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Institute
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.
More sustainable food consumption and production could make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting natural resources. Nevertheless, the market shares of “green” products are still low. This cumulative dissertation aims to increase green consumption by exploring different marketing communication strategies. Article I shows that Point-of-Sale technologies such as digital signage and augmented reality can draw consumers' attention to sustainable products and increase their sales. Article II focuses on the formulation of advertisement messages and suggests that their credibility is a central driver for buying intentions. Since specifically formulated environmental benefits are perceived as particularly credible, their use is the most promising. The third article proves the effectiveness of a newly developed form of green advertisements aiming at increasing both the perceived customer orientation and environmental responsibility of a company. Article IV tests an information app to educate consumers about the sustainability of products and shows that a simple and credible 'sustainability index' is most effective in shaping behavior.