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The practical implications of this thesis are apparent for both (marketing) managers and governmental policymakers. As many companies created environmentally friendly product lines to respond to a growing group of environmentally conscious consumers, determining how these consumers react to different green advertisements is highly relevant. This study provides past research on the effects of greenwashing with a new perspective, as existing literature has focused mainly on either emotional appeals in advertisements or how people feel about greenwashing. In most cases, however, it is not necessarily apparent to consumers whether a company is greenwashing. Therefore, this study looked at whether those high in green involvement respond better to green advertisements that do not employ any

greenwashing appeals.

As Petty & Cappioco (2000) explain, consumers with higher levels of involvement are expected to respond better to explanatory arguments. Suppose this is the case with greenwashing advertisements, then this could indicate that changing people's attitude and knowledge toward and about green products could help make greenwashing less beneficial for companies, as a growing number of consumers will no longer respond to it positively.

Nevertheless, if this is not the case, government intervention may be necessary to protect consumers from this form of misleading advertising.

This study used advertisements for clothing companies, and evidence suggests that consumers who are positive towards green products respond negatively to advertisements that use green marketing slogans that are not exaggerated or meaningless. No such result is found for advertisements that use exaggerated and irrelevant appeals in their advertisements.

Moreover, strong support is found that both the green marketing and greenwashing appeals improve the attitude toward the brand by shaping the attitude toward the advertisement. This indicates that both advertisements did cause a positive effect independent of a person's environmental involvement.

34 5.2.1 Managerial implications

The findings have considerable practical implications for managers. The

greenwashing and green marketing appeals in this study positively affect brand attitude by shaping attitudes toward advertisements. Therefore, using green marketing or greenwashing appeals may help foster environmentally friendly consumption habits.

Notably, the findings of this study suggest that highly involved consumers respond negatively to advertisements that use green marketing appeals. However, this result is not found for greenwashing appeals. This indicates that greenwashing appeals may target people with no direct attachment to environmental issues and those more highly involved with environmental issues. Of course, the risk remains that some consumers may react with skepticism when confronted with greenwashing appeals.

The findings of this study imply that the use of greenwashing in advertisements may appeal to low and highly involved consumers. Hence, this study indicates that greenwashing may be a more attractive strategy than green marketing appeals, which are not deceitful, as highly involved consumers respond negatively to those advertisements. However, prior studies concluded that greenwashing could harm all green marketing activity as consumers stop trusting green advertisements overall, and therefore recommend companies should not employ greenwashing methods (Hamann & Kapelus 2004; Polonsky et al. 2010).

Nonetheless, most of these studies focused on cases in which participants perceived greenwashing (Chang 2011). Schmuck, Matthes & Naderer (2018) found that if consumers suspect greenwashing, they view a brand less positively. As the opposite effect was found in this study, and therefore it seems that participants did not notice the greenwashing.

Furthermore, the greenwashing advertisement was based on high street fashion brands; it could indicate that these forms of greenwashing go unnoticed. This does not mean, however, that this form of greenwashing is without risk.

Over the years, corporations have been increasingly held accountable for corporate social irresponsibility. Some have even faced lawsuits for greenwashing (Delmas and

Burbano 2011; Stäbler and Fischer 2020). Moreover, as previously mentioned, 42% of online green claims could qualify as unfair commercial practices under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (European Commission 2021). However, it is essential to note that to which extent an event of corporate social irresponsibility damages a company is primarily boosted by whether it is covered by the media, as by construction, unethical behavior has no consequences unless it is publicized (Stäbler and Fischer 2020). Moreover, Stäbler and

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Fischer (2020) found that positive brand news can crowd out media coverage of unethical behavior.

Even though the greenwashing appeals used in this specific advertisement focus on vague statements and meaningless images to mimic labels and therefore often are not strictly illegal. When greenwashing is perceived as such, consumers may decide to no longer

purchase products from said company. Furthermore, when consumers suspect greenwashing, they view the brand negatively, and its credibility can decrease (Akturan 2018). Additionally, after experiencing greenwashing, consumers are found to become less likely to trust any green products (Chen and Chang 2013).

Consequently, even though greenwashing appears to appeal to both consumer's high and low environmental involvement, the strategy is not as risk-free as honest green

marketing. Based on this study, a better option for managers would be creating clothing in a sustainable matter and preferably get the necessary certification, but still use slogans more similarly to those in the greenwashing advertisement as consumers respond better to those.

This way, the brand will not mislead consumers with its advertising and, therefore, will not behave unethically, so it should not damage its credibility.

5.2.2 Governmental policy implications

The findings of this study suggest that greenwashing advertisements appeal to both low and highly green involvement. Moreover, evidence is found that a higher attitude toward green products combined with the green marketing advertisement harms brand evaluation.

This might make it more attractive for companies to use these sins of greenwashing, which is often a form of misleading advertising. As advertising arguably exhibits the power to effect social change. Companies misusing advertising to spread false claims about their company's environmental impact can further harm its ability to help mitigate this crisis (Kilbourne 1995). Moreover, consumers who have previously encountered greenwashing are found to distrust green advertising overall (Chen and Chang 2013).

Therefore, to protect consumers from this harmful behavior, governments may need to intervene. One way to do so is through the creation of environmental certification. At the moment, many certificates and labels offer helpful guidance for selecting products and services that genuinely are produced more sustainably. However, the sheer number of labels available to consumers can make it hard to differentiate legitimate claims from false ones. To combat this, governments could create a unifying green label (Dahl 2010).

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Secondly, to ensure that companies become more transparent about their

environmental performance, governments should implement both punishment measures for greenwashing firms and create a multistakeholder supervision system to monitor

greenwashing (Sun and Zhang 2019). This would help lower the benefits of greenwashing and hopefully make an honest approach more attractive. Moreover, Sun and Zhang (2019) argue that governments should strengthen corporate social responsibility construction as this would increase the psychological costs of greenwashing and thereby reduce the need for government intervention in the long run.

Lastly, the media needs to report it more to ensure consumers know whether companies engage in greenwashing. Prior studies have suggested that advertisers strongly influence whether a company's greenwashing practices are covered by media (Gentzkow and Shapiro 2010; Rinallo and Basuroy 2009). Additionally, strategically launching neutral or positive brand news can crowd out the bad news. Therefore, companies may hide their corporate social irresponsibility by spreading positive brand news simultaneously (Stäbler and Fischer 2020). However, as mentioned previously, this is not risk-free, as when

greenwashing grows common, consumers are found to become skeptical of green advertising as a whole.