Although most people claim to prefer a more sustainable product, only a limited number of ‘green buyers’ act on their words at the moment of purchase. To find out how to get mainstream buyers to buy more sustainable products, we used data on 950 Western European buyers of 32 different vacuum cleaner models. The issue was why three out of four consumers bought a less sustainable high input power model when an energy-efficient model with equal specifications was also on offer at the same price. Only 6% of buyers bought their vacuum cleaner for environmental reasons. The remaining 94% of buyers stated that their purchase decision was mainly based on reliability, durability, key features, the brand and value for money, regardless of whether they bought an energy-efficient or -inefficient model. The 73% who bought energy-inefficient vacuum cleaners opted for heavier models (perceived as more robust) featuring bags for dust collection, and were more sensitive to messages addressing technological innovation. Beside energy-efficiency legislation, we see two options to encourage mainstream consumers to buy more energy-efficient products: (1) link technical advancement in innovation to lower power (‘we can create more suction with less energy’) in product branding, and (2) seduce mainstream consumers with models that are redesigned for performance, robustness and durability. With this quantitative consumer research, we add both to the knowledge of buying behaviour in terms of sustainability as well as to the knowledge on how to redesign and market green products in mainstream markets.

尽管大多数人声称更喜欢可持续发展的产品，但是在购买时，只有少数“绿色买家”会按照自己的意愿行事。为了找出如何让主流买家购买更多可持续产品，我们使用了950种西欧买家的数据，其中包括32种不同吸尘器型号。问题是为什么当四分之一的消费者也以相同的价格提供相同规格的节能模型时，为什么四分之三的消费者购买了可持续性较低的高输入功率模型。出于环保原因，只有6％的买家购买了吸尘器。其余94％的购买者表示，他们的购买决定主要基于可靠性，耐用性，关键特征，品牌和物有所值，而不管他们购买的是节能型还是低效型。购买低能耗真空吸尘器的73％的人选择了较重的型号（被认为更坚固），这些型号带有用于收集灰尘的袋子，并且对解决技术创新的信息更加敏感。除了节能法规，我们看到了两种选择来鼓励主流消费者购买更多的节能产品：（1）将创新的技术进步与产品品牌推广中的低功耗（“我们可以用更少的能源创造更多的吸引力”）联系起来；以及（2）通过针对性能，坚固性和耐用性进行重新设计的模型来吸引主流消费者。通过这项定量的消费者研究，我们不仅增加了在可持续性方面的购买行为知识，而且还增加了如何在主流市场重新设计和销售绿色产品的知识。