Friday Research: Do You Have to Sacrifice Quality Figurine to be Green?

When Will You Use This?  

Creating and developing positioning strategies for your new and improved products.

What’s The Red-Letter Bite Today? 

Nowadays it's quite common for companies to upgrade and add new product features in order to increase the desirability of a product. Many companies choose to redesign popular products using materials that are more environmentally-friendly. But do consumers really respond better to the "greener" products?

Current research* puts focus on green product enhancements and specifically, how the communication of environmental benefits as intended or unintended affects consumers’ purchase decisions

As authors explain, "in a series of studies, consumers learned about a company that manufactures household cleaning products and were told that the company either intended to make the product better for the environment or that the environmental gain was the result of another improvement. Consumers thought the products were higher in quality and were more likely to purchase the cleaning products when the improvement was unintended. Even when the company’s intentions were not disclosed, consumers thought the products suffered from a quality control problem, suggesting that consumers automatically perceive green products as being lower quality even when a company does not specify its intentions."

Green works for environment, but will it work on my stains?, consumers worry.

Addition To Your Bag of Tricks    

This research suggests a few communication tips for companies, manufacturing green products or thinking of improving some basic product features to become more friendly to the environment. As one of the most important issues for consumers when deciding whether or not to purchase green products is "whether the quality of the green product is undermined", the authors suggest to either position the improvement as unintended or emphasize that the primary goal is improving the quality of the product.

*Newman G.E., Gorlin M., Dhar R. “When Going Green Backfires: How Firm Intentions Shape the Evaluation of Socially Beneficial Product Enhancements.” Journal of Consumer Research: October 2014 {Thanks for the material}

P.S. When you’re done reading, I’d love for you to share your experience with redesigning a product ? Leave a comment or Tweet me, let's chat!

P.P.S. Need some help on crafting your marketing message? Let's do this together.

Friday Research: Don't Underestimate the power of GREEN consumers

When Will You Use This?  

Planning campaigns and promotions for your environmentally friendly products.

What’s The Red-Letter Bite Today? 

More and more companies start producing products targeting environmentally friendly consumers and the shelves of  “green” products are expanding daily. However, are most consumers willing to buy environmentally friendly products? Does the perception of green product's reduced efficacy or higher cost still exist?


Current research* found that consumers with stronger green consumption values (i.e., “green” consumers) tend to be more concerned with financial savings, are more likely to consider product reuse, and are less likely to dispose of products. Moreover, this study revealed the fact that green consumers tend to evaluate an array of product attributes, such as effectiveness, style, and aesthetic appeal, of environmentally-friendly products more favorably than do less green consumers in order to overcome possible financial and physical resource concerns associated with environmentally-friendly products.

Riding on the waves of green: Eco Friendly - the new black?

Addition To Your Bag of Tricks    

This research shares a few insights to help you in planning your environmentally-based marketing actions. As authors suggest, "consumers with stronger green consumption values may need less convincing to purchase environmentally-friendly products as they appear to evaluate the non-environmental attributes of these products more favorably without prompting. Given this, we suggest that marketers of environmentally-friendly products may benefit from focusing their marketing efforts on consumers with weaker green consumption values since those with stronger green consumption values are motivated to purchase these products on their own.<..> We believe the identification of the relationship between green consumption values and conservation of financial and personal resources will be of great use in further understanding how to increase environmentally-friendly consumption."

Finally, the authors of this research developed a scale of green consumption values - GREEN scale - which predicts consumer preference for environmentally friendly products. If you're interested in assessing green consumption values, the six items of the GREEN scale are as follows:

- It is important to me that the products I use do not harm the environment
- I consider the potential environmental impact of my actions when making many of my decisions
- My purchase habits are affected by my concern for our environment
- I am concerned about wasting the resources of our planet
- I would describe myself as environmentally responsible
- I am willing to be inconvenienced in order to take actions that are more environmentally friendly. 

  

*Haws, Kelly L., Karen Page Winterich, and Rebecca Walker Naylor,"Seeing the world through GREEN-tinted glasses: Green consumption values and responses to environmentally friendly products". Journal of Consumer Psychology: 2014. {Thanks for the material}

P.S. When you’re done reading, I’d love for you to share your experience with environmentally freindly consumers? Leave a comment or Tweet me, let's chat!

P.P.S. Need some help on crafting your marketing message? Let's do this together.