The Double-Edged Sword of Green Brand Advocates: How Motivation and Anticipated Moral Reproach Influence Purchase Intention

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Master Thesis

The Double-Edged Sword of Green

Brand Advocates: How Motivation and

Anticipated Moral Reproach Influence

Purchase Intention

Stefani Vuong

S3113655

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The Double-Edged Sword of Green Brand

Advocates: How Motivation and Anticipated

Moral Reproach Influence Purchase Intention

Author: First Supervisor: Second Supervisor:

Stefani Vuong (S3113655) Dr. J.W. Bolderdijk Dr. M. Keizer s.vuong@student.rug.nl j.w.bolderdijk@rug.nl m.keizer@rug.nl

Saturnuslaan 29 Nettelbosje 2 Nettelbosje 2 9742 EB, Groningen 9747 AE, Groningen 9747 AE, Groningen

The Netherlands The Netherlands The Netherlands

University of Groningen Faculty of Business and Economics

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Preface

This master thesis represents the last milestone of my academic year at the University of Groningen that I now proudly and successfully completed as a MSc in Marketing Management.

First, I would like to express my gratitude for my first and second supervisor Dr. Jan-Willem Bolderdijk and Dr. Martijn Keizer for their guidance, patience and their inspiration that helped me through the process which ultimately led me to achieving this goal.

This journey during my Master’s helped me grow in many ways for which I will always be grateful for. The Marketing Master’s program has been a challenging but rewarding journey. This wouldn’t have been possible without the friends that I have been blessed with who became family throughout these years. Special thanks go out to Yen-Nhi Nguyen who has been like a sister to me since the first day I placed my foot into Groningen and has been nothing but a great support. I would also like to thank my friends from MSc Marketing with whom I share great memories and experiences from this amazing journey and my friends from Hamburg for their emotional support. Further, I’d like to thank my partner J.H., who has been my rock during the whole past years and who always supported me in unimaginable ways. Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and respect for my parents who helped me realize this opportunity to study abroad and for their unconditional love and support throughout all these years.

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Abstract

As the world struggles with environmental degradation, sustainable companies are trying to contribute to a more sustainable future and further try to inspire their customers to follow their lead.

While many consumers often perceive companies’ advertisement as not trustworthy, they tend to rely on fellow customers’ experiences. Although research shows that brand advocates can be used as a highly effective strategic marketing tool, this research counterargues, that brand advocate who use moral arguments to advertise a brand, may ironically impede purchase intentions. This is because fellow consumers could anticipate moral judgment and therefore be discouraged to adopt the advertised sustainable product. A quantitative study by means of an online survey examined how morally motivated brand advocates compared to economically motivated brand advocates. Specifically, it was examined whether brand advocates can evoke anticipated moral reproach by observers and whether anticipated moral reproach reduces purchase intentions. In total, 237 participants took part in the survey.

The results of the study contradict the expectations, showing that there is no significant difference of the impact between the brand advocate’s moral or economical motivation on anticipated moral reproach. A highly significant result was found for the relationship of anticipated moral reproach on purchase intention, which implies that more anticipated moral reproach reduces the purchase intention of observers. Further, there was no mediation effect of anticipated moral reproach on the relationship between the brand advocate’s motivation and the observer’s purchase intention. Therefore, there was no empirical support found that moral brand advocates have a negative effect on purchase intentions.

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1. Introduction

In the past, excessive consumer consumption led to an environmental degradation such as the depletion of resources and a tremendous damage to the environment in general. The environmental issues have also caught the attention of many companies that are now trying to facilitate sustainable practices through their businesses to push the shift towards a more sustainable future. In doing so, the businesses make an important contribution to the environment and simultaneously reflect altruism in their reputations. Companies need to develop and implement strategies that balance consumer expectations and social drivers to facilitate green behavior among consumers (The Nielsen Company, 2014). However, consumers themselves can be considered as important actors since they can support this shift towards a sustainable future through green businesses. This research addresses an important topic in Marketing. Among many marketing tools, the word-of-mouth has a great impact on consumer decision making and behavior (Herr, Kardes & Kim, 1991). As an important facilitator, loyal customers, such as the brand advocates come into play.

