Abstract
Effectively communicating properties of environmental products to consumers can be challenging. This especially pertains to highly environmentally conscious (HEC)—yet skeptical—consumers, since this target group must balance the need for reliable product knowledge with high sensitivity to often ambiguous nonverbal cues about a product’s environmental friendliness (e.g., environmental pictures). Using a group-specific (2 ×) 2 × 2 repeated-measures experimental study, we investigated the effect of communication-channel-specificity (verbal and nonverbal) to convey the environmental friendliness of products and evaluated consumers’ environmental skepticism and attention during product presentation. Environmental information delivered via a verbal/text-based communication channel translates into low skepticism for both HEC and low environmental consciousness (LEC) consumers. However, nonverbal/pictorial communication proved persuasive only for LEC consumers; HEC consumers exhibited high levels of skepticism, which, in turn, decreased the products’ perceived environmental friendliness. The analysis of combined verbal and nonverbal communication presented here provides a promising framework for effective green marketing communication.
Highlights
Communicating properties of environmental products to consumers can be challenging
While they need to know about product quality, they are sensitive to informational ambiguity, and environmental quality–related information is often ambiguous, with unclear propositional content. Such ambiguous environmental information appears to lead consumers to perceive information as greenwashing [1]. It begs the question: How can environmental friendliness be communicated to highly environmentally conscious (HEC) consumers if they are skeptical and may perceive information as greenwashing? are HEC consumers becoming increasingly skeptical about environmentally friendly information, increasing challenges for green marketing communication [2,3]? If so, how can the communication of environmental qualities be effectively achieved across consumer groups with different levels of environmental consciousness (EC)? To address these questions, we draw on recent findings and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), as a theoretical framework to develop hypotheses regarding consumer responses to green marketing communication
The results of this study expand on the findings of previous studies dealing with the effectiveness and design of green marketing communication, in particular, the communication channel used for communicating environmental product information, consumer environmental
Summary
“Green,” highly environmentally conscious (HEC) consumers are the main target group for environmentally friendly products. They are willing to pay more for environmental friendliness and, need to be informed about a product’s environmentally friendly qualities. It is challenging to find the right channel to communicate these environmental qualities to consumers While they need to know about product quality, they are sensitive to informational ambiguity, and environmental quality–related information is often ambiguous, with unclear propositional content (e.g., pictures of green landscapes). Such ambiguous environmental information appears to lead consumers to perceive information as greenwashing [1].
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