ABSTRACT

In light of the increasing demand for environmentally friendly products and services, companies have expanded their green marketing activities, such as EasyJet in November 2019 with its promise to offset the carbon emissions of all flights. However, green claims entail the risk of being judged by customers as greenwashing. Given that previous research has largely neglected customer characteristics concerning the perception of greenwashing, this paper investigates the effects of customers’ self-concepts on the evaluation process of EasyJet’s green marketing efforts. The presented moderated mediation model is based on self-congruence theory as well as cognitive dissonance theory and is empirically tested. The findings show that ideal self-congruence increases the perception of authenticity, which in turn functions as an inhibitor of greenwashing. However, this effect depends on customers’ actual self-congruence. Overall, this study presents a model that strengthens and deepens the understanding of customers’ evaluation processes regarding companies’ green marketing efforts and provides marketers with advice to enhance the effectiveness of green claims.

摘要

鉴于对环保产品和服务的需求不断增长，各公司已扩大了其绿色营销活动，例如2019年11月的EasyJet，其承诺将抵消所有航班的碳排放量。但是，绿色环保要求有被客户判定为绿色环保的风险。鉴于先前的研究在很大程度上忽略了客户对环保清洗的认识，因此本文研究了客户自我概念对EasyJet绿色营销努力评估过程的影响。所提出的调节型调解模型基于自我一致性理论和认知失调理论，并经过了实证检验。研究结果表明，理想的自我一致性可以提高对真实性的认识，进而可以起到抑制水洗的作用。但是，这种效果取决于客户的实际自我一致性。总体而言，本研究提出了一个模型，该模型可以增强和加深客户对公司绿色营销工作的评估过程的了解，并为营销人员提供建议，以增强绿色主张的有效性。