Brand advocacy can be a double-edged sword especially to green businesses based on the motives of their arguments (Täuber et al, 2014). Sustainable innovations can be purchased based on an expected positive outcome for the sake and the welfare of others (moral) or for selfish reasons (e.g. to save money). On the one hand, companies have the opportunity to build a strong brand advocate base that they can use as a highly cost-effective strategic marketing tool (Fuggetta, 2012). In fact, it is strongly believed that positive word-of-mouth drives purchase intention and sales (e.g. See-To & Ho, 2014; Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006). 20-50 percent of all purchase decisions are driven by word-of-mouth, which also encourages customers to look for more different opinions formed by others (Bughin, Doogan & Vetvik, 2010). Consequently, brand advocates have a great potential to persuade other customers to adopt sustainable alternatives and can be considered as a valuable asset to brands.

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resentment and annoyance among other (potential) customers, which in turn could discourage them to adopt the sustainable alternative as well (Monin et al, 2008).

This research paper examines that moral brand advocates may become a liability for brands as their moral behavior could implicitly elicit anticipated reproach, and thus antagonize consumers. As a result, brand advocates who are perceived as judgmental are disliked by others (Monin, Sawyer & Marquez, 2008). This could in turn discourage other customers to adopt a sustainable alternative as well and thus have a negative impact on their purchase intentions. This paper contributes to existing literature by examining the influence of moral brand advocates and anticipated moral reproach on purchase intention. To the best of my knowledge, there is no existing paper addressing this issue.

The results of this research reveal important insights that could help brand managers to get a better understanding of the consumer’s feelings and perceptions towards a moral brand advocate. Furthermore, it could give a direction on whether brand advocates should be used as an effective strategic marketing tool.

2. Theoretical Foundations

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Rogers 1995). Therefore, consumers tend to rely on experiences of real customers and their opinions, especially when they are looking for information to make a decent purchase decision in uncertain situations (Goldsmith and Clark 2008; Mitchell & McGoldrick, 1996, Wiedmann, Hennigs & Langner, 2007). For example, this situation could be whether or not to adopt a sustainable innovation. A research study of Ferris-Costa (2011) found that brand advocates are seventy percent more likely seen as a trustworthy source of information. Therefore, brand advocates can be more convincing than an advertisement coming from a company. They understand the brand and its values (Keller, 2013) and thus could be considered as experts. As such, brand advocates could be used as valuable facilitators for the information flow for purchase decisions and perceptions (Rogers, 1995; Frenzen and Nakamoto, 1993; Fuggetta, 2012). In fact, it is strongly believed that positive word-of-mouth drives purchase intention and sales (e.g. See-To & Ho, 2014; Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006). Based on this reasoning, green brand advocates can also play a crucial role in increasing the awareness of sustainable alternatives and inspire fellow consumers to follow a sustainable behavior as well (Bollinger & Gillingham, 2012; Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Consequently, brand advocates can be a blessing to brands.

When purchasing from a sustainable brand, there are mainly two motivations to engage in this behavior: Firstly, you are concerned of the environment and the welfare of others. Therefore, you may want to support sustainable alternatives that minimize these risks to the environment by purchasing them. Secondly, you could adopt a sustainable product out of selfish concerns, for example to save money. In general, it could be agreed upon that behavior based on moral motivations, rather than selfish motivations, is admirable and is worth aspiring for (Monin, Sawyer & Marquez, 2008). Morally motivated people are often praised by observers (Griskevicius, Tybus & Van den Bergh 2010) and are often considered as more likable, which increases the likelihood that peers will follow their moral behavior(Jiang, Hoegg, Dahl & Chattopadhyay, 2010).

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sustainable lifestyle as pioneers are called “moral rebels” (Monin et al, 2008). These social groups take a stand against mainstream consumption and try to do the right things, whereas all the others that only observe the moral rebels, but don’t actively engage in a prosocial behavior, are referred to as observers (Monin et al., 2008). Monin et al. (2008) suggest that the rebel doesn’t have to be physically present. In fact, the smallest cue about the rebel’s behavior might be enough to trigger resenting emotions among the observers (Monin et al., 2008).

But how come that moral behavior can sometimes be praised as good and at other times be derogated? This could be explained by the concept of self-involvement (Zane, Irwin & Reczek, 2016; Cramwinckel, van den Bos & van den Dijk, 2015; Monin et al, 2008). More specifically, literature suggests that the responses to morally motivated deviants may depend on the social situations that people engage in.

For example, when people take the role of the mere observer of the moral rebel, but are not involved in the same situation of making a moral choice, their moral self-concepts shouldn’t be harmed. In this case, their own morality isn’t challenged and observers tend to applaud and welcome the moral rebel’s moral behavior. In general, everybody wants to maintain a positive self-concept of themselves (Mazar et al. 2008). Because it is important for people to be seen as a good person, it is much easier for them to remain their own positive self-concept when they didn’t do anything that can be perceived as wrong or immoral (Cramwinckel, 2016).

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with the moral refuser (Cramwinckel et al. 2015). Further, Cramwinckel, van Dijk, Scheepers & van den Bos (2013) found that the threat is not based on the deviant behavior itself but rather on the underlying moral motivations. Bolderdijk, Brouwer & Cornelissen (2017), further found empirical support that morally motivated arguments, indeed encourage to derogate moral pioneers but also demotivate observers to imitate their sustainable behavior. These findings suggest that self-involvement is an important and necessary prerequisite for the occurrence of the do-gooder derogation. Based on the self-involvement, moral arguments can either encourage neutral observers or derogate self-involved observers. Hence, this research takes into account the self-involvement as an underlying mechanism and argues that morally motivated brand advocates can also be put down by observers.

It seems that deviant moral behavior indirectly imply that it is wrong for others not to comply with that behavior because morality is considered as universal (Turiel, 1983). Observers tend to respond defensively to compensate for the threat by discrediting moral rebels and their good intentions because they are feeling or imagining being judged for being morally inferior, which is referred to as anticipated moral reproach (O’Connor & Monin 2016; Monin et al, 2008; Minson & Monin 2012). In other words, self-involved observers feel like they need to protect their moral self-concept and thus discredit moral rebels. Minson & Monin (2012) have studied this phenomenon in the context of meat eaters and vegetarians. They found that when a threat is made salient, that meat eaters indeed perceive vegetarians as judgmental. Participants expected to be perceived as morally inferior and thus felt judged by the vegetarians. As a result, they dislike the moral rebel, associating the moral rebel with negative attributes, which finally results in derogation (Monin et al, 2008). These findings show that the moral reproach motivates moral do-gooder derogation.

Based on the literature, I argue that the anticipated moral reproach can also be evoked by morally motivated brand advocates with the prerequisite that the observers feel self-involved. Even though it is not intentioned, a morally motivated brand advocate could signal judgment towards others.

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As the research of Minson & Monin (2012) has shown, anticipated moral reproach leads to a reduced likability of the moral rebel and discourage self-involved observers to imitate their behavior. Consequently, if a moral brand advocate was to elicit the feeling of judgment among consumers, the individual is expected to be less liked. As liking predicts purchase intention (Bouwer & Turner, 2001), this is also expected to be negatively affected.

The purchase intention is expected to decrease when self-involved observers are exposed to a moral brand advocate because they anticipate moral judgment.

H2: When observers anticipate moral judgment after being exposed to the moral brand advocate, they are less inclined to purchase the sustainable product.

The combined effect of H1 and H2 would imply a mediation effect. Therefore, the brand advocate would be perceived as judgmental and thus the purchase intention would decrease.

H3: The anticipated moral reproach mediates the effect of the moral brand advocates on the observer’s purchase intention.

Fig. 1 – Conceptual Model

In the presented Conceptual Model (Fig. 1) the brand advocate’s motivation forms the independent variable which is manipulated by 2 dimensions: (1) The moral motivation and (2) the economic motivation. The research study aims to measure the observer’s

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purchase intention (dependent variable) and the relationship is mediated by the observer’s anticipation of moral reproach.

3. Methodology

The goal of this quantitative study is to assess how potential customers can be discouraged adopting a sustainable product by morally motivated brand advocates because they anticipate being judged by them. Therefore, a causal research design will be used to test the nature of the relationship between the variables as stated in the hypotheses. A causal research design requires the manipulation of independent variable(s) and the measurement of the dependent variable (Malhotra, 2010). The manipulation of the independent variable as well as the measurements of anticipated moral judgment and the dependent variable purchase intention will be further discussed in the following subchapters.

The conceptual model as shown in Figure 1 was tested empirically by means of an online survey using Qualtrics.

3.1. Data Collection

The online survey1_{also incorporated another study by a fellow Master student, who}

examined a different research question (Knol, 2017). This was done to increase the number of participants in a short period of time. The survey was distributed mainly via social media (Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram) and E-Mail. For a snowball effect, all people, who were asked to fill in the survey, were requested to help distributing the survey with their friends and family. Furthermore, the participant’s confidentiality of the collected data and their consent to participate in this survey was assured before proceeding with the survey.

Data was collected between December 9th_{and December 14}th_{2017. By the end of}

the data collection 237 participants took part in the survey.

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The online survey opened up with a few easy demographic questions about the participant (Age, Gender, Nationality, Employment). According to the between-subjects design (Aronson, Wilson & Brewer, 1998), the different conditions were randomly assigned to ensure the validity of the sample. The participants were either exposed to the moral motivated brand advocate (N=120) or to the economically motivated brand advocate (N=117). Participants were either asked to read a review of a brand advocate (Fig. 2 & Fig. 3) with economic reasons or a review that holds moral motivations for the purchase.

3.2. Introduction

The sustainable brand “Patagonia” from the U.S. was chosen based on its strong engagement on sustainability by using responsibly sourced materials to reduce threats to the environment.

The brand Patagonia is an American outdoor and gear retailer that strongly emphasizes their marketing campaigns on sustainability and durability of their products. The company gives 1% of their total sales to environmental groups. They actively use their business to implement sustainable activities to give back to the environment and to inspire their customers and other businesses to do the same. Due to the sustainability and durability of Patagonia products, the customer saves money and lowers the environmental costs at the same time. Thus, this allowed me to credibly introduce an advocate that promoted Patagonia with moral (environment) or selfish (money) arguments.

To assure that all participants have the same amount of information about this brand, a short description about Patagonia was provided: “Patagonia is an American company that sells outdoor and gear which is highly marketed as sustainable and durable. Their mission is to produce the best products and prevent unnecessary harm to the environment.” It is kept short so that the moral ethics of the company is not going to overrule the brand advocate’s moral motivation in the manipulation.

3.3. Manipulation of the independent variable

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reproached by the moral brand advocate (as opposed to the economic brand advocate). Secondly, it was tested that brand advocates are perceived as judgmental and are thus ineffective.

Participants will be randomly assigned to see either a moral or selfish condition of the customer review.

In both conditions, fictitious customer Alex has a past with many good experiences, implying that it is not a new customer. Further, he indicates a positive review and recommendation, which is also reflected in the review stars (see Fig. 2 & Fig. 3). This determines that he has a positive history with the brand and is a loyal customer. All these elements would make him a good representative of a brand advocate.

The morally motivated Alex hints at the ethically conscious business practices of Patagonia by pointing out the “responsibly sources and recyclable materials to minimize

environmental harm”. He also mentions the welfare of the workers that are considered at

Patagonia (“(…) safe, fair, legal and humane working conditions”). This is supposed to make the moral motivation more salient in order to trigger the effect of anticipated moral reproach.

Fig.2 – Customer review of the morally motivated customer

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Fig. 3 – Customer Review of the economically motivated customer

Moreover, the crucial words that operationalize the manipulation were bolded for more salience.

3.4. Manipulation check

A manipulation check is applied to assure that the results are based on the manipulations made for the independent variable. Participants are asked to recall why the Patagonia customer purchased the brand: a) to save money in the long run b) to invest in a more sustainable future c) to start a fashion blog online. The last option c) is false and depending on the random assignment of the participant, option a) or b) will be true.

3.5. Self-Involvement

The measurement of self-involvement serves as an additional check of an underlying process which is not part of the conceptual model. However, as mentioned before, it is an important requirement for the process of derogation to occur, because without it there feeling of anticipated moral reproach could not be created. Therefore, the results could be more positive when self-involvement is not considered.

