The effect of Green Advertising on Customer Engagement
Behavior intentions
The moderating roles of perceived quality, perceived pro-‐social behavior and environmental involvement
Hans Langedijk
The effect of Green Advertising on Customer Engagement Behavior intentions
The moderating roles of perceived quality, perceived pro-‐social behavior and environmental involvement
Master Thesis June 2012 Author Hans Langedijk Student Number; 1905104
Eikenlaan 214, 9741 EV Groningen hanslangedijk@gmail.com
+31 (0) 613963447
Supervisors
Prof. Dr. J.C. Hoekstra (1st)
E.L.E. de Vries, MSc (2nd)
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Businesses, Department of Marketing
Abstract
This research examines how green advertisements can influence customers’ engagement behavior intentions. Hypotheses based on salience literature are developed and tested in an online experiment. One group considered a green ad that emphasized on the environment that included an environmental certificate and environmentally friendly words. Another group considered a non-‐green appeal that included a regular tourism logo and without environmentally friendly words. Further, the consumers’ environmental involvement, perceived quality and the pro-‐social benefits of the service are measured. After cleaning the data, the analysis was performed on 423 respondents. These respondents mainly consisted out of students.
The main finding concludes that green advertising has a negative impact on customer engagement behavioral (CEB) intentions. The main explanations for this are the declining interest of consumers in overall environmental protection and the perceived overload of green messages, which result in less engaged consumers. Pro-‐social benefits have a positive direct influence on the willingness to engage in CEB. Consumers are motivated to express and present themselves in a socially desirable way. Consuming green services facilitates this goal. Contrary to earlier findings, however, no evidence is found that perceived service quality and environmental involvement have a moderating effect on CEB-‐intentions.
Keywords: Customer engagement behavior, environmental sustainability, green marketing, green advertising, service, tourism, pro-‐social benefits.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 6
1.1. The necessity of having a green image 6
1.2. Introduction to the dependent variable: Customer Engagement Behavior 6
1.3. Green Tourism 8
1.4. Problem Statement 9
1.5. Relevance 9
1.6. Structure 10
2. Impact of Green Marketing on Consumer Behavior 11
2.1. Environmental Sustainability 11
2.2. Effect of Green Marketing on Consumer Behavior 12 2.3. Effect of Green Advertising on Consumer Behavior 15
2.4. Customer Engagement Behavior 17
2.5. Conclusion 19
3. Impact of Green Advertising on Customer Engagement Behavior 20
3.1. Conceptual Model 20
3.2. Hypotheses 21
4. Research Design 27
4.1. Sample and Sampling Technique 27
4.2. Data Collection Method 28
4.3. Manipulation of the Independent Variable 29
4.4. Measurement 29
4.5. Data Analysis 34
5. Results 38
5.1. Data Characteristics & Descriptive Statistics 38
5.2. Hypotheses Testing 38
5.3. Conclusion 41
6. Discussion 42
6.1. Summary and Discussion of Findings 42
6.2. Implications 44
6.3. Research Limitations and Future Research 44
6.4. Conclusion 45
References 46
A. Email 52
B. Dutch Survey and Manipulated Advertisements 53
Definitions & Abbreviations
Definitions
Blogging
A social and networking process that includes links and comments regarding previous posted content.
Co-‐creation
A concept that includes consumers’ collaboration with businesses or other consumers to create some kind of value.
Customer engagement behavior
The customers behavioral manifestation toward a brand or business, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers such as word-‐of-‐ mouth, recommendations, willingness to help other customers, writing a blog, co-‐creation, and providing customer ratings.
Ecotourism
Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the wellbeing of local people.
Environmental involvement
Affect or the emotion associated with beliefs about environmental protection.
Green advertising
Advertising a product or service with environmental sustainable claims.
Perceived quality
Opinion of consumers of the ability to fulfill the consumers’ expectations.
Pro-‐social benefits
Consumers’ perceptions that a product or service help the society and
thus capture the social dimension of consumers’ choice.
Word of Mouth
The passing of information from person to person by oral communication.
