Abstract
This research aims to investigate the potential of consumer empowerment, the activation of consumers’ perceived power over companies, to achieve improved advertising effects for organic food compared to only communicating ecological benefits (classical green appeals). Two online experiments were conducted to analyze the ad effectiveness for consumers’ responses including their evaluations of the company and purchase intentions (nStudy1 = 294; nStudy2 = 457). Results indicate that green empowerment ads reach overall better performance to increase people’s perceived customer orientation and purchase intentions compared to green appeals, while similar effects are identified for perceived corporate environmental responsibility. Empowerment tactics are especially effective when consumers perceive the supplier to be a larger, high-resource company compared to a smaller, low-resource one. The significant effects of perceived corporate resources also indicates that smaller companies should use differentiated ad strategies depending on if they intend to enhance consumers’ purchase intentions or their environmental reputation.
Highlights
Preventing further ecological damages caused by intense conventional agricultural production such as soil erosions and groundwater pollution, requires stronger support from markets or a vital shift in consumption (e.g., Gomiero et al 2011; Ma et al 2019)
For CER, we found a significant difference between the green empowerment ad and the control group ad but not to the green appeal
We observed significant main effects of both the ad type and perceived corporate resources on customer orientation (CO). Both green and non-green empowerment ads (MGreenPower = 5.59, MNon-GreenPower = 5.78) significantly increased CO compared with the green appeal (MGreenAppeal = 5.13; Table 4)
Summary
Preventing further ecological damages caused by intense conventional agricultural production such as soil erosions and groundwater pollution, requires stronger support from markets or a vital shift in consumption (e.g., Gomiero et al 2011; Ma et al 2019). Consumers’ willingness to pay a price premium for socially and environmentally responsible products is evidenced in extant research (e.g., see a meta-analysis by Tully and Winer 2014). Besides these positive attitudes, previous research shows that companies need to be cautious with unexpected adverse effects when advertising their products as environmentfriendly. Consumers still seem to consider other criteria to be more important for their purchase than social or environmental sustainability. The question arises how companies can achieve positive effects of communicating their environmental friendliness in advertisements on consumer responses while not undermining other relevant criteria or even provoking adverse effects
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