In order to measure whether respondents feel involved in the situation, two statements were included (1=Strongly disagree; 7=Strongly agree):

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“Oftentimes I choose cheaper, less ethically-conscious brands, even though I could afford to buy more expensive, ethically-conscious brands.”

It is intentionally tried to challenge participant’s moral self-concept after they have been exposed to the moral brand advocate, so that it triggers anticipated moral reproach. The statements intend to remind the participant of their (non-) moral choices in the past. Hence, these questions aimed to evoke a feeling of guilt towards the consumer’s own morality for not choosing the more ethically-conscious brand in the past. This is important since only self-involved people can anticipate the moral reproach. Hence, participants who score high on this scale will be self-involved (5-7). If they would not feel involved, people would not feel judged and rather praise the brand advocate’s moral intentions instead.

3.6. Anticipated Moral reproach measurement

The scale to measure anticipated moral reproach is based on the scale as used by Minson & Monin (2012). Since the scale was based on vegetarians and meat eaters, this will be adapted to this study context of Patagonia. The statements ranged on a 7-point scale from 1= extremely immoral to 7= extremely moral: “I would say I am…”, “Typical customers

of Patagonia are…”, “If other Patagonia customers saw how sustainable the materials of my clothes are, they would think I am…”, “Most people buying from Patagonia, think that people like me are...”). These statements were intended to measure whether other Patagonia

customers are perceived as judgmental (anticipated moral reproach).

However, the statements “I would say I am” and “Typical customers of Patagonia

are...” were removed in the subsequent analysis to increase the reliability of the

measurement (α = 0.71, M = 7.95, SD = 2.43). Another reason for the removal was that the perception of their own morality as well as the perception of the morality of the Patagonia customers are not facets of anticipated moral reproach. Only the remaining items specifically measure the concept of anticipated moral reproach, which makes the measurement of the concept more accurate.

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3.7. Purchase intention measurement

Firstly, the preference of the participant towards the brand will be measured by means of a 7 points scale (1= extremely unlikable – 7 = extremely likable):

“Patagonia is…”

Secondly, the participants are asked to rate the likelihood of a purchase on a 7-point Likert scale (1= extremely unlikely – 7 = extremely likely):

“Would you buy a product from Patagonia?” “I would recommend this brand to a friend”

Altogether, the measurement showed an internal consistency in the scale (α = 0.84, M=4.77, SD=1.17).

4. Results

The analysis is done by means of the statistical program SPSS by IBM. All subsequent analyses were performed at a 95% confidence level.

4.1. Descriptives of Participants

A total of 237 participants took part in the study (95 Male and 142 Females; Age: M=29.37, SD= 10.47). However, 13,9% of respondents (N=33) were cleared out due to manipulation check failure. The remaining 204 participants passed the manipulation check and were included in the subsequent analysis.

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4.2. Moral vs. Economic motivation on anticipated moral reproach

An independent t-test for the Moral vs. Economical motivation against anticipated moral reproach was performed to examine whether or not there is a statistical difference between the two groups. It was expected that moral brand advocates would result in a higher anticipated moral reproach when observers feel self-involved. The independent t-test revealed that there is no significant (t(202) = 0.31 p = 0.76) between the moral (M = 4.00, SD = 1.23)2_{and the economical motivation (M = 4.06, SD = 1.20). The results suggest that}

participants who saw the moral condition did not anticipate moral reproach more than the group that were exposed to the economic condition. Hence, hypothesis 1 is not supported

Participants who were not self-involved feel very slightly less judged in both conditions. Despite the non-significant findings of the motivation on anticipated moral reproach, descriptives show that 59.3% (N=70) out of those participants, who have been exposed to the moral motivation (N=118) score at least 4,5 and a maximum of 7 on the self-involvement scale. It shows that still a lot of participants did not feel self-involved, which is a mandatory condition on the effect of anticipated moral reproach. Even though this finding is not significant and very marginal, it is in line with literature (Zane et al. 2016; Cramwinckel et al. 2015), which suggests that people feel less challenged when they are not personally involved in the situation. Hence, the anticipated moral reproach is less when they don’t feel self-involved.

Not Self-involved Self-involved

Moral M = 3.98; SD = 1.33 M = 4.01; SD = 1.14

Economic M = 4.00; SD = 1.20 M = 4.13; SD = 1.22

These findings suggest that anticipated moral reproach is not dominantly present and could not be evoked based on the manipulation of the brand advocates motivation and the measurements for self-involvement used.

2_{There was also no significant finding for the t-test after considering self-involvement (people who scored at least 4.5 on}

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4.3. Purchase Intention

An independent t-test for the Brand Advocate’s motivation was performed (moral vs. economic brand advocate) with purchase intention as the dependent variable. In contrast to the literature which suggested that people like moral people and are thus more likely to comply to their behavior, more so than economically motivated people, this is not reflected in the results. Additionally, self-involvement was not considered here because it is not a necessary prerequisite for the effect on purchase intentions. It was found that there was no significant main effect of the brand advocate’s motivation on purchase intention. (t(202) = -.938 p = 0.48) between the moral (M = 4.83, SD = 1.14) and the economical motivation (M = 4.67, SD = 1.21). Consequently, the type of motivation of a brand advocate does not have an effect on the observers’ purchase intention.

4.4. Mediation Analysis

It was expected that anticipated moral reproach (mediator) mediates the effect of the brand advocate’s motivation (moral vs. economic) (IV) on purchase intention (DV). The mediation hypothesis was tested by means of PROCESS macro (Model 4)3_{for SPSS by}

Andrew Hayes (2013).

According to Baron & Kenny (1986) four conditions must hold to test a mediation effect. First, there must be a significant relationship between the independent variable “Brand advocate’s motivation” and the dependent variable “purchase intention”. The total effect of the brand advocate’s motivation on purchase intention was found to be insignificant (b =.155, SE=.165, p = .35).

Second, a statistical significance between the IV “Brand advocates motivation” and the mediator “anticipated moral reproach” needs to be proven. However, results indicated that the brand advocate’s motivation is not a significant predictor of anticipated moral reproach (b=-.030, SE=.132, p = .823). Hence, H1 can be rejected.

Third, the effect of the mediator on the dependent variable has to be significant. The results indicated that the mediator, anticipated moral reproach, is a significant predictor for

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the observer’s purchase intentions (b=-.222, SE=.066, p < .01). Therefore, more anticipated moral reproach indeed lowers purchase intentions. Therefore, H2 is supported.

Finally, the indirect effect was tested by means of the bootstrap estimation approach with 1000 samples (Shrout & Bolger, 2002). The results indicated that the indirect effect was insignificant (bbootstrap=.012, SEbootstrap=.038; 95% CIbootstrap = [-.065; .090]). The mediation is

considered to be insignificant as zero was included in the 95% confidence interval.

To conclude, it was expected that anticipate moral reproach would mediate the effect between the brand advocate’s motivation and observer’s purchase intention. Since most of the conditions by Baron & Kenny (1986) showed no significant effect, there was no mediation effect found in this study. Thus, also H3 can be rejected.

Fig. 4. Mediation Analysis

5. General Discussion

The purpose of this research paper was to test whether (H1) a moral motivation of a brand advocate could implicitly evoke anticipated moral reproach and (H2) whether or not anticipated moral reproach would decrease the purchase intention and (H3) whether there is a mediating effect of anticipated moral reproach on the relationship between the brand advocate’s motivation (moral vs. economic) on purchase intention.

Contrary to the expectations, the outcome of the analysis in the previous section showed, that H1 was not supported. There is no significant difference of the moral vs. economic motivation of the brand advocate on the participant’s perceived moral reproach.

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Hence, it could not be proven that the moral condition has a significantly stronger effect on anticipated moral reproach compared to the economic condition, as expected. Previous studies suggested that self-involvement is an important prerequisite that has an influence on the responses of observers (Zane et al. 2016, Cramwinckel et al, 2015). However, after the self-involvement was considered, the results still didn’t show significant effects. It means that even when people’s moral self-concept is threatened, they don’t seem to anticipate moral reproach by the moral brand advocate. This is not in line with previous studies that found that moral advocates, who purchase ethical products, may evoke admiration or resentment (Monin et al, 2008). According to the theory, admiration would most likely arise when observer’s do not feel self-involved whereas observers who do feel self-involved feel judged by the moral counterpart and thus respond with resentment (Monin et al, 2008).

Finally, results show that there is no mediation effect on the brand advocate’s motivation and the observer’s purchase intention through the anticipated moral reproach.

To conclude, there is no empirical support for the anticipated moral reproach by observers when exposed to a moral brand advocate and the mediation effect. However, a highly significant negative effect of anticipated moral reproach on purchase intention was found, implicating that the more observers anticipate moral reproach, the lower is the purchase intention.

These findings could suggest to engage in further research to find significantly ineffectiveness of the moral brand advocate as proposed in the following chapter “Limitations and Further Research Recommendations”

5.1. Limitations and further research recommendations

There are several limitations to take into account in this study.

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Self-involvement was included as a necessary prerequisite to make sure that anticipated moral reproach could be triggered. The measurement of self-involvement served as an additional check of an underlying process which is not part of the conceptual model. The fact that only 59.3 percent out of those participants in the moral motivation condition is an indicator that still a lot of participants did not feel self-involved. This could have the reason that participants may not even have considered adopting sustainable clothing. Thus, they might not feel self-involved, because they never seeked out to buy sustainable alternatives, such as the Patagonia products.

Moreover, it is questionable whether the measurement for the mediator was sufficient to really capture anticipated moral reproach because it is now based on only two items due to the low Cronbach’s alpha. Although, the remaining two items were important for capturing the concept of anticipated moral reproach, they might not have been precise enough in the wordings. The statements might have been too general and a clear link between the customer review and the statements for anticipated moral reproach was missing, which ultimately might have enhanced the results. For instance, there should have been a link between the customer review and the questions shown in the anticipated moral reproach measurement (e.g. “Alex B. thinks that people like me are…”). That way, they would focus more on the brand advocate instead of other Patagonia customers. Other Patagonia customers could be imagined differently by different people. Perhaps additional similar items in the measurements would have been necessary to conclude with more straightforward results.

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customer review of a brand advocate is not trustworthy or credible enough to impact their purchase intentions. To increase the validity, it can be suggested that in further research, multiple different customer reviews that reflect the moral and economic motivation can be shown to participants.

However, the survey is limited to the introduction of Patagonia as the only sustainable brand. Some participants may have been biased due to past experiences with Patagonia. One could argue that Patagonia is a rather expensive brand. This might also seem a bit contradictory for some people to be really convinced by the economic exposure which suggests to adopt a Patagonia product to save money in the long run. However, it is still a rather big investment one has to make, which also creates some kind of barrier to adopt the sustainable innovation. Since the majority of the sample consists of students, most of them could possibly not afford brands such as Patagonia on an everyday basis. Hence, they might not have felt self-involved in the situation, because they choose to buy cheaper, less ethically, conscious brands because they simply cannot afford it yet. Although moral behavior is considered as the right thing to do, it s oftentimes more expensive than regular alternatives (Steg, 2003).

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5.2. Managerial Implications

For a successful transition into a sustainable future, it is crucial for organizations to understand how well-intentioned word-of-mouth may ironically result in the opposite effect than it was hoped for. As discussed earlier, the creation and development of a brand advocate base has many advantages. Brand advocates are a powerful tool not only in promoting the organization and its values among fellow consumers and inspire them with their infectious enthusiasm to eventually adopt a sustainable innovation. Bolderdijk, Steg, Geller, Lehman & Postmes (2013) have found that moral behavior, more so than selfish behavior, could convert people to conform with more sustainable behavior. A brand advocate has the potential to convert potential customers because they are perceived as trustworthy. The implications of this study were supposed to give marketing managers important insights about the double-edged sword of the brand advocate. While brand advocates can be used as a highly effective marketing tool to motivate others to follow their behavior, they also had the potential to discourage other customers from adopting the same sustainable behavior. This research was primarily focus on the latter issue. The objective was to moral expressions by a brand advocate could elicit anticipated moral reproach. Thus, when the brand advocates were perceived as judgmental, it was expected that they engage in negative feelings and that would lead to reduced purchase intention.

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25

Appendices

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26 Demographics

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27 Manipulation – Economical Condition

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28 Manipulation Check

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29 Anticipated Moral Reproach (Mediator)

Purchase Intention (Independent Variable)

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30

B. Results