Abbreviations
ANOVA Analysis of variance
CEB Customer engagement behavior e.g. For example
et al. And others
i.e. That means, in other words
M Mean
Sig. Significant
1. Introduction
The request for environmental sustainable products and services has increased globally with the continuous rise in consumer fear about climate change. Environmental consciousness has evolved into a societal norm, as both consumers and businesses aim to accept responsibility for the consequences of consumption (Rundle-‐Thiele, et al. 2008). Despite the economic downturn, two-‐third of the consumers consider the importance of businesses with good environmental records (Ferguson & Goldman, 2010; Laroche et al., 2001). Businesses respond to this growing consciousness by developing and communicating products and services that appeal to consumers’ norms and values. These products and services can benefit society while fulfilling the business’ objectives of achieving long-‐term profitable growth (Luchs et al., 2010) and create a sustainable competitive advantage (Laroche et al., 2001). However, sales of green products and services have still not reflected the level of environmental concern (Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2006). Some even reveal a declining interest of consumers in overall environmental protection (Gupta & Ogden, 2009).
1.1. The necessity of having a green image
Businesses increasingly recognize that sustainability factors drive profitability and use environmental issues as an additional promotional dimension (Ghosh, 2011; Mascaranhas, 2009; Peattie & Crane, 2005). Consumption is connected to the communication of social messages, with aspirations and ideals that touch on important aspects of human existence. Every misjudgment or miscalculation related to environmental sustainability can create serious damage on how citizens judge a business (Mascaranhas, 2009). A positive image and way of communication regarding the environment is crucial for a business’ existence. It is a great challenge to get consumers engaged and to act in an environmentally responsible manner. Environmental problems still do not directly impact individuals. However, it does affect society, others, and the planet (Konrad et al., 2012).
production or delivery of the service (Pervan & Bove, 2011). The customer participation behavior is referred to as customer voluntary performance (Bettencourt, 1997), customer citizenship behavior (Groth, 2005), customer helping behavior (Johnson & Rapp, 2010) and customer engagement behavior (Van Doorn et al., 2010). This engagement behavior shares customer characteristics of performing voluntary behavior, without the expectation of getting any reward, in order to improve products and services and promote the effective functioning of organizations (Groth, 2005). As the importance of becoming environmentally sustainable is evident (Mascaranhas, 2009), getting customers engaged in environmental sustainability is truly worthwhile. A success story in that sense is Proctor and Gamble (P&G). In 2005, P&G became partner with a non-‐profit organization: the Alliance to Save Energy (ASE). In a green marketing campaign they spread news about the money-‐saving benefits of laundering clothes in cold water with specially formulated ‘Tide Coldwater’. ASE showed promotions that encouraged consumers to register on the website ‘Tide.com’ so that they would receive a free sample. Consumers could learn other energy-‐saving laundry tips, calculate how much money they could save, recommend the website to friends, and even track how friends recommended their friends and formed an engaging map. In two months, more than one million Americans accepted the ‘Coldwater Challenge’ and recommendations via email, video or written-‐reviews went through, up to ten times in all states and more than 33.000 zip-‐codes (Tide Press Release, 2005).
the non-‐buying customer, because they understand that they have to manage consequences of non-‐buying behavior like positive and negative comments on the Internet (Verhoef et al., 2010). These businesses try to establish a responsible image, because the majority of consumers understand the importance of (environmental) sustainable behavior. Communicate clearly about environmental advantages will help businesses to survive heavy price competition (Kassarjian, 1971). Hence, by communicating an environmental message a proper image can be created. At present, businesses become aware of the importance of green advertising, after a downfall in green advertising claims in the past 10 years (Hartman & Apaolaza-‐Ibanez, 2009). Many large businesses are again stressing their involvement with the environment.
Research on green advertising has focused mainly on consumer behavior, where buying behavior predominates (Chan et al., 2006; D’Souza & Taghian, 2005; Hartman & Apaolaza-‐ Ibanez, 2009; Haytko & Matulich, 2008; Leonidou et al., 2011; Shrum et al., 1995). In this research, green advertising is discussed with the aim of pointing out the effect on customer engagement behavior. In the scope of this research, green advertising is understood as advertising a product or service with environmental sustainable claims.
1.3. Green Tourism
of environmental claims should be even more apparent for a service when compared with a product.
1.4. Problem Statement
The purpose of this research is to investigate whether green advertising increases the engagement of customers in a service context. The main question is:
“How does green advertising influence customer engagement behavioral intentions?”
A related sub question is: ‘which factors limit or drive this relationship?’. The research question is tested in the light of green tourism, because consumers especially rely on components of customer engagement behavior (CEB) when it concerns such service (Lee et al., 2010). For example, it is often more difficult to estimate the quality of a holiday destination beforehand, compared to a physical product. People often rely on others experiences by visiting websites like ‘hostelworld’ and ‘tripadvisor’ to decide upon a booking. The behavioral manifestations of CEB, other than purchases, could be both positive (i.e., posting a positive message on a blog) and negative (i.e., organizing public actions against a business). This study only focuses on positive CEB.
