsure answer. For vegans, they would assume the vegan mark should
be placed in the front label. (F1, VG1, V1, V2)

Group 3: Sceptical cosmetics user (V3, V4). This group include only ethical vegan group. They are
not easily giving any conclusion without solid fact, either by tangible or non-tangible brand belief.
V3 has strong brand loyalty but limited ingredient knowledge. The background brand stories are
important to her and may affect greatly on her perspective about the products, despite the brand
public message (NYX case). V4, on another hand, seeks for the tangible fact she can use to make
the decision herself if the brand/product is trustworthy to consume as vegan suitable cosmetics.
She is extra careful around perfume ingredients due to the awareness of animal perfume element
may be extracted from whales. It is surprising that she overlooked many self-claimed brand vegan
marks and answered “Not sure” for most of the product due to the unknown origin of perfume

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element (see Appendix 4). It is not until P7 that she can confirm with confidence: “I would use this
one”.

Vegan Society Logo is a very strong indicator for all diet groups. It is recognised very quick, and
even the participants know very little fact about the organisation, they have a firm belief in the
trustworthiness of the indicator, due to the popularity and the appearance of the logo in the vegan
food industry. The only product has a Vegan Society mark comes from Germany and the product
description is written in German. Some participants recognise the brand, some do not. Despite the
origin of the product, the Vegan Society mark gains the participant trust easily. For other self-
claimed vegan marks, the recognisable is unstable and dependant on prior knowledge of participant
about the brand. In the case of P1, the mark was written in uppercase character, but since the
placement is in the back and vertical direction, it does not catch the participants’ attention as the
observant’s expectation. For longer text claim of P3, only two participants can detect the mark
under ten seconds; the rest need to read the whole label and then figure out the mark, some did
not see that until they read the label in the second time.

4.4.4.2 Test of Vegan Product Recognition – Lush’s product

Table 4 Test B result - Lush product Vegan recognition

F1 F2 VG1 VG2 V1 V2 V3 V4
Know the brand x x x - x x x x
Use their product
x - - - x x x x
before
Own their product
- - - - x x x -
right now
Conclusion on the
A Vg V - V V V Vg
product

A = Animal-friendly x = Yes
Vg = Vegetarian - = No/ Cannot give a conclusion
V = Vegan

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In this test, the lack of industrial packaging revealed some interesting point about consumer
decision-making. In 8 participants, there is one person who did not know about the brand before,
two persons knew it but have not used any product, two persons knew and used before, and three
were having Lush’s products. Most of them have the problem to recall Carnauba wax and some
citrus ingredients (Citral, *Citronellol, *Limonene, *Linalool) whether it is suitable for vegan. Due to
the lack of any veg*an indicator, their conclusions heavily based on given hints on the paper bag
(‘Fighting Animal Testing’ with bunny logo – see Appendix 5 for product’s image) and previous
personal brand knowledge. For VG2, she had no prior knowledge or impression about the brand;
she cannot give any conclusion. In the case of F1, although she knew about the brand and used
the product before, without any indication, she concluded it as ‘No animal testing’, based on the
paper bag. Both F2 and V4 have a concern about the original fragrance source, so they assumed
it as a vegetarian product. And among VG1, V1, V2 and V3, who answered vegan, VG1 did not
use the product but seeing the paper bag gave her a hint of “caring about animal”, V1 and V2
referred to a similar product they used before and V3 gives an affirmation as she trust the brand
for a long time. Most of the participants answered that having an indicator could help them easier
in reading the product by themselves, regardless of the ingredient knowledge.

4.4.4.3 Test in Cosmetics Service Situation – Lush’s store

From the sales representative point of view, to answer the scenario concern that the gift recipient
is strict about vegan concern, two of them answered a similar solution: the receiver would have an
ingredient list included on the product wrapping material (the sticker on the product) and can check
further information on Lush’s website, as most of the consumer would do. About the concern of the
expiry date of the products, there is not a clear answer for each product, but one said: “as long as
it still smells and looks good, then it’s good to use”. But since the Lush’s product are produced as
‘fresh cosmetics’, they encourage the customers to use the product within six months to a year.

4.4.5 Vegan Consumer Profile

Based on the collected data, there are some common characteristics can be grouped from their
veganism consumption habit. In diet, the Motivation (as a part of Attitude) and Subjective Norm
have a significant influence on the subjects’ Perceived Behaviour Control and Emotions. The more

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supportive and similar practitioners surround, the easier and more relax to maintain the veganism
diet. Based on diet and motivation, there are four groups of veg*an consumers:

Table 5 Veganism grouping by diet

Looking for
Group Motivation Inspiration Commitment
extension
Flexitarian Environment Friends, family Mixed Mixed
Vegetarian Environment Friends, family Mid to high Low to mid
Environment Environment Friends, family High Mid
Vegan
Ethical Vegan Ethical Social High High
Environment influencers

The level of commitment in the diet may vary, depending on subjects’ attitude, social network and
income. But the demand for veganism extension increase along with the level of diet they are
committed, inconsistent and various in flexitarian and vegetarian group, and more consistent and
highest in the ethical vegan group. It showed in the number of vegan cosmetics found in their
collections (Table 2). The non-experimental tests demonstrate clearer of their shopping habit in
cosmetics. Based on the data, the consumer profile in cosmetics can be divided into three groups
as followed.

Table 6 Vegan consumer profile in cosmetics

Group Description Reading label habit

Low user Could not recognise animal- Give the conclusion depend on brand
derived ingredients; depend on a belief heavily; need to find further
vegan certificate or self-claimed information through media and the
marks. Internet.
Basic user Could detect some common Use both ingredient list and brand
animal-derived ingredients, belief to examine the products; follow
seeking for further proofs and pay the media and aware of brand image.
attention to ‘No animal testing’
marks.

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 Sceptical user Follow the brand movement Scan through the ingredient list
closely; not easy to believe in closely; question a lot the brand
brand had conflict; the ingredient transparency, origin and authenticity
knowledge is varied of the ingredients; need secondary
information sources to confirm the
vegan authenticity.

Even with all those differences of knowledge of vegan ingredients, the test of vegan product
recognition (test A) confirmed the importance of the vegan certificate in improving customer
experience. With 100% participants can confirm the creditability of the product with confident under
10 seconds, it is a positive match with the suggestive time frame withdrawing from many market
research in cosmetics (Underhill, 2000).

Besides, despite the small number of participants in this research, it is noticeable that the income
seems not the main barrier for the Ethical Vegan group (or Sceptical user group) using vegan
cosmetics. It shows as a pattern that the subject’s attitude has more effect on their commitment to
expanding their vegan product categories than occupation, income or education. Even though, this
could be an interesting direction for future market research in vegan consuming which can be
supported firmly by the quantitative method.

The collected data in previous chapters showed that veg*ans have many different challenges on
the journey to keep their belief and practice straight. The combination of internal and external
factors creates a complexity of the situation keeping their goal and harmony. Hence, there is a
need for providing more certificated vegan options for consumers. It is a clear picture that there is
a need for a standard of vegan both in food and the extension of other consumption manufacturing
industries.

4.4.6 Summary

The results from the study, indeed, is a combination of many individual veg*ans with their own
stories. In general, the young female veg*an in Finland has good support from family, vegetarian
lunch options and the number of vegan products in grocery stores are increasing in recent years.

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The recognition of changing in diet starts very early in adolescence, around 12 to 15 years old and
with the availability of vegetarian meal in the school campus, the veg*an consumption increases
gradually within 1 to 4 years and the intention of being veg*an is achievable. The motivation usually
starts with a veg*an in their close social connection circle and the more they exchange about the
concerns, such as environmental, ethical reasons, etc., the more it becomes a reasonable choice
to be veg*an. Obviously, for parents, nutrition is a reasonable concern. Hence, if there are more
available nutrition information for young adult, that would support them in choosing the right diet for
each nutrition needs. Also, better education about nutrition and gastronomy in public hospital would
improve the social attitude about veganism and masculinity, which will support for vegans in long-
term.

