In the hope of benefiting from the increasing focus on sustainability in Western markets, national brands are introducing new sustainable products. We investigate the success of new sustainable products with a unique dataset combining household panel data, consumer survey data, expert panel survey data, and advertising expenditure data. We show that sustainable new product introductions achieve lower sales than their conventional counterparts. Investing in corporate social responsibility activities compensates for this negative effect and is therefore a viable strategy to boost sales of new sustainable products. Importantly, making sustainable new products clearly innovative mitigates the negative effect of a sustainability claim on new product sales, whereas price promotions aggravate the negative effect. We furthermore caution that the negative effect of sustainability may not decrease as sustainability becomes more mainstream, even if our data covers a period before the currently increased interest in sustainability.

为了从西方市场对可持续发展的日益关注中受益，民族品牌正在推出新的可持续产品。我们使用结合了家庭面板数据、消费者调查数据、专家面板调查数据和广告支出数据的独特数据集来调查新的可持续产品的成功。我们表明，可持续的新产品推出的销售额低于传统产品。投资于企业社会责任活动可以弥补这种负面影响，因此是促进新可持续产品销售的可行策略。重要的是，使可持续新产品具有明显的创新性可以减轻可持续性声明对新产品销售的负面影响，而价格促销则加剧了负面影响。