1.5. Relevance
This research is managerially-‐, scientifically-‐, and socially relevant. First, it is practically relevant for management that wants to increase the engagement of customers and seeks for ways to realize this. Second, a major barrier to adopt green applications is that managers do not recognize the importance of environmental sustainability. They are only interested in improving areas where there are demonstrable consequences (Penny, 2007). Third, it is relevant for advertisers who want to understand the importance of green content and cues in ads. Fourth, CEB stimulates buying behavior (Kumar et al., 2010; Verhoef et al., 2010), while this might seem clear, less is known about the behavioral processes that drive these outcomes (Goldenberg, et al., 2001). For example, Berger and Schwartz (2011) indicated that less is known about why consumers talk or how marketing campaigns can generate more WOM.
benefits and environmental involvement are taken into account. Further, the way in which services should be advertised remains a relatively unexplored research area (Tripp, 1997).
Third, this research is relevant for society because it is important to evaluate the status of society with respect to environmental involvement, and the public opinion about measures to increase awareness for a sustainable society like green advertisements.
1.6. Structure
2. Impact of Green Marketing on Consumer Behavior
This chapter brings together concepts and theories about environmental sustainability as a driving force of green marketing in section 2.1. The effect of green marketing on consumer behavior is discussed in section 2.2, followed by the effect of green advertising on consumer behavior in section 2.3. Last, customer engagement behavior (CEB) is introduced in section 2.4.
2.1. Environmental Sustainability
Sustainability concerns whether this generation can leave future generations with the same basket of resources that is present now. Sustainability refers to social-‐ and environmental responsibility, ranging from issues of human rights to conservation of natural resources (Fenwick, 2007). Sustainability could be divided in two types: environmental and social sustainability. Environmental sustainability involves the protection of the environment, nature, and prevention of waste and pollution (Goodland, 1995). Social sustainability is out of scope for this research, because the environment has become a major constraint on human progress and environmental sustainability is always a prerequisite of social sustainability. Social sustainability needs a total different research approach. It encompasses human rights, labor rights and corporate governance, therefore it is out of scope for this research. With regard to marketing, businesses and their marketers have operated on the assumption of an endless supply of resources. Once society began to acknowledge resource limitations and externality costs, traditional marketing reinvent its practices to be environmentally sustainable (Kotler, 2011). Environmental sustainability is the driving force of green marketing.
2.2. Effect of Green Marketing on Consumer Behavior
Green marketing is used as a synonym for terms like ecological marketing, environmental marketing and responsible marketing. Environmental sustainability is the main reason why green marketing is executed (Choi & Ng, 2011). Green marketing examines environmental concerns within the discipline of marketing (Crane, 2000). It tries to prevent consumers from buying non-‐green, mostly environmentally damaging products. Green marketing consists of all activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchange intended to satisfy human needs and wants, such that the satisfaction of these needs and wants occur with minimal detrimental impact on the natural environment (Polonsky, 2011). The two objectives of green marketing are: improving the environmental quality and satisfy customers (Ghosh, 2011). The challenge of green marketing is to meet the unlimited desires of consumers within the constraint of limited resources (Ghosh, 2011).
There is now a growing recognition that green marketing strategies gain better customer endorsement and therefore contribute to long-‐term profits (Sharma et al., 2010). Other articles also recognize the importance of green marketing and their effect on consumer behavior. These studies analyze different effects of green marketing on the effectiveness of: green ads (Chan et al., 2006), purchase intentions and actual buying behavior (Choi & Ng, 2011; Gupta & Ogden, 2009; Mohr & Web, 2005; Picket-‐Baker & Ozaki, 2008; Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2006), and willingness-‐to-‐pay (Van Doorn & Verhoef, 2011). Table 1 gives an overview of these and other studies and their most relevant findings. However, the scope and the number of the current literature in this field are much broader than it can be presented here.
Table 1: Overview of Studies analyzing the effect of Green Concepts on Consumer Behavior Authors Independent
Variable
Dependent Variable Moderators Main Relevant Findings Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001. Product quality information Purchase intention Business evaluation
General beliefs about environmental-‐ and social responsibility and consumers’ personal support for environmental-‐ and social responsibility.
Environmental-‐ and social responsibility initiatives can, under certain conditions, decrease purchase intentions. Consumers’ business evaluations are more sensitive to negative than positive environmental-‐ and social responsibility.
Mohr & Web, 2005. Corporate Social Responsibility Business evaluation Purchase intention Social responsible consumer behavior, price
High environmental-‐ and social responsibility has a positive impact on evaluation of the business and purchase intent.
Chan et al.,
2006.
Different types of green ads
Effectiveness of green ads
Involvement Green ads enhance communication
effectiveness. For high-‐involvement services, green ads generate more favorable attitudinal responses. Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2006. Perceived ecological performance Brand attitude Purchase intention
Environmental label Positive relation between perceived ecological performance and brand attitude.
Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2008.
Environmental information
Brand attitude Purchase frequency, involvement, and product category.
Individual's knowledge about environmental benefits of the brand is relevant when forming attitudes, only if the brand has a high-‐purchase frequency and is a high-‐involvement product. Pickett-‐Baker
& Ozaki, 2008.
Green products Buying behavior
Product preference
Individual-‐ and socio-‐ economic
characteristics, corporate reputation, and WOM.
The strength of environmental beliefs affects the faith in a product.
Green products are judged based on previous experience and WOM.
Gupta &
Ogden, 2009.
Green products Buying behavior Social value orientation
Individual social value orientation (e.g. trust, in-‐ group identity, expectation of others) differs between non-‐ and green buyers.
Hartman & Apaolaza-‐ Ibanez, 2009. Green advertising Brand attitude Brand image
Content of ad
Nature imagery cues
Nature imagery in green ads increase green brand attitude. Green brand attitude positively affect brand image.
Lee et al., 2010. Green tourism (cognitive-‐ and affective image) Word-‐of-‐Mouth
Willingness to pay
Revisit intention
/ Green tourism overall image favorably enhance behavioral intentions, like WOM, WTP and revisit intentions.
Luchs et al.,
2010. Sustainable products Buying behavior Product preference
Product type (strong or gentle)
When attributes related to strength are valued, preference for sustainable products decreases. When attributes related to gentleness are valued, preference for sustainable products increases.
Chang, 2011. Strength of green claims
Attitude
Brand Attitude Ad believability
Green claim believability
ambivalence Choi & Ng, 2011. Environmental sustainability Economic sustainability Business evaluation Purchase intention
/ Consumers respond more negatively to business’ poor commitment to caring for the environment than to the business’ poor commitment to economic sustainability. Lee et al.,
2011.
Green tourism Word-‐of-‐Mouth intentions
Visit intentions
/ Expected outcomes of green tourism like environmental protection, eco-‐friendly practices, eco-‐friendly facilities and organic foods have a positive relation with word-‐of-‐ mouth intentions and visit intentions. Van Doorn &
Verhoef, 2011.
Organic food Willingness to pay Product type (vice or virtue), quality, pro-‐ social product benefits
Vice food with organic claim is associated with lower quality, and lower WTP. Virtue food with organic claim increased WTP.
Konrad et al., 2012.
Assertive green requests
Environmental compliance
Perceived importance When message receivers perceive an environmental issue as important, they are affected more by assertive than non-‐assertive phrasing and are more willing to comply with the message.
White et al., 2012.
Ethical products Consumer intentions Buying behavior Product type (indulgence or necessity), justice sensitivity, and need.
Strong ethical purchase intentions emerge, when people are aware of great need and believe that the opportunity to restore justice exists.
Consumers avoid ethical products under conditions of low justice sensitivity and no info about the justice sensitivity is presented.
The research presented in table 1 indicates a significant main effect of green marketing concepts (like green requests, green tourism and green advertising) on consumer behavior (e.g. willingness-‐to-‐pay, purchase intentions, buying behavior, brand attitude: Mohr & Web, 2005; Chan et al., 2006; Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2006; Pickett-‐Baker & Ozaki, 2008; Hartman & Apaolaza-‐ Ibanez, 2009; Lee et al., 2010; Luchs et al., 2010; Choi & Ng, 2011; Lee et al., 2011).
frequency (Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2008) environmental beliefs (Picket-‐Baker & Ozaki, 2008), opportunity to restore justice (White et al., 2012), personal characteristics (Gupta & Ogden, 2009), involvement (Chan et al., 2006; Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2008), pro-‐social behavior (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Mohr & Web, 2005; Picket-‐Baker et al., 2008; Gupta & Ogden, 2009) and communication characteristics like believability of the ad (Chang, 2011).
