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Green Branding in Fast Fashion: Examining the Impact of Social Sustainability Claims on Consumer Behavior and Brand Perception
Abstract
This study explores the impact of social sustainability claims on consumer perception and behavior in the fast-fashion industry. Specifically, it examines how sustainability claims based on the fashion supply chain impact green purchase intentions through the serial mediation of green brand image, green satisfaction, and green brand equity. Based on the Mean-End-Chain (MEC) theory and the Value-Based-Norm (VBN) theory, our research investigates the 'H' brand, known for its social sustainability initiatives. These initiatives emphasize altruistic values, including cooperation with farmers for organic fiber cultivation, improved working conditions, fair wages, and workplace safety. We analyze data from 257 Chinese participants via a serial mediation model using the PROCESS macro in SPSS. The findings reveal a positive relationship between sustainability claims and purchase intentions through green brand image, green satisfaction, and green brand equity. These outcomes highlight the necessity for fashion industry marketers to strategically emphasize altruistic values in sustainability efforts to enhance green brand image, green satisfaction, and green brand equity and increase green purchase intentions. Keywords: Supply Chain Sustainability Claims, Fashion Industry, Value-Behavior relationship, Sustainability Marketing, Green Brand Image, Green Satisfaction, Green Brand Equity, Green Purchase Intention.
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Purpose: This study aims to investigate the ecological awareness of Chinese consumers towards fast fashion and examine the effect of social sustainability claims on green brand image and purchase intentions in China, considering China’s unique environmental policy landscape and its significant role in the global fast fashion industry. The study explores the role of altruistic values in promoting sustainability within the well-known fast fashion brand ‘H’ and how they shape brand image, consumer satisfaction, and brand equity.
Methodology: The study collected data from 257 Chinese participants and used a serial mediation model through the PROCESS macro in SPSS to analyse the correlation between green brand image, created through sustainability claims, and consumer purchase intentions. The model also assessed the intermediary effects of brand image, satisfaction, and equity.
Findings: The findings of the research indicate a direct and positive relationship between green brand image and consumer purchase intentions, emphasising the need for clothing and textile industry marketers to strategically promote altruistic values in their sustainability efforts and highlighting the importance of ecological awareness in shaping consumer behaviour in the Chinese context. This approach enhances green satisfaction and green brand equity and ultimately leads to higher green purchase intentions.
Originality/Value: This study provides significant insights into the effectiveness of incorporating social sustainability claims in advertising to improve a brand’s green image and influence consumer behaviour. It emphasises the importance of altruistic values in sustainability strategies, offering valuable guidelines for marketers in enhancing green satisfaction and brand equity, thereby boosting consumer purchase intentions in the context of green branding and sustainability advertising. Focusing specifically on the Chinese market, this research sheds light on the impact of ecological awareness among Chinese consumers within the fast-fashion industry. Given China’s substantial role in shaping global fast-fashion production and its evolving environmental policies, this focus adds significant depth to our understanding of sustainability claims’ influence within this crucial consumer base.
Keywords: Supply Chain Sustainability Claims, Fashion and Textile Industry, Value-Behaviour relationship, Sustainability Marketing, Green Brand Image, Green Satisfaction, Green Brand Equity, Green Purchase Intention, China
The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations prioritize sustainability by 2030. The fashion industry is one most substantial manufacturing industries that generate an economy of 3 trillion dollars and contributes to 2% of the world’s gross domestic product. In addition to this, the fashion industry must focus on social and environmental concerns, where it should create fashionable products to promote sustainable consumption and production. Sustainable consumption and production can be achieved with the establishment of resilient infrastructure with innovation. The resilient infrastructure with innovation is realized by the integration of digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). With this motivation, this study explored the different studies that implemented these technologies in the fashion industry for smart cloth (health), supply chain, circular economy, dress recommendation system, fashion trend forecasting, health prediction, and virtual and augmented based shopping experience. Along with the progress of these technologies in the fashion industry, the study also discussed limitations and provided recommendations such as wide adoption of blockchain in fashion supply chain; advancement in energy storage for smart cloth; integration of IoT, AI, and edge computing; and smart clothing-based framework for rescue operation for future enhancement.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether various kinds of sustainability claims based on the supply chain drive different extents of green psychological variables and behavioral intention. In this study, we selected the sustainability claims of the H&M group, as this group indulges in a sustainable fashion i.e. commitment of doing business that generates revenues for shareholders, protects the people, and the planet. The H&M sustainability program can be categorized into social and environmental practices. We collected data from 316 Chinese respondents. The finding of one-way ANOVA revealed that eight types of sustainability claims drive the same level of green trust and green loyalty. However, the social claims such as "building safety in Bangladesh" and "animal welfare" significantly bring a high impact on the green psychological variables (i.e. green brand image, green satisfaction, green brand equity, and green purchase intention). The outcomes of this study are helpful for fashion/clothing and textile industry marketing managers to understand the consumers' preferences towards ethical practices and trade-offs between claims while developing a positioning strategy.
Retailers face a major operational challenge in fulfilling online orders while managing their traditional store-based distribution processes. In this context, the following order fulfillment options available to retailers are considered: store-facing distribution centers (DCs), dedicated order fulfillment facilities (DTCs), retail stores, and direct-fill by vendors. The current study provides an order fulfillment evaluation for the Disposable Products Industry, which is one of the industries that have a tremendous effect over the downstream industries, as it is the source for production. Also, the differences in the factor focus are provided for various parties and countries. The results show that the order fulfillment risk factors identified from various research studies are good enough for the Disposable Products Industry, even though they are not intentionally designed for this highly diversified industry. Among them, sustainability is the most important factor that the companies in the Disposable Products Industry should pay attention to. This is because sustainability is believed to lead to large deviations in various types of order fulfillment losses and incur a higher chance of having the order fulfillment failure for the companies with an international customer base. The companies should focus on how to improve the sustainability (long-term relationships with the various parties along the chain) rather than over-emphasis on the short-term documentation accuracy as the long-term improvement is likely to result in an overall improvement in performance on order fulfillment.
Influencer marketing is the practice of compensating individuals for posting about a product or service on social media. Influencer marketing is on the rise, and many marketers now plan either to start using influencers or to increase their use of them in their media mixes. Despite such growth, relatively little strategic or academic insight exists that is specific to influencers. In this article, we describe the roots of influencer marketing and the many different types of influencers that now exist. We identify influencers’ three functional components: the audience, the endorser, and the social media manager. We then detail for each of these components the different sources of value influencers potentially offer marketers. We draw on relevant academic research to offer advice about how to leverage each component strategically. We close by describing how the interplay of these functional components makes influencers a potentially powerful—and undervalued—marketing tool.
The study explores the transparency status of sustainability disclosures among luxury and mass-market fashion brands, examining the possibilities that the type of information disclosed is selectively prioritized, and higher differences in supply chain disclosure exist among differently positioned retail brands. Fashion Transparency Index 2017 represents the first comprehensive index that ranked 100 of the most affluent fashion brands according to the levels of corporate and supply chain transparency. To explore the index raw-data study employs non-parametric methods, the Hodges-Lehmann median differences and the Probability of Superiority. For 100 brands, the average corporate and supply chain transparency joint score was just 19.6% (out of 100%). The type of information disclosed was selectively prioritized, and there was an 80% chance that brands were scored higher in corporate than in supply chain transparency. A comparison of the mass-market (n = 27) and luxury (n = 13) sub-sample revealed higher transparency of supply chain disclosures among mass-market brands. Benchmarking the transparency of sustainability disclosures serves as a point of reference against which current and future disclosures may be assessed. Consumers may use these findings to question current transparency status and facilitate further industry change. Retailers might use identified critical areas to re-negotiate priorities for future disclosure.
In this study, we identify impure altruism as a duality of altruistic and egoistic warmth. We examine how these feelings motivate consumers to buy green apparel in response to advertisements. We test the effectiveness of the message orientation and its interactivity with a beneficiary and propose modeling impure altruism as the reason why consumers purchase green apparel. The study uses a quasi-experiment to estimate a comparison effect among advertising stimuli. We conduct an online survey among US consumers that garnered 586 responses for the main data analysis. The results indicate that egocentric appeals increase perceived uniqueness and that human beneficiary appeals lead to higher communal harmony. The findings show that communal harmony and global wellbeing prompt altruistic warmth and that uniqueness and product quality encourage egoistic warmth. Notably, altruistic warmth contributes to egoistic warmth, which indicates the existence of impurely altruistic consumers. Both altruistic and egoistic warmth lead to the intention of purchasing green apparel. We recommend “feel-good” marketing strategies to publicize the benefits of a sustainable lifestyle. The study contributes to the theoretical development of sustainability and can serve as an extension of a discrete model of altruism and egoism on consumers’ sustainable behavior.
“Sustainable fashion”, also known as “eco fashion”, is a part of the growing design, manufacturing, and consumption philosophy and trend toward system maintainability. The goal of system maintainability is to create regularity which is supportable indefinitely in terms of human impact on the environment and social responsibility. Sustainable fashion is an alternative trend against fast fashion. The severe environmental damage that the fashion industry firms and consumers cause now is the main rationale for embracing sustainable fashion – following the petroleum industry, the fashion industry is the second largest cause of pollution worldwide. Specific sustainable fashion trends are identifiable that focus on nurturing the reduction of the pollution caused by fashion. These trends include innovative behavior by a growing number of firms and segments of fashion consumers. Relevant literature identifies specific sustainability topics requiring the most attention by firms in the fashion industry include the following top two: promoting sustainable fashion thinking and achieving ethical/responsible production is supply chains. Attention among scholars to the issue of how to accomplish sustainable fashion objectives is growing.
Sustainability in marketing has gained some traction over the years, yet we still remain uncertain about exactly what ‘sustainability marketing’ means. Utilising the Scopus database, a discourse analysis was conducted on nearly 200 published journal articles. The analysis categorises multiple sustainability views and outlines three conceptualisations of sustainability marketing: Auxiliary Sustainability Marketing (which focusses on the production of sustainable products), Reformative Sustainability Marketing (which extends the auxiliary approach through the promotion of sustainable lifestyles and behavioural changes) and Transformative Sustainability Marketing (which further extends the auxiliary and reformative approaches through the need for transformation of current institutions and norms, and critical reflection). This paper then discusses how these three conceptualisations might be used by scholars and practitioners to interpret and implement sustainability marketing going forward. Please visit my personal website for more details and access. https://drjkemper.weebly.com
This study uses a human-centered approach to environmental ethics to examine which perceived factors in advertising predict consumers’ intention to purchase “green”, or sustainably and ethically produced, apparel. We use eight different types of green apparel advertisements to build a decision tree model to determine the most influential factors that lead to future purchases of green apparel. We classify consumers’ perceptions of green advertising as either humanistic, environmental, or product-related responses and propose a conceptual framework to outline the essential elements of an effective green advertising strategy. We use a sample of 829 US consumers from the period January 2015 to December 2017 in our empirical research. Our results show that four factors, namely, perception of the apparel’s quality, its uniqueness, caring, and nature connectedness, predict consumers’ intention to purchase green apparel. Notably, the largest segment of consumers (36%), those who perceive high levels of apparel quality and caring in the advertising, are identified as the high-purchase group. Our findings could improve strategies in green apparel advertising by providing a new analytical approach to model consumers’ behavioral intention to purchase green apparel.
Adopting the interpretative lens provided by the Systems Thinking and Service Logic, the paper pursues a twofold aim: 1] from one side it offers a wider picture of fashion sector with the aim to support both researchers and practitioners in defining more valuable and effective approaches and 2] from the other side it investigates the customers’ perspectives and their approach to Information and Communication Technologies in the fashion sector.
After the definition of four hypotheses, the perceptions of a sample of 1125 customers are investigated through a qualitative survey and the results are analysed using Structural Equation Modelling.
Purpose – Indirect or mediated effects constitute a type of relationship between constructs that often occurs in partial least squares path modeling (PLS). Over the past few years, the methods for testing mediation have become more sophisticated. However, many researchers continue to use outdated methods to test mediating effects in PLS, which can lead to erroneous results. One reason for the use of outdated methods or even the lack of their use altogether is that no systematic tutorials on PLS exist that draw on the newest statistical findings.
Design/methodology/approach – This study illustrates the state-of-the-art use of mediation analysis in the context of PLS.
Findings – This study facilitates the adoption of modern procedures in PLS by challenging the conventional approach to mediation analysis and providing alternatives that are more accurate. In addition, we propose a decision tree and classification of mediating effects.
Originality/value – Our recommended approach offers a wide range of testing options (e.g., multiple mediators) that go beyond simple mediation analysis alternatives, helping researchers discuss their studies in a more accurate way.
The growth in ethical consumption behaviour and greater interest in sustainable fashion from
a production side provides grounding for the emergence of a new consumer market for
sustainable fashion. To date however most studies in this field focus on the production end of
the emerging market, with little exploration of the consumers. Of the work there is on
sustainable fashion consumption, the majority discuss perceptions of sustainable fashion by
the general population, with little work sampling actual consumers of sustainable fashion.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the values and motivations underpinning
actual sustainable fashion consumption. 39 in-depth interviews were conducted with a sample
of frequent sustainable clothing consumers. The study follows a means-end theory approach
linking purchased products back to purchasing criteria and personal values. This study
therefore contributes to the overall understanding of sustainable fashion consumption and
gives insights into purchasing criteria and behavioural choices of sustainable fashion
consumers.
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The management of a firm's green operations is increasingly important for marketing strategists. The purpose of this study is to investigate the cross-influences of green marketing strategy and the key internal green functional areas in a firm. We use the antecedents of marketing strategy and identify relationships between green marketing strategy and key supporting internal environmental operations of firms with respect to (1) green suppliers, (2) environmental resource management, (3) green research and development, and (4) environmental manufacturing processes and procedures. The statistical techniques of parallel analysis, factor analysis and multiple regressions are used to analyze data collected from 332 firms. The results identify that among the four functional areas of firms adopting green marketing strategy. Two are more likely to influence green marketing strategy - supplier selection and research and development. Implications are discussed. The findings contribute to the theory of green marketing strategy. Future research is recommended.
Purpose
– As huge environmental impacts caused by the coffee industry are significant and controversial in the course from cultivation to consumption, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not different types of green claims based on the product lifecycle can lead to different extents of green psychological variables including purchase intention.
Design/methodology/approach
– The green claims of Starbucks were chosen as the research target for this study not only because the coffee chain store is working on the “Starbucks” Shared Planet’ program, which makes a commitment to do business in ways that are good for people and the planet, but also because such a program can be categorized into three major green message elements on the basis of the product lifecycle. A total of 920 valid self-reported questionnaires collected in Taiwan were used for this empirical analysis.
Findings
– One-way ANOVA results reveal that all of the three green claims of Starbucks can lead to consumers building up the same level of green brand image of this company, with “ethical sourcing” significantly possessing more impacts on the other green psychological variables (i.e. green trust, green satisfaction, green brand equity, and green purchase intention).
Practical implications
– The empirical results and findings from this study are helpful to the coffee industry marketers if they, in formulating various promotion campaigns, can communicate with the consumers with an eye to increasing their green brand image and other green psychological variables, including green purchase intention.
Originality/value
– This study is among the first to introduce different types of green claims on a basis of the product lifecycle to examine whether or not consumers’ green psychological variables will be different.
The issue of brand equity has emerged as one of the most critical areas for marketing management in the 1990s. Despite strong interest in the subject, however, there is little empirical evidence of how brand value is created and what its precise effects are. This study explores some of the consequences of brand equity. In particular, the authors examine the effect of brand equity on consumer preferences and purchase intentions. For comparative purposes, two sets of brands are tested, one from a service category characterized by fairly high financial and functional risk (hotels), and one from a generally lower risk product category (household cleansers). Each set includes two brands that are objectively similar (based on Consumer Reports ratings), but they have invested markedly different levels of advertising spending over the past decade. Across both categories, the brand with the higher advertising budget yielded substantially higher levels of brand equity. In turn, the brand with the higher equity in each category generated significantly greater preferences and purchase intentions.
Purpose
Consumer scepticism about the credibility of green advertising around the world is growing. The article aims to provide a comprehensive assessment and trend analysis of green advertising practices of international firms over a 20‐year period.
Design/methodology/approach
The study identifies 473 international green advertisements during the 1988‐2007 period and content‐analyses them on five major axes: advertiser profile, targeting features, message aspects, copy characteristics, and situation points.
Findings
The content analysis reveals significant trends in all major areas examined and identifies important interaction effects between certain dimensions of green advertisements.
Research limitations/implications
The findings could be augmented by combining them with changes in the external environment, input from consumers about advertising effectiveness, the views of advertisers and advertising agencies, and secondary data referring to the performance of the specific company/product advertised.
Originality/value
Green advertising research mainly focuses on domestic rather than international advertisements; examines important issues in isolation from other issues; partially analyses message, copy, and situation characteristics; and covers a short period. This study fills these gaps by systematically evaluating international green advertisements over a long period and using an integrated framework of analysis that is based on the extant literature. It also explores potential interaction effects between key dimensions describing these advertisements.
With the expansion of ethical consumption, there is an increased need to understand the variety of consumer motives for consumer engagement in such behaviour. For the rapidly growing area of ethical clothing, this study explores consumers’ desired consumption outcomes and personal values that drive ethical product preferences. Analysis of data obtained through a semi-qualitative laddering approach (n = 98 ethical clothing consumers) reveals 5 dominant perceptual patterns relating not only to environmental and altruist ethical concerns, but also more individual motives of value for money, personal image, and well-being. Further analysis shows that consumers have to compromise and balance between their conflicting end-goals. The study augments previous findings in ethical clothing research as researchers can better understand how specific attributes of products relate to the emotional and symbolic aspects and link back to consumer values. Though limited in scope by its exploratory character, the study contributes towards a deeper understanding of ethical consumer behaviour, implications for theory; practice and further research are discussed.
This article argues that micromarketing cannot examine the relationship between sustainable consumption and the quality of life critically because the essence of the relationship lies in the dominant social paradigm. Only macromarketing can address this relationship effectively. It is within the intellectual purview of macromarketing to expand the domain of inquiry to include technological, political, and economic benefits and costs of consumption, thus challenging the paradigm itself
Investigated, in 2 experiments, whether judgments of happiness and satisfaction with one's life are influenced by mood at the time of judgment. In Exp I, moods were induced by asking 61 undergraduates for vivid descriptions of a recent happy or sad event in their lives. In Exp II, moods were induced by interviewing 84 participants on sunny or rainy days. In both experiments, Ss reported more happiness and satisfaction with their life as a whole when in a good mood than when in a bad mood. However, the negative impact of bad moods was eliminated when Ss were induced to attribute their present feelings to transient external sources irrelevant to the evaluation of their lives; but Ss who were in a good mood were not affected by misattribution manipulations. The data suggest that (a) people use their momentary affective states in making judgments of how happy and satisfied they are with their lives in general and (b) people in unpleasant affective states are more likely to search for and use information to explain their state than are people in pleasant affective states. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The current rapid growth in the economy and the patterns of consumers' consumption and behavior worldwide are the main cause of environmental deterioration. As the environment continues to worsen, it has become a persistent public concern in the developed countries and has recently awakens developing countries to the green movement. This paper is essentially exploratory in nature and has two objectives. The first objective is to compare gender with attitudes towards the environment and green products. The second objective is to investigate the relationship between attitude towards the environment and green products. Result from the independent sample t-test shows that there were no significant differences between gender in their environmental attitudes and attitudes on green products. The rotated factor matrix validated the underlying dimensions of environmental attitudes into three major dimensions (environmental protection, government's role, and personal norm). Results from the multiple linear regression analysis revealed that consumer attitudes on the government's role and their personal norm towards the environment contributed significantly to their attitude on green product. Further investigation revealed that personal norm was the most important contributor to the attitude towards green product. However, environmental protection did not contribute significantly to consumers' attitudes on green product.
Empathy is related to a variety of prosocial behaviors, but the brain mechanisms producing the experience of empathy have not been fully characterized. This study investigated whether the experience of empathy raises oxytocin levels and affects subsequent generosity toward strangers. Short video clips of an emotional scene and an unemotional scene were used as stimuli. Participants rated the emotions they experienced and then played a $40 ultimatum game to gauge their generosity. We found that empathy was associated with a 47% increase in oxytocin from baseline. We also found the empathy-oxytocin response was stronger in women than in men. Higher levels of empathy were also associated with more generous monetary offers toward strangers in the ultimatum game. Our findings provide the first evidence that oxytocin is a physiologic signature for empathy and that empathy mediates generosity.
It has been suggested that evaluations may be based on a "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic, which involves holding a representation of the target in mind and inspecting feelings that this representation may elicit. Previous studies have shown that reliance on such feelings depends on whether or not they are believed to be representative of the target. This article argues that reliance on feelings also depends on whether feelings toward the target are regarded as relevant. Consistent with this thesis, findings from three experiments indicate that reliance on the "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic is more likely when the decision maker has consummatory as opposed to instrumental motives. Results also suggest that subtle feelings toward the target are indeed instantiated in the process, and that the process may be more likely among individuals with a propensity to process information in a visual and sensory manner. Copyright 1998 by the University of Chicago.
Sustainability is a critical issue in today’s society. Organizations can no longer consistently grow their businesses without society’s cooperation. Marketing managers thus focus on satisfying consumers’ socio and ethical needs, such as through providing cultural promotion, environmental protection, and disaster relief activities. Sustainability encompasses an organization’s economic, social, and environmental responsibilities, provoking the question of how to implement them effectively. This study focuses on the traditional fashion market’s sustainable marketing activities and their performance. The results demonstrate that the traditional fashion market’s sustainable activities have a positive effect on brand image, trust, and satisfaction. Moreover, they have a positive influence on building brand loyalty. The results offer meaningful implications for corporate executive officers and marketers to create more effective sustainable management strategies.
This precise study performed a focalized investigation to examine the association of environmental effects, new product development performance, superior customers' value, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on sustainable performance. This research study aimed to investigate how social media marketing application moderates the association between corporate social responsibility and sustainable performance of the firms located in Multan Division, Pakistan. This study applied a simple random sampling approach to execute this research, and the authors sent a questionnaire with an invitation letter and informed consent form to 752 respondents. Based on 548 valid responses from the targeted population, the first step was to screen and analyze data through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS-V25) and the Smart PLS V-3.2.8. The results indicated that corporate social responsibility presented a positive impact on firms' sustainable performance. The findings also revealed that social media marketing tools moderated the relationship between CSR and sustainable production of business firms. As a final point, the study only included respondents from Multan Division, therefore, limiting the generalizability of the findings to other Pakistani business firms. The implications of this study may provide further directions for researchers and academicians to consider the larger sample size and the addition of new variables in other regions worldwide. The findings are useful for filling the gap between the relationship of environmental effects, CSR, and social media marketing application to calculate the sustainable performance of business firms.
This study offers a retrospective commentary on a high-impact article and contributes to the extant literature by examining the relationship between sustainable marketing performance and customer equity. The study helps clarify perceived sustainable marketing performance, providing new insights into the relationship between perceived sustainable marketing performance and customer equity, including value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity. It also shows that environmental concerns are a key factor in enhancing customer equity for the fast fashion industry context. The high-impact article offers an initial examination of the key features of sustainability and customer equity. An assessment of works citing the article shows how it has shaped sustainable marketing and customer equity.
Despite its importance, young vacationers’ waste reduction and recycling decision formation remains unknown. This research was designed to investigate the intricate associations among social norms (descriptive and injunctive), willingness to sacrifice, and personal norm by developing a theoretical framework for young vacationers’ waste reduction and recycling intentions. The impact of gender was also examined. A quantitative approach employing a structural equation modeling was utilized. Our results revealed that descriptive norm, injunctive norm, and willingness to sacrifice were significant activators of personal norm. In addition, the direct impact of descriptive and injunctive norms on pro-environmental intentions was found. Personal norm acted as a mediator. Moreover, the proposed theoretical framework was further broadened by the significant moderating effect of gender on the injunctive norm–intentions linkage. Overall, this research helps researchers and practitioners better understand young international vacationers’ waste reduction and recycling intentions while traveling.
The authors report a study of the effects of price, brand, and store information on buyers’ perceptions of product quality and value, as well as their willingness to buy. Hypotheses are derived from a conceptual model positing the effects of extrinsic cues (price, brand name, and store name) on buyers’ perceptions and purchase intentions. Moreover, the design of the experiment allows additional analyses on the relative differential effects of price, brand name, and store name on the three dependent variables. Results indicate that price had a positive effect on perceived quality, but a negative effect on perceived value and willingness to buy. Favorable brand and store information positively influenced perceptions of quality and value, and subjects’ willingness to buy. The major findings are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.
To practitioner and researcher alike, consumer values play an important role in understanding behavior in the marketplace. This paper presents a model linking perceived product attributes to values.
The clothing industry holds huge potential for improvement concerning various aspects of sustainability. Although consumer attitudes towards sustainable products and services, both in general and specifically in clothing, have grown more and more favourable in the past years, the market share of clothing produced in environmentally friendly and socially responsible ways is still lagging behind. This article empirically investigates this phenomenon, known as the attitude-behaviour gap, in the context of sustainable clothing. Based on a large sample of female German consumers, a structural equation model is estimated to assess the magnitude of the attitude-behaviour gap and the impact of possible enablers of, and barriers to, sustainable clothing purchase behaviour. The value-attitude-behaviour hierarchy is used as a theoretical framework, augmented by further psychographic constructs hypothesised to influence behaviour. Apart from a considerable attitude-behaviour gap, the article indicates that a positive attitude towards social-ecological clothing standards, biospheric and altruistic values, as well as an affinity to online and catalogue shopping, enhance sustainable clothing purchases. Egoistic and hedonic values and, remarkably, a preference for durable clothing hinder sustainable clothing purchase behaviour. No significant effects of the suspected barriers – fashion consciousness and price sensitivity – have been identified. The results thus highlight the importance of changing attitudes and values towards sustainability, and of focusing on the durability of sustainable clothing and its availability via retail stores.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important part of many firms’ customer relationship management programs and can be a source of competitive advantage. Many firms have reaped competitive advantage by making CSR a central part of their corporate mission, rather than an afterthought, since this ensures sustained commitment to CSR. Sustainability can be an important CSR target for firms in the fashion industry, though the adoption of sustainability initiatives has been slower than in other industries such as food production. This article explores the reasons why fashion manufacturers and retailers have been reluctant to take action to increase the production of sustainable fashion products, and why consumers have generally been reluctant to purchase sustainable fashion products. We present an agenda for the future, which details several concrete steps for fashion manufacturers and retailers to overcome the barriers to customer adoption. The central idea is for firms in the fashion industry to recognize the long-term benefits of adopting a business model which includes CSR, and specifically sustainability, as an integral part of the corporate mission. We conclude with managerial implications.
The market for green and ethical clothing represents a less researched but challenging area, as this green product category is driven by multiple personal end-goals. A review of ethical and eco clothing literature reveals a blur of terms and concepts (Thomas 2008) and confusion about what consumers truly value in ethical clothing (Niinimäki 2010) and how values link back to product preferences (e.g. Dickson 2000). This study explores consumers’ product preferences, desired consumption outcomes, underlying personal values driving ethical/eco clothing purchase, and segmentation based on preferences related to ethical and eco clothing. The theoretical foundation is value theory (Rokeach 1973, Schwartz 1992) and means-end chain theory (Gutman 1982), recommended as a valuable research technique for sustainable consumption by Jackson (2005).
Building on the literature on green consumption, this study investigates consumers’ perceptions of a brand's green benefits (utilitarian environmental and warm glow) and green transparency on their green perceived value (GPV). In particular, this study tests the mediating role of GPV and self-brand connection on the relationships between green benefits and green transparency and brand loyalty. We used structural equation modeling to test the research model with a sample of 826 Chinese respondents. Our findings suggest that most of the hypotheses were supported. However, comparison between brands of physical goods and services indicate that the approach to develop consumers’ green value perceptions is different and that the influences of GPV and self-brand connection on brand loyalty are significantly different between these two groups of brands. Hence, it would be more effective for organizations to have diverse green branding strategies between these two groups of brands.
Using an innovative fabrication technique, eco-friendly faux leather (EFFL) has been newly developed as a green leather alternative for the Chinese and Korean markets. Value–belief–attitude logic drawn from the heuristic-systemic model (Zuckmand and Chaiken in Psychol Mark 15(7):621–642, 1998) and value–belief–norm theory (Stern et al. in Environ Behav 27(6):723–743, 1995) is proposed to explicate the consumer acceptance attitudes toward the EFFL product. The findings from the multi-group structural equation modeling analysis of online data (n = 600) support the relevancy of VBA logic in which utilitarian and hedonic value motivate pro-environmental belief, and the EFFL product attributes significantly mediate belief and positive attitude toward the EFFL product. The discrepancies across two countries and two age cohorts are noteworthy when pro-environmental belief and product-related information lead to different consumer VBA processes in specific market segments. This study presents insights which provide novel opportunities for managerial implementations and theoretical advancements in eco-friendly related subjects and issues.
Driven by more demanding customers, global competition, and slow-growth economies and industries, many organizations search for new ways to achieve and retain a competitive advantage. Past attempts have largely looked internally within the organization for improvement, such as reflected by quality management, reengineering, downsizing, and restructuring. The next major source for competitive advantage likely will come from more outward orientation toward customers, as indicated by the many calls for organizations to compete on superior customer value delivery. Although the reasons for these calls are sound, what are the implications for managing organizations in the next decade and beyond? This article addresses this question. It presents frameworks for thinking about customer value, customer value learning, and the related skills that managers will need to create and implement superior customer value strategies.
Understanding communication processes is the goal of most communication researchers. Rarely are we satisfied merely ascertaining whether messages have an effect on some outcome of focus in a specific context. Instead, we seek to understand how such effects come to be. What kinds of causal sequences does exposure to a message initiate? What are the causal pathways through which a message exerts its effect? And what role does communication play in the transmission of the effects of other variables over time and space? Numerous communication models attempt to describe the mechanism through which messages or other communication-related variables transmit their effects or intervene between two other variables in a causal model. The communication literature is replete with tests of such models. Over the years, methods used to test such process models have grown in sophistication. An example includes the rise of structural equation modeling (SEM), which allows investigators to examine how well a process model that links some focal variable X to some outcome Y through one or more intervening pathways fits the observed data. Yet frequently, the analytical choices communication researchers make when testing intervening variables models are out of step with advances made in the statistical methods literature. My goal here is to update the field on some of these new advances. While at it, I challenge some conventional wisdom and nudge the field toward a more modern way of thinking about the analysis of intervening variable effects.
This article develops a conceptual framework for advancing theories of environ- mentally significant individual behavior and reports on the attempts of the author's research group and others to develop such a theory. It discusses defini- tions of environmentally significant behavior; classifies the behaviors and their causes; assesses theories of environmentalism, focusing especially on value-belief-norm theory; evaluates the relationship between environmental concern and behavior; and summarizes evidence on the factors that determine environmentally significant behaviors and that can effectively alter them. The article concludes by presenting some major propositions supported by available research and some principles for guiding future research and informing the design of behavioral programs for environmental protection. Recent developments in theory and research give hope for building the under- standing needed to effectively alter human behaviors that contribute to environ- mental problems. This article develops a conceptual framework for the theory of environmentally significant individual behavior, reports on developments toward such a theory, and addresses five issues critical to building a theory that can inform efforts to promote proenvironmental behavior.
