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Although consumers express their willingness to adopt ethical products, they rarely actually purchase such products. The reason for this attitude-behavior gap is that social desirability bias leads to positive attitudes in marketing surveys, while ambiguity of benefits leads to negative behavior in real life. To resolve this discrepancy, there is a need to evaluate the main factors of a product comprehensively, but current literature is limited to ethical factors only. This study complements this knowledge with two surveys targeting the Japanese coffee market. In the first study, loyalty factors were examined using structural equation modeling. Positive effects were found for brand, product quality, and sales channels, with a negative effect only for ethical factors. In other words, the survey obtained responses that were not subject to social desirability bias. Hence, we conducted a demonstration to ensure that ethical factors are recognized as a value. The second study showed through a randomized controlled trial that the concept of product quality brought about by good working conditions on farms is more appealing than the concept of presenting poverty issues.

Since internal marketing (IM) treats employees as customers, the focus has naturally been on internal measures. However, consumer-oriented advertising provides an opportunity for employees to recognize the social impact of their work and change their mindset. Such activities can be seen in business, but knowledge based on academic research is scarce. Therefore, this study examined the effects on job satisfaction and turnover intention by targeting ten factors, including advertising and nine factors covered in existing IM literature (capability acquisition, wages, work-life balance, relationship with superiors, diversity of human resources, office facilities, cafeteria, advanced technology, and purpose). An online survey of 5,000 full-time employees across ten industries (automotives, electronics, medical equipment, food, real estate, information technology, finance, retail, service, and government) was conducted in Japan. Advertisement had no effect on satisfaction, but had a significant positive effect on turnover intention. Furthermore, we found that the smaller the size of the company and the younger the employees, the more likely the employees are to change jobs. This result indicates the need to take care not to increase the desire to change jobs when promoting internal communication through advertisements.