2.3. Effect of Green Advertising on Consumer Behavior
Green marketing is expressed as green applications to a range of traditional marketing topics: advertising and promotion, purchase intention, consumer behavior and market strategy (Choi & Ng, 2011; Ghosh, 2011; Polonsky, 2011). Green advertising reflects the business’ level of greenness. On average, there is a clear environmental substance (e.g. green operations and green product packaging) behind green advertising (Karna et al., 2001; Leonidou et al., 2011). Green advertising is an important concept because of several reasons. First, it is a good strategic move to build up a responsible image. Second, green advertising helps to distinguish one business from competitors (Ghosh, 2011). Third, consumers’ attitudes are changing because of their environmental concerns. Green advertising is therefore a motivational factor for consumers (Pickett-‐Baker & Ozaki, 2008). On average, businesses increased their spending on green advertising the last 20 years and is the driving force behind increasing public awareness of ecological issues (Leonidou et al., 2011). Green advertising shifts gradually from a business-‐to-‐ business perspective towards a business-‐to-‐consumer perspective. Leonidou et al. (2011) stress the growing importance of environmental marketing in consumer markets. Green advertisements promote products, services or a business’ ability to reduce environmental harm in order to create awareness and create strong attitudes and behavior towards brands and businesses (D’Souza & Taghian, 2005). Indeed, the successful creation of a green image is not possible when the benefits of green products and services are not effectively communicated (Pickett et al., 1995). There are several types of green ads. First, those that directly or indirectly address the relationship between the product or service and the natural environment. Second, promoting environmentally responsible lifestyles with highlighting a product or service. Third, those that presents an image or corporate environmental responsibility (Leonidou et al., 2011).
advertising. It can be categorized in three groups. First, ambiguity regarding statements that are too broad to have a clear meaning. Second, exclusion of important information and therefore no proper evaluation can be made. Third, communicating misleading or untrue claims (Leonidou et al., 2011). Therefore, the credibility of the message is controlled in this research.
2.4. Customer Engagement Behavior
Customer engagement behavior (CEB) differs from consumer behavior and has some comparisons with brand engagement. CEB is different from consumer behavior because it reflects the totality of consumers’ decisions with respect to the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of products, services, activities and ideas by human decision-‐making units over time (Hoyer & MacInnis, 2007). Consumer behavior is product-‐related, whereas CEB is non-‐product-‐ related. CEB involves expressions initiated by consumers because of their experiences towards the different consumer behavior stages. This could result in non-‐product-‐related actions like WOM, providing ratings, blogging, etc. Customer brand engagement involves immersion (being focused on), passion (being fanatic about), and being active (willing to spend time and effort interacting with the brand) (Hollebeek, 2011). These components are comparable with the customer consequences in the CEB-‐model presented by Van Doorn et al. (2010).
Engagement is currently seen as a driving force behind postmodern consumer behavior (Gambetti & Graffigna, 2010). It is an ongoing emotional, cognitive and behavioral activation state of individuals (Wefald & Downey, 2009). In academic marketing, engagement is defined to be related to involvement (Sawhney et al., 2005), commitment (Alloza, 2008) and loyalty (Kerr, 2009). Engaged consumers exhibit enhanced consumer loyalty, satisfaction, empowerment, connection, emotional bonding, trust and commitment (Brodie et al., 2011). Especially Wefald and Downey (2009) point out the strong relation between engagement and satisfaction. According to Van Doorn et al. (2010), customer engagement behavior (CEB) is “customers
behavioral manifestation toward a brand or business, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers such as word-‐of-‐mouth (WOM), recommendations, willing to help other customers, writing a blog, co-‐creation, and providing customer ratings”. Positive CEB is seen as a
the service at every opportunity. Levels three to five are identified as being engaged customers (Roberts and Alpert, 2010).
This engagement behavior is different from attitudes. In research this is a widely acknowledged gap between articulated positive attitudes toward sustainability and consumers’ actual (mostly unsustainable) behavior (Gupta & Ogden, 2009; Prothero, et al. 2011; White et al., 2012). Consumers often engage in activities like WOM and giving recommendations, because they desire social interaction, earn something with it, concern for other consumers, and enhancing their self-‐esteem. Kumar et al. (2010) find the definition of customer engagement incomplete without the inclusion of purchases, because a purchase is a behavioral manifestation that can result from similar motivational drivers. There is some disagreement, what CEB involves. The line of arguments by Van Doorn et al. (2010) is followed. They argue that customer engagement involves behavior that goes beyond transactions. One reason for this is that many researchers have focused on actual buying behavior instead of engagement behavior. CEB is therefore underexposed in current literature. Another reason is that CEB is a necessity to stimulate buying behavior (Kumar et al., 2010; Verhoef et al., 2010). Customer engagement includes behavioral manifestations of a customer with a rather indirect impact on business performance (Bijmolt et al., 2010). When the expression of positive WOM is taken into account, customers are almost always more valuable to a business (Kumar et al., 2010). CEB positively or negatively influence future purchase intentions (Kumar et al., 2010; Verhoef et al., 2010; Ahearne, 2005). For a business, it has financial consequences because of referral behaviors, and also reputational consequences, like participation in brand communities, supporting events related to the brand and providing feedback (Van Doorn et al., 2010).
2.5. Conclusion
Conclusively, this chapter started explaining the role of environmental sustainability as a prerequisite for green marketing and advertising. There is a significant main effect of green marketing concepts (like green requests, green tourism and green advertising) on consumer behavior (e.g. willingness-‐to-‐pay, purchase intentions, buying behavior, brand attitude). It is assumed to be the same for customer engagement behavior, which is seen as a necessity for
3. Impact of Green Advertising on Customer Engagement Behavior
This chapter gives an overview of the conceptual model in section 3.1 and describes the variables. Section 3.2 underpins the effect of green advertisements on customer engagement behavior (CEB), followed by explaining the effect of the moderators – perceived service quality, pro-‐social benefits and environmental involvement – on the main relation in section 3.3.3.1. Conceptual Model
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the link between green advertising and CEB has never been investigated. Recent studies primarily investigated the effect of green marketing and advertising on consumer behavior (Gupta & Ogden, 2009; Luchs et al., 2010; Picket-‐Baker & Ozaki, 2008; White et al., 2012). Green advertising does affect consumer behavior in multiple ways. Research focused on the effect of green ads on (brand) attitudes (Hartman & Apoalaza-‐ Ibanez, 2009; Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2006; Haytko & Matulich, 2008), and involvement (Chan et al., 2006). But the relation between green advertising and CEB should be further clarified. Is green advertising an antecedent of CEB? The conceptual model incorporating the independent, dependent, moderating and control variables is presented in figure 1 and subsequently described in more detail.
Figure 1 – Conceptual Model
Customer Engagement Behavior
CEB consists of WOM, co-‐creation, blogging and providing customer ratings. First, WOM is a key behavioral outcome of an individuals’ identification with an organization (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2004). WOM is one of the most powerful forces in the marketplace because consumers primarily rely on informal and personal communication sources. Respondents have expressed the intentions to encourage friends, to suggest a service, etc. (Maxham & Netemeyer, 2002; Lee et al., 2011). Second, co-‐creation happens when customers are willing to share, combine and renew information about services and products in order to create more value. Respondents
Green advertisement CEB-‐intentions
Perceived quality Perceived pro-‐social benefits
Environmental-‐involvement
have expressed the willingness to get involved with marketing, service care and new service development (Zhang & Chen, 2008). Third, intrinsic motivations drive the intention to blog. Bloggers who voluntary blog, like to use it to present themselves, to manage relationships, keep up with trends, share expertise, for entertainment and to show off (Lee et al., 2008). The blog intention is investigated by the extent to which a user is willing to blog about the subject that is under investigation (Hsu & Lin, 2008). Lastly, the willingness to provide feedback on websites like ‘hostelworld’ is an example of CEB. Consumers especially focus on ratings provided by other consumers. Respondents have expressed their willingness to provide feedback (Paine, 2007).
Control Variables
3.2. Hypotheses
Roberts and Alpert (2010) linked the consumer loyalty ladder (Das Narayandas, 2005) with marketing actions like advertising. They indicate that advertising is mediated by customer experience that eventually leads to advocacy. Advocacy aims to influence the public and corresponds with the engagement in CEB elements like WOM. By consistently communicating a value proposition in advertisements, customers can become engaged (Roberts & Alpert, 2010). Indeed, products and services that receive more publicity and are top of mind, receive more attention and consumers talk more about them (Berger & Schwartz, 2011). So, ads can help to increase WOM (Mangold et al., 1999; Graham & Havlena, 2007) because being visible for the public shapes immediate and ongoing WOM (Berger & Schwartz, 2011). Additionally, ads affect the valence and helpfulness of WOM, by influencing consumers’ attitudes (Mangold et al., 1999). Keller and Fay (2009) found that at least twenty percent of WOM occurs because of advertising. The ones that are influenced by advertisements are more likely to perform WOM-‐ recommendations to buy or try a product when compared with other WOM discussions. Another component of CEB, blogging, has been emphasized as a critical tool to initiate and manage engagement behavior in corporate communications (Paine, 2007). It gives the impression that a business is not avoiding the discussion of an incident in question. Kozinets et al. (2010) researched 83 blogs for six months and identified the linear marketer influence model. Because of the use of traditional advertising and promotion methods, this stage is referred to as a model of linear influence. According to this model, marketers actively try to influence consumers by using advertising and promotions in order to stimulate them to talk with other consumers on blogs or through WOM. When consumers are enthusiastic and motivated about an advertisement, the willingness to engage in CEB is likely to increase, especially when the product or service can easily be distinguished from others.
