Sustainability, to practice or to preach? An investigation into how consumers perceive sustainability claims.
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2021-08-26
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en
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Abstract
Previous research has demonstrated that different language styles are used by companies that claim to be sustainable, but are in fact not, and companies that truthfully claim to be sustainable. Whereas the first often use inclusive language styles, the second tend to use exclusive language styles. However, up until now it has not been studied whether consumers actively detect these language styles and respond correspondingly. Therefore, this study focusses on the relationship between the type of language that is used by companies in communicating their sustainability statements and consumer’s attitude towards the firm. Additionally, the construal level theory was used to see whether the perceived closeness of sustainability related objects was influencing the aforementioned relationship. An experiment was conducted for which respondents were allocated to one of two conditions that reflected either an inclusive or exclusive language manipulation. The two conditions consisted of a sustainability advertisement that was created for a fictitious company operating in the shoe industry. The results showed there was no significant relationship between the type of language that was used by companies and consumer’s attitude towards the firm. Similarly, there were no significant results to proof a moderating effect of construal level.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen