Communicating Eco-Friendly Benefits: Why Accidental Improvements May Be Better Received by Consumers

Doing good does not necessarily imply doing well for a company. Ironically, in the case of green products it can even be quite the contrary. Deliberately enhancing a product with environmental benefits to make it more appealing may actually lead to a decrease in consumer interest because consumers suspect that quality was reduced on other dimensions. Even explicitly stating that the company cares about both the environment and quality is not sufficient to overcome consumers’ skepticism, according to our experiments. Fortunately, there are ways to communicate environmental improvements successfully. Companies improving a basic product feature like making something more eco-friendly should either position the improvement as unintended or emphasize that the primary goal is improving the quality of the product. Focusing on eco-conscious market segments also helps to avoid harm and might even be beneficial. Improvements on dimensions that are not inherent to a product’s composition, like fair trade or other social benefits, turned out to be less critical in the experiments.