branch indicated that without prior experience of staying at green hotels, consumers still form a willingness to visit green hotels and engage in WOM (Lee, 2011). This willingness, in the absence of experience, may be the result of increased awareness because of green ads. Lee (2011) stresses the importance of increasing engagement by conducting ongoing green campaigns highlighting environmental protection. If the customer’s goals are aligned with the advertisement goals, then CEB should have positive overall impact. The CEB-‐intentions is hypothesized to be stronger for a green ad compared to a non-‐green advertisement. Based on these findings, the main relation between green advertisements and CEB per se is hypothesized to be positive. Thus,
H1 Green advertising positively affects customer engagement behavior.
It is assumed that the strength of the relationship between green advertising and CEB is moderated by three variables: perceived service quality, perceived pro-‐social benefits and environmental involvement.
Perceived Service Quality
Behavioral researchers argue that consumers often rely on extrinsic cues to evaluate products and services with which they are not familiar (Chan et al., 2006). Extrinsic cues are for example quality, price and performance. Quality (61 percent) and price (52 percent) are the two main factors impacting managers in their actions or lack of improving the environment (Mandese, 2010). Consumers’ attitudes are less likely to compromise on quality than on somewhat higher prices of green products (Sen & Bhattacharya 2001).
Perceived quality is the opinion of consumers regarding the ability to fulfill in the consumers’ expectations. It is based on a business’ public image and consumers’ experience, influence of opinion leaders and pear groups (Dale et al., 2010). In a service context, perceived quality drives WOM (Hartline & Jones, 1996). This can be explained by the fact that high service quality builds up trust, which is important to differentiate from competitors, and eventually lead to increased commitment (Chenet et al., 2010).
quality standards, such as convenience, availability, price and performance. Green products and services must match up with those quality standards in order to be considered by the majority of consumers. However, recent endeavors have not really succeeded. Green substitutes are often perceived to suffer from poor quality and to be more expensive (Ottman, 1998; Teisl et al., 2009). When quality is perceived to be high, positive environmental-‐ and social responsibility can even lower purchase intentions (Sen & Bhattacharya 2001). When a positive ad is incongruent with prior perceptions and experience, the strength of the positive appeal can even lead to larger declines in perceptions (Teisl et al., 2009). Van Doorn and Verhoef (2011) indicated the moderating effect of perceived quality, on the effect of organic food claims on the willingness-‐to-‐pay. They found that organic food claims are associated with lower perceived quality. In a service context, a customer might want to warn another customer because it perceives an insufficient quality level. For example the holiday is centered on ‘saving energy’ instead of pleasing the customers’ desires. When consumers believe green services suffer from poor perceived quality, it is likely that they are less willing to engage in CEB. Therefore,
H2 The effect of green advertising on positive customer engagement behavior is weakened
when the perceived quality of the advertised service is low.
Perceived Pro-‐Social Benefits
Ethical motives of consumers, like contributing to a better environment, are the main reasons to choose for environmental sustainable products or services. Consumers often weigh their own benefits compared to social importance. This social dilemma between individual motives (e.g. quality and price) and social interests (e.g. a better environment) often occurs (Van Doorn & Verhoef, 2011). Pro-‐social benefits reflect consumers’ perceptions that a product or service help the society and thus capture the social dimension of a consumers’ choice. Van Doorn and Verhoef (2011) executed a research in the organic food market and found that green claims have a positive effect on pro-‐social benefits when it concerns vice condition (i.e. more enjoyable on the short term, but detrimental effects on the long term). They did not found evidence regarding virtue condition (less enjoyable on the short term, but better effects on the long term).
