Green retailing: the spillover-effect of organic products on the perceived eco-friendliness of supermarkets
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2021-08-24
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en
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Over past years, the already present attention for the environment has been increasing. With consumers feeling insignificant in bringing climate change to a halt, consumers are increasingly looking at corporations like supermarket chains to take responsibility, by choosing to buy at companies that are actively environmentally friendly. Nonetheless, not much research has been done on the actions that supermarkets can take to improve the extent to which consumers perceive them to be environmentally-friendly. Past research has nonetheless shown that pro-environmental products, in this case organic products, can cause a spillover of the environmental-friendly connotations to the image of the entire supermarket. Making use of an experiment, respondents were divided into six groups, each exposed to a different manipulation, showing different supermarket shelves containing either no organic products, organic private label brand products, or organic national brand products. Furthermore, the shelves contained either hedonic or utilitarian products. As a covariate, the organic involvement of participants was tested.
Results showed no effects of the types of brands in the assortment on the extent to which participants saw a supermarket as environmentally friendly, even in comparison to the situation not containing organic products. Interestingly, an effect was found of the extent to which participants were involved with organic products, showing that higher involvement leads to lower perceived eco-friendliness. Furthermore, there was a direct effect of product category, with participants who were exposed to the utilitarian shelves seeing the supermarket as more environmentally friendly than the participants who saw the hedonic shelves. This provides supermarket managers with insights into how to influence their environmentally-friendly image.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen