What is it about?
This paper examines different strategies for increasing adoption of “environmentally friendly” products. Scholars have consistently shown that consumers with strong biospheric and altruistic beliefs are more likely to purchase these products, while marketers are increasingly appealing to consumers’ self-interest in their efforts to sell their “green” products. This paper explores this divide and offers a potential explanation for it, using the concept of value activation.
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Why is it important?
This paper is one of the first of its kind to explicitly test whether advertisements designed to activate a range of human values can increase consumers’ intention to engage in pro-environmental behaviors. The two studies reveal that value-based advertisements may have a stronger effect on the organic purchasing intentions of specific demographic groups (e.g. consumers who are aged under 40, lack a college degree and do not identify as liberal).
Perspectives
While organic food clearly appeals to a wide range of different values, we seldom see retailers or manufacturers make a strong attempt to use advertisements to help consumers make that connection. Our study, which uses a rigorous experimental design, suggests that marketers should consider using such value-based advertisements to activate consumer values when marketing organic food products.
Dr. Graham D Bullock
Davidson College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Activating values to stimulate organic food purchases: can advertisements increase pro-environmental intentions?, Journal of Consumer Marketing, August 2017, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/jcm-12-2015-1643.
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