A master thesis about the effect of firm language on customers’ purchase intention.
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2021-07-08
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en
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Abstract
It often occurs that organizations make commitments in their language while failing to commit to it. The language that is regularly used in such false claims is also called inclusive language. On the other hand, organizations that act in line with their promises use a different type of language, namely exclusive language. Previous studies showed that inclusive language in organizational claims lead to deceptive stakeholders. This research extends previous studies by investigating the effect of both inclusive and exclusive language on customers’ purchase intention. Besides, the degree of customers’ environmental awareness is studied in order to investigate whether participants with a high degree of environmental awareness can see through organizational false green claims. An experiment is conducted to investigate the hypothesized effects. The data was analyzed by means of AN(C)OVA. The hypotheses were not supported. Furthermore, several additional analyses were conducted. The results of the additional analyses indicated that the perceived realness of a green claim can be viewed as a prominent factor to influence customers’ purchase intention. To conclude, organizations that make false green claims might not be always detected by customers. However organizations should still be careful in their formulations when making green claims considering the extreme consequences.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen