The color of green product advertisements is an important factor affecting consumers’ preferences. Based on the theory of the self-control system, this paper explores the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of green product ad color on consumers’ preferences through three experiments. Experiment 1 tested the effect of advertisement color type on consumers’ preferences for green products. The results show that color ad can promote consumers’ preferences for green products compared with green ad. Experiment 1 also analyzed the mediating role of (...) the self-control system between advertisement color type and consumers’ preferences. Experiment 2 further clarified the boundary of the main effect. The effect of ad color on consumers’ preferences was only effective in the context of green products. Experiment 3 explored the moderating effect of green product type on the main effect. The results show that only when the green product type is altruistic, the ad color type can significantly affect consumers’ preferences. This study is the first to link the ad color of green products with consumers’ preferences. The findings confirm that the use of color ad for green products can elicit higher consumers’ preferences than pure green ad, which enriches the research on the color of green product advertisements. (shrink)

Sustainable products offered in today’s marketplace are labelled with product-related green attributes or non-product-related green attributes. The current research investigates consumers’ inferences about a product’s functional quality when its core attributes are green and when its peripheral attributes are green. Four experimental studies and an internal meta-analysis show that there is a sustainability liability effect in strength-dependent categories, and a sustainability asset effect in gentleness-dependent categories. Our research contributes to the current understanding of how consumers make inferences about product quality (...) when contemplating different types of green attributes. The findings have implications for how strength-dependent and gentleness-dependent products should be labelled as green. (shrink)

Understanding how packaging communication guides consumers in evaluating the environmental performance of a product is essential to promoting sustainable consumption. Previous studies suggest that while consumers are unable to verify the veracity of environmental information and the actual environmental impact of a product, they use packaging communication to evaluate packaging and product quality subjectively. However, few studies focus on the aspects of efficient and credible green marketing communication and the role of communication channels used. This situation applies, in particular, consumers (...) who have high environmental consciousness but are skeptical, as they must balance the need for reliable product knowledge with a high sensitivity to the often ambiguous references to the environmental compatibility of a product. Three experimental studies were conducted to investigate the challenges of an effective GMC using different communication channels and their combined effects on different environmentally conscious target groups. The first study investigates consumers’ responses to nonverbal packaging elements—graphical surface design and packaging material—regarding the perceived environmental friendliness of the product. The results showed that individuals with HEC tended to use packaging material to evaluate environmental friendliness and associated a package’s graphical design with greenwashing. This study contributed to the literature by expanding on the knowledge about the effects of nonverbal packaging on different types of environmentally conscious consumers and demonstrating that there are gradations in nonverbal communication channels concerning how strongly consumers are linking these channels to attempts of greenwashing. Building on these findings, in study 2, the effect of the communication channel specificity on consumers’ environmental skepticism and attention during product presentation and effects on conveying product environment was investigated. The results revealed a complex interplay between communication channel specificity and the involvement of the environmental target groups—HEC and low environmental consciousness —on consumers’ skepticism and the evaluation of environmental friendliness. Study 2 contributes to the literature by providing a framework that may be used to address how channel specificity affects the reception of the marketing message by the intended audience, the ways the marketing message is presented, and how individual perspectives and expectations are formed. Within the elaboration likelihood model, the role of both verbal and nonverbal communication channels has been tested, revealing a theory-conform demand for elaboration, which depends on consumers' environmental consciousness. That is, when environmental information is provided verbally, text-based communication channels translate it into low skepticism for both HEC and LEC consumers. However, nonverbal, pictorial communication proved to be persuasive only for LEC consumers; HEC consumers exhibited high levels of skepticism, which, in turn, decreased perceived environmental friendliness. In addition to the direct effect of the differently specific communication channels, the analysis of combined verbal and nonverbal communication channels provides promising starting points for effective GMC, which is addressed in-depth in study 3. Study 3 explored the combined effects of an associative environmental communication channel when used in conjunction with a content congruent and incongruent specific communication channel. When these effects in the two consumer groups were compared, the results showed that the use of environmental information transmitted via an associative communication channel, along with environmental information presented via a specific communication channel, reduces skepticism among HEC consumers. However, when environmental information presented through the associative communication channel is presented in isolation, HEC consumers show a high degree of skepticism; that is, HEC consumer responses to nonverbal packaging elements interacted with verbal justification contexts, which is the specific verbal information. In accordance with ELM, this suggests a joint effect of central and peripheral processing of environmental information among HEC consumers. In contrast, this joint effect of elaborated processing revealed no significant impact on LEC consumers' skepticism. The results of the three studies are relevant for marketing practitioners. Effective marketing strategies for different environmentally conscious target groups and an inclusive approach were deduced, and the implications for future research were presented. (shrink)