In the face of marketp ace polls that attest to the increasing influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on consumers' purchase behavior, this article examines when, how, and for whom specific CSR initiatives work. The findings implicate both company-specific factors, such as the CSR issues a company chooses to focus on and the quality of its products, and individual-specific factors, such as consumers' personal support for the CSR issues and their general beliefs about CSR, as key moderators of consumers' responses to CSR. The results also highlight the mediating role of consumers' perceptions of congruence between their own characters and that of the company in their reactions to its CSR initiatives. More specifically, the authors find that CSR initiatives can, under certain conditions, decrease consumers' intentions to buy a company's products.
Through the 1960s and early 1970s, Schlitz beer was a strong number-two beer brand supported by the well regarded gusto campaigns, such as the “You only go around once in life—so grab all the gusto you can.” In the mid-1970s, Schlitz converted to a fermentation process that took four days instead of 12 and substituted corn syrup for barley malt to gain a strategic cost advantage. The result was a beer that became flat or cloudy after time on the store shelf; Schlitz developed an image of being a “green” beer with “cheap” ingredients.
This study presents and examines a model of the determinants of green consumption behaviour. Specifically, it examines the characteristics of altruism, risk aversion, environmental concern, price consciousness, knowledge, ethnocentrism, locus of control, attitudes, involvement and income and their relationship with behavioural intentions and actions. It is the first study to examine the effects of ethnocentrism on green intentions and behaviours. LISREL was used to test the hypothesised relationships based on survey data. Findings revealed that green intentions were significantly influenced by ethnocentrism, environmental concern, involvement and attitudes. Similarly, while involvement and environmental concern were significant in the determination of green behaviours, risk aversion also emerged as a notable variable. These findings are of practical value to marketers of green products, allowing them to determine factors that influence consumer ecological intentions and design marketing initiatives to address these requirements accordingly.
Discusses the contributions that the means-end chain research model (the linking of attributes to consequences and to personal values) can make to creating images for products/services. Once researchers understand the types of cognitive representations that consumers have for particular products, the linkages between the personal lives of the consumers and those products can be exploited to maximize the product's image. Researchers must also tap into consumers' networks of meaning and identify common images that different consumers may hold about particular products. The components of the advertising strategy must then be coordinated with the levels of the means-end chain. These levels are driving force, leverage point, executional framework, consumer benefit, and message elements. This model allows for the creation of advertising that identifies important aspects of self and relates these to consequences associated with product use and, in turn, with key product attributes that produce these consequences. This model is applied to airlines to determine their consumer image. Hierarchical-value-structure maps are constructed to indicate the importance of certain descriptors. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article describes and presents initial empirical tests of a theory that links values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior within a preference construction framework that emphasizes the activation of personal environmental norms. Environmental concern is related to egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric value orientations and also to beliefs about the consequences of environmental changes for valued objects. Two studies generally support the hypothesized relationships and demonstrate links to the broader theory of values. However, the biospheric value orientation postulated in the theoretical literature on environmentalism does not differentiate from social-altruism in a general population sample. Results are discussed in terms of value change, the role of social structural factors (including gender) in environmentalism, theories of risk perception, and the mobilization strategies of social movements, including environmental justice movements.
Resources, Conservation and Recycling j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / r e s c o n r e c a b s t r a c t To reduce the amount of waste entering landfills, policymakers and governments have implemented various recycling and waste reduction programs such as source reduction, curbside recycling and drop-off recycling programs. The success of a recycling program largely depends on household participation and sorting activities. A better understanding of recycling behavior will help us aid the design and improve the effectiveness of recycling policies. This paper studies the profile of people who utilize drop-off recycling sites and analyzes the factors influencing their site usage. The results show that the usage of drop-off recycling sites is influenced by demographic factors such as age, education, income and household size. Attitudinal factors are also found to affect site usage. Recyclers tend to use the drop-off sites more when they feel that recycling is a convenient activity and when they are more familiar with the sites.
This article provides researchers with a guide to properly construe and conduct analyses of conditional indirect effects, commonly known as moderated mediation effects. We disentangle conflicting definitions of moderated mediation and describe approaches for estimating and testing a variety of hypotheses involving conditional indirect effects. We introduce standard errors for hypothesis testing and construction of confidence intervals in large samples but advocate that researchers use bootstrapping whenever possible. We also describe methods for probing significant conditional indirect effects by employing direct extensions of the simple slopes method and Johnson-Neyman technique for probing significant interactions. Finally, we provide an SPSS macro to facilitate the implementation of the recommended asymptotic and bootstrapping methods. We illustrate the application of these methods with an example drawn from the Michigan Study of Adolescent Life Transitions, showing that the indirect effect of intrinsic student interest on mathematics performance through teacher perceptions of talent is moderated by student math self-concept.
PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling
- A F Hayes
Hayes, A. F. (2012). PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed
variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling. In:
University of Kansas, KS.