For veg*an cosmetics, more than half of the participants still consider cosmetic is utilitarian goods
and find low to no connection between their diet and cosmetics. This attitude affects greatly to the
subject’s perspective and how they perceived the necessity of obtaining vegan cosmetics as the
extension of their veganism consuming habit. The study found that there is a sensitiveness for
consuming non-vegan cosmetics concern raised noticeably in the ethical vegan group. For other
groups, this concern is low or inconsistent.

Although, it is a positive sign that in other diet groups, there are some of them have the intention to
extend the product category into veg*an cosmetics if the price is lower. Most of them feel the quality
of veg*an cosmetics is equal or more natural than the non-veg*an category, but in the makeup
cosmetics category, it would need improvement in quality to persuade the demanding task.

Regarding the product label design, it is critical to enhancing the clarity of the veg*an indicator if
the cosmetics producers want to emphasise veg*an as a key feature of their products. Self-claimed
vegan indicator, especially for a foreign brand or small brand name companies, would not be
effective to persuade new veg*an customers, especially vegans, as the brand acknowledges is not
established yet the familiarity is limited. The majority of the veg*an consumer are still focused more
on their diet as it takes a large part in their veganism consumption and due to the lack of demand
in their perspective. The knowledge of veg*an cosmetic ingredients is still a barrier, and it requires
a lot of effort for the regular consumer to distinguish an unknown cosmetics product without a vegan
mark. Hence, in the decision-making process of a veg*an consumer, they are still mainly choosing
the product based on the brand beliefs, brand attitude and familiarity when there is not any solid,
comprehensible, credible indicator on the product label.

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For the veg*an market, it is noticeable that the consumers already have a positive impression on
the veg*an product or affective brand attitude. Hence, to not emphasise this characteristic enough
in product label is a disadvantage. While there is not an official guideline from the European Union,
owning a reliable and familiar veg*an certification would increase the brand beliefs without much
effort in marketing. In the case of Lush Cosmetics, the lack of a veg*an indicator on the product
label is, still, a limitation for a new customer who never exposed to their brand name. For most of
the young consumer, Lush Cosmetics is recognised for the animal-friendly and environment-
friendly brand image, even though they may not use their product before due to the premium price.
Although, in exchange, they have credibility in the cosmetics industry as an innovative brand and
good customer service. But the business model of Lush Cosmetics is not easy to replicate as it
requires a lot of workforce in the store. For the traditional cosmetics industry, it would be more
beneficial in improving the product label and owning a veg*an certificate. With the result of this
study, veg*an cosmetics is a promising market if the producers can approach the market with a
lower price and more customer-centric packaging design.

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 Table 7 Summary of TPB in participants’ diet

Participant
Attitude Subjective Norm Perceived Behavior Control Emotions
Code
F1 Environment, ethical, Many friends have similar diets; family Feel easy with current diet Mid
avoid wasting food* support Feel proud to contribute to the
environment; “hate meat”
F2 Environment, health, Many friends have similar diets; Feel easy with current diet, but Low
avoid wasting food* disapproval from mother when was sometimes crave for meat Feel good with current diet
underage
VG1 Environment Know a few vegetarians, support from Feel easy to be vegetarian, but find it Mid
mother to be vegetarian, but not being is hard to be vegan when joining lunch Unattractive to meat and being
vegan. with colleagues vegetarian is natural.
VG2 Environment and Many friends in the workplace have Feel easy to be vegetarian, very High
ethical similar diet; husband and son are flexible to find a vegetarian option. A strong connection to diet and well-
vegetarians being.
V1 Environment Many friends have similar diets; co- Feel easy with increasing options in Low
habitat is vegan; family support grocery stores, but a bit difficult when Veganism seems natural to her.
travelling to the north of Finland

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V2 Environment, health Many friends have similar diets; co- Easy to be vegan but hard to find a Low
habitat is vegan; family support vegan option in France She feels ordinary to be vegan.

V3 Environment, ethical Only knows one (1) vegan; has Easy to be vegan with more dairy High
support from mother but against from substitute; but find awkward in some Being vegan is necessary for her but
father social situation also create anxiety.
V4 Environment, ethical Being the first vegan in her social Easy to be vegan but sometimes High
group; her sister later is vegan; family having the crave for non-vegan Veganism becomes her identity and
support desserts and chocolate she is willing to do extra tasks to trace
the product origin.

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 Table 8 Summary of TPB in Cosmetics

Interviewee Attitude Subjective Norm PBC Emotions

F1 Pay attention to No animal None Owns 1 VC product without noticing; Low
testing; Feel more natural with would like to try more VC when Feel positive toward Animal-friendly
VC4 income improved brands and want to support them.
F2 Aware but not using; can’t find None Does not have the intention to use None
the relation of diet and VC VC soon
VG1 Pay attention to No animal None Owns 3 VC products; found VC Mid
testing; Feel VC is more natural when browsing in the local Feel positive toward Animal-friendly
supermarkets product and natural VC
VG2 Pay attention to organic signs; None Owns 1 VC product Low
Think VC is a great idea Feel positive toward VC
V1 Seeking for green cosmetics; not Share some cosmetics with Use bar soap, local cosmetics, and Low
intended to find vegan cosmetics, co-habitant some VC products The VC becomes a norm, for
but happens to use some environmental
V2 Seeking for green cosmetics Share some cosmetics with Use bar soap, local cosmetics, and Low
options co-habitant some VC products

4 VC: Veg*an cosmetics

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 The VC becomes a norm, for
environmental
V3 Did not consider herself as a fully Social media, Youtubers, Owns 8 VC products High
vegan cosmetics user, being bloggers She questions the transparency of
humble about it but have a good cosmetic brands regard vegan and
number of VC products. cruelty-free.
V4 Active looking for VC substitute Social media, Youtubers, Try to use as much VC as she can High
products; try different brands to bloggers (11 VC products) The VC partly reflects her identity, so
find good VC products. she checks the ingredient origin
carefully

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5 CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

5.1 Conclusion

Veganism is a growing concept in recent decades with a lot of improvement in the 2010s. Although,
the lack of an official regulation for veg*an manufacturing industries has created some barriers in
providing a user-centric shopping experience for veg*an (includes vegan, vegetarian and
flexitarian). The study proceeded with 8 female persons in the age range of 18 -32 years old who
live in Finland and practice veg*an diet from 3.5 years to 13 years. Most of the participants started
the diet at underage, from 12 to 16 years old.
In consumer diet behaviour, the family is a strong foundation to support the subject in starting the
concept. Family meal culture plays an important role in shaping young adult behaviour. For these
participants, there are only less than half of them has a mother who is or was vegetarian. Hence,
the switching in diet caused some objection from the parents in the beginning, mainly due to
nutrition concern. The main inspiration for being veg*an are their friends in adolescence. The
celebrities and social influencers only take part in encouraging in vegan group. For Subjective
Norm, the social meals and opinion have a great impact on veg*an, affect on their attitude,
perceived behavioural control and emotion. Most of them recognised the improvement in veg*an
food availability in groceries and restaurants. It is also a noticeable phenomenon that for veg*ans
have the ethical reason as the main part of their beliefs, the emotion aspect raised higher in their
attitude, leads to higher commitment in taking action.
In veg*an cosmetics, there are some levels of awareness about veg*an cosmetics. Most of the
participants find the veg*an cosmetics price is still quite high. The interest and amount of veg*an
cosmetics consumption increase alongside with the commitment to their veg*an diet: lower in the
flexitarian group, varied in vegetarian and environment vegan group, and highest in ethical vegan
group, despite the income factor. In the reading label tests, the participants have difficulty in
detecting self-made vegan marks (text or own-design mark) due to the lack of familiarity. Some
tried to detect animal-origin ingredients, but with the scientific ingredient names, it is a challenge
for a regular consumer to study and update their knowledge and many would not willing to do that.
In the case of inability to detect a veg*an indicator, the participants have the tendency to give the
conclusion based on their prior brand belief and in some cases, the personal beliefs can question
brand’s credibility if there is a conflict of their marketing message and activities. Nevertheless, it is

68
a remarkable result that 100% of the participants can detect the vegan mark from The Vegan
Society under 10 seconds and have the strong beliefs in this certification, which proves the need
of standardised in vegan manufacturing industry. The lack of veg*an indicator on product
packaging, in the exception of Lush Cosmetics, would require extra task for the consumer to reach
out for secondary information sources on their website. Although, in their case, many users’ brand
beliefs have a strong affection by the good instore customer service. Hence, it is not an applicable
business model to the other tradition retail chains.

With these findings from the study, a future marketer of a cosmetics company could drive her/his
attention to creating a friendly-budget product range, more user-centric label design, registering
the products for a suitable veg*an certification and creating a transparency in the company's
activities. Obviously, a lower price range for veg*an cosmetics would gain more customers to
extend their veganism practice, as veg*an products, in general, are more expensive than non-
vegan categories. In label design, it would help to gain the attention if the vegan mark places in the
front label of the products, instead of the back as many of the brands are using. For small, new or
foreign veg*an cosmetics companies, registering their products to a reliable and recognised veg*an
certificate would create a positive brand belief for veg*an as well as establish familiarity with the
product. It is also worth considering the core value of the company and aligning their activities in
term of creating a consistent brand image. As mentioned, the veg*an consumer, especially in
ethical vegan group, could use their brand beliefs to classify a vegan product as non-vegan, if the
owner company of the brand proceeds testing animal, which is not aligned to the veganism concept.
Besides, from the understanding of veg*an diet, the young adult market segment would need more
studies how to increase the social interaction in sharing veg*an cosmetics and establishing a new
effective route to approach this potential market segment.

Based on these facts, it is an open pathway for veg*an manufacturers to improve their
communication with the consumer through their products’ labels. On another hand, the veg*an
would be willing to broaden their veganism practice in a new product category if the products can
serve them at their convenience (location, price, benefit). The veg*an market segment is very
promising and has many opportunities for improvements as well as creating a more sustainable
consumption habit for the modern world in the near future.

69
5.2 Discussion

The findings demonstrate that the cosmetics manufacturers and marketers need to pay more
attention to label design, the choice of veg*an indicator and the consumer brand belief as those
factors would affect the consumer decision-making process greatly. The self-proclaimed veg*an
indicators would cost much more time, and consumer’s attention to detect and most of the veg*an
consumers are not familiar with the cosmetics ingredients. Also, the placement of vegan certificate
logo can make a significant improvement to draw consumer attention to new veg*an products in
the retail chain. Hence, a reliable and familiar vegan certification would boost the decision-making
process of veg*an consumer and establish the brand belief for new or foreign products. A lower
price range of veg*an cosmetics also could be a good market segment to gain new consumers due
to their concern of price. Besides, marketers need to think of a new approach to increase the social
interaction between veg*an consumers to increase the awareness of veg*an cosmetics.

Furthermore, in the position of a marketer, she/he need to take responsibility for ensuring gender
equality in veganism. The heaviness of masculine public image toward meat consumption or
attachment of feminine to veganism is only widening the gap between omnivore and veg*an wider.
Because of that, to establishing the veg*an standard, the market leader players should consider a
regulation to erase the gender inequality in marketing, especially advertising, for the consumer
goods sector. And finally, the marketers also need to align their companies’ core values, brand
image to their activities. The brand and company’s activities have a significant impact on the brand
belief, especially to vegans as they are alert about background stories and consider that
wholeheartedly.

For future researches, quantitative approach with TPB and Emotion model may help to gain an
affirmation answer on a narrower scale. Also, it would be a fascinating pathway to use the available
technology in the neuroscience field, gaining more insight into the emotion influence on veg*an
consumer behaviour. For example, the cognitive analysing service is ready on the market to gain
a more accurate interpretation of the consumer. In the marketing field, it could be useful to have
further researches about label design and the affection of certification on consumer behaviour;
branding, storytelling and public relations affection on the brand beliefs. Vegan trend, indeed, is an
interesting field due to the involvement of lots of emotion in consumer behaviour, and according to
Chaudhuri, “Emotions can never be wrong.” (2005, p.27)

70
For the Arctic Berry Wax Project, it is a necessary move to obtain a vegan certificate to
approaching the cosmetics manufacturers effectively. The valuable Arctic Berry Wax has a lot of
potentials to become a premium ingredient with a high profile for the vegan cosmetics market.
With the growing pace of veganism, it is a good path to exploit the business opportunities of
Arctic Berry Wax.

During the process of conducting this research, it is unavoidable that the author makes some
honest mistakes and subjective interpretation due to the lack of experience, time, funds and
instruments. The sample size is humble and cannot present for all the veg*an in Finland. Also, the
project has been extended due to a load of unplanned work tasks. It is, indeed, an overwhelming
but fascinating project to gain as many insights from the veg*an consumers in Finland. This
research was a great chance for the author to gain more knowledge about veganism, research
methods, especially in conducting consumer research. The author would like to express the
appreciation to the participants who agreed to participate in this research for their openness to
share the experience, which is contributed greatly to the success of the study; Helena Ahola – Head
Researchers of Arctic Berry Wax Project and Ph.D. Taina Vuorela – Project Manager and
supervisor for their insightful guidance throughout the whole research process.

71
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THEME INTERVIEW QUESTION LIST APPENDIX 1

Objectives
Her own veg*an diet Vegan-cosmetics
Factors
Attitude Feel and think about the current diet: Feel and think about vegan cosmetics – reasons for using/not
Describe your current diet? Which group are you belong to? using vegan-cosmetics
What are the benefits of your diet? How do you think about veg*an cosmetics?
Is there a need to improve your current diet? How well are you know about them?
Is there a need to improve your veg*an practice? Can you name veg*an cosmetics brands/products that you aware
of? Do you use any veg*an cosmetics?
Does it need to be improved?
How do you feel about them? How do you feel about their
For flexitarians – how often you consume meat? quality?
(times per week, per month or per year)
How do you think about other diet groups?
Vegan/ vegetarian/ flexitarian/ meat-eaters
Subjective Norms Family and friends; Social relation; Influencers/ Celebrities Who do you think would approve or support you to start/continue
using vegan cosmetics?
Who do you think would approve or support you to
Who do you think would discourage you from your using veg*an
start/continue your current diet?
cosmetics?
Who do you think would discourage you from your diet?
What type of information sources do you use to refer to veg*an
Do you have any inspirational of being vegan?
products?
Who do you look up to (being a veg*an)?
What type of information sources do you use to refer to
veg*an products?

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Perceived Motivators/barriers? (Budget/ Craving for meat?) Motivators/barriers? (Budget/ Available options)
Behaviour Control Location/ convenience Location/ convenience
- At home: with partner/flatmate/family - At home: with partner/flatmate/family
- Travelling: with companies What are the factors or motivators that make it easy for you to
What are the factors or motivators that make it easy for you use vegan cosmetics? (optional)
to be veg*an? What are the factors or barriers that make it difficult for you to
What are the factors or barriers that make it difficult for you to use vegan cosmetics? (optional)
be veg*an? How cosmetics manufacturers can improve your experience?
(product, shopping journey, information, etc.)
Emotions Towards the animal/ environment, the trigger to act on the Towards the animal/ environment, the trigger to act on the
intention intention
How do you feel when you introduce yourself as veg*an? Similar questions
How does your social relation react? How to you feel about
their attitude/reaction?
Do they feel surprised or curious about being veg*an?
Do you feel the respect/ disrespect form them?
Is it a must for you to use only veg*an products?
Past behaviour Attempt to be and failed – or succeed How many veg*an cosmetics products you are using now? What
are those?
Have you failed to be a veg*an before? How many attempts
have you done? Could you show me your cabinet and find out how many veg*an
products you own? (optional – if the interviewees feel
comfortable)

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TEST A PRODUCT LIST APPENDIX 2

List of products used in the test:

Vegan/
No. Product type Brand Country of Origin/ Language Type of label Ingredient list
No indication

1 Deodorant Dm Germany/ German Vegan Text (Vegan) Yes

2 Deodorant Rexona/ Unilever UK/ English No indication - Yes

Text 5
3 Antibacterial Hand gel Superdrug Store plc UK/ English Vegan Yes

USA/ English, French,

4 Hand cream Burt’s Bees No indication Logo Rabbit 6 No
German, Spanish, Italian

5 Hand cream L’ Occitane En Provence France/ French, English No indication - Yes

Finnish brand –
Manufactured in Italy/ Yes/Under
6 Mascara Lumene Vegan Text 7
barcode sticker
English

7 Hair spray Alverde Naturkosmetik by Dm Germany/ German Vegan Logo 8 Yes

5 (Suitable for vegetarians and vegans - Superdrug is against animal testing)

6 (implied No animal testing)
7 (100% Vegan)
8 (Sunflower logo from the Vegan Society)

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TEST A - TEST OF VEGAN PRODUCT RECOGNITION - PRODUCT PICTURES APPENDIX 3

Figure 7 Product 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - Front label Figure 8 Product 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - Back label

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Figure 9 Product 5 - 6 - 7 - Front label Figure 10 Product 7 - Back label

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Figure 11 Product 5 - Back label Figure 12 Product 6 - Ingredient list sticker

Figure 13 Product 6 - Back label Figure 14 Product 6 - Ingredient list - Pealed sticker

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 TEST A RESULT SUMMARY TABLE APPENDIX 4

Diet Flexitarian Vegetarian Environmental Ethical Vegan

group Vegan

F1 F2 VG1 VG2 V1 & V2 V3 V4

T A T A T A T A T A T A T A

P1 21 Y 6 Y 27-42 N then Y 4 Y 57 Y 27 Vegan 33 -

P2 5 N 20 N/- 3 N 11 N 9 N 24 Vegan 21 -

P3 21 Y 12 Y 24 Y 3 Y 8 Y 27 * 30 Y

P4 16 Veg 7 ** 40 N 1 N 61 Veg 26 Veg 23 N

P5 22 N 49 - 46 N 33 N 28 Veg 54 Veg - 30 -
Not sure

P6 5 Y 3 Y 19 Y 21 Y 7 Y 6 Veg 21 N

P7 9 Y 3 Y 8 Y 5 Y 2 Y 5 Veg 7 Y

* No animal ingredient – then Y* T: Time (count by the second)

** No animal testing* A: Answer (Y: Vegan/Vegetarian, N: Non-vegan; “-”: Not sure)
For cells has more than one answer, the interviewee changed the answer

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TEST B – LUSH’S PRODUCT RECOGNITION APPENDIX 5

Figure 15 Lush solid body lotion

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INTERVIEWEE COSMETICS PRODUCTS APPENDIX 6

Figure 16 Interviewees’ cosmetics collection - Published under the agreement of the interviewees

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