act more pro-‐socially, even when it is unrelated to the conservation of the environment. Environmentally responsible consumers are also more likely to cooperate for the collective good (Kaiser & Byrka, 2011). Such commitment also strengthens WOM (Brown et al., 2005). When a business claims that their product or service is environmentally sustainable, consumers might be persuaded to spend money because they can reduce guilt and justify a purchase and even strengthen this justification by letting other people know how environmentally sustainable they are (through CEB). In addition, consumers communicate when they have a helpful personality and achieve social status (Cheema & Kaikati, 2010). Pro-‐social benefits can induce individual consumers to engage in extra role behavior. Even when customers are not engaged with a service yet, in a shared service experience they may engage in activities like WOM, blogging and providing ratings if they perceive that other consumers in a group are performing this engagement behavior (Pervan & Bove, 2011). Thus,
H3 The effect of green advertising on positive customer engagement behavior is stronger
when the perceived pro-‐social benefits are high.
Environmental Involvement
Involvement is a motivational state that is influenced by someone’s perception of the objects’ relevance based on inherent needs, values and interests (Day et al., 1995). Involvement is affected by the characteristics of a consumer, stimulus and situation (Zaichkowsky, 1994). When involvement is high, consumers devote more attention to advertisements, exert greater cognitive effort to comprehend ads, focus attention on product and service related information in ads, and elaborate more on the product and service information in ads (Petty et al., 1983).
information processing (Montoro-‐Rios et al., 2008). This deep information processing is determined to be the central route to persuasion. In the central route, qualitative arguments have a greater impact on attitudes (Petty et al., 1983) and ads increase the likelihood of behavioral intentions (Kim et al., 2009). Consumers who are highly environmentally involved are intrinsically motivated to process the information towards green ads. When this environmental information is present, highly environmental involved consumers are more likely to be triggered by the information. Environmental involvement also strengthens a consumers’ green behavior (Lee, 2011). Due to habits and norms, it requires more environmental involvement for consumers to perform green behavior (Jansson et al., 2010). Further, high involvement drives the willingness to adopt green services that in turn affects the green engagement behavior (Jansson et al., 2010).
Samson (2010) emphasized that under high involvement, it is more likely that someone engages in WOM. Both situational involvement (i.e. being a recent customer) and marketplace involvement (i.e. providing information about the market) affect WOM (Samson, 2010). When a consumer perceive that an issue (e.g. environmental concern) is relevant to their personal life, they are involved to personally contextualize their own interests and values and this motivates them to engage in more consumer behavior (Lee, 2011). So it is assumed that high environmentally involved consumers are more likely to engage in CEB when confronted with green ads. Thus,
H4 The effect of green advertising on positive customer engagement behavior is stronger
4. Research Design
This chapter first describes the sampling technique and response in section 4.1, and then the structure of the experiment and data collection method is addressed in section 4.2. Section 4.3 describes the performed manipulation of the non-‐green-‐ and green advertisement. Section 4.4 gives an overview of the performed field experiment. Section 4.5 describes the reliability of the factors, validity, the intercorrelation between the factors and the appropriate regression models.
4.1. Sample and Sampling Technique
A field experiment applies the scientific method to experimentally examine an intervention in an actual market condition (Malhotra, 2007). This study conducts a field experiment in the Dutch consumer market to identify the CEB-‐intentions when confronted with non-‐green-‐ compared to green ads to quantify the conceptual model (fig. 1). A field experiment has several advantages (Malhotra, 2007). First, a realistic surrounding can be simulated. Second, it is easily distributable. Third, the experiment is conducted in a domestic context, which makes the respondent more likely to act realistic regarding the experiment rather than act to the situation, which can be the case in laboratorial design. Fourth, the external validity is high, which makes the field experiment better generalizable to the real world compared to laboratorial design. However, the limitations of the field experiment are a lack of control, low internal validity and reactive error where the respondent can act in response to some outside stimulus.
This study focuses on positive CEB only. The respondents have never seen the presented ad before and will only respond according to the presented ad. The lack of previous experience, together with the positive intentions of the ads message and picture to get the consumer involved, makes the CEB-‐intentions likely to be positive. Therefore, only the positive CEB-‐ intention is tested. Further, the study of Van Doorn et al. (2010) conceptualized CEB. One of the main reasons to take the components of CEB together is to test the conceptualization of Van Doorn et al. (2010). This study aims to come up with one scale for CEB. Therefore, no analysis is performed on for example WOM, co-‐creation or blogging individually.