Golden goose or wild goose? The hunt for the green consumer

Business Strategy and the EnvironmentBus. Strat. Env. 10, 187–199 (2001)DOI: 10.1002/bse.292

GOLDEN GOOSE OR WILDGOOSE? THE HUNT FOR THEGREEN CONSUMER

Ken Peattie*

Cardiff Business School, Cardiff, UK

The green consumer has been the centralcharacter in the development of greenmarketing, as businesses attempt tounderstand and respond to externalpressures to improve their environmentalperformance. Marketing practitioners andacademics are attempting to identify andunderstand green consumers and theirneeds, and to develop market offeringsthat meet these needs. So far there islittle consensus about the identity andnature of green consumers, except thatthey have been something of adisappointment to the marketers whohave pursued them. These difficultiesperhaps reflect the folly of trying tounderstand green consumption andgreen marketing by viewing it as simplya variation on conventional marketing.This article proposes some differentways of looking at green consumptionand green marketing, which have thepotential to prevent the hunt for thegreen consumer from deteriorating into awild goose chase. Copyright © 2001 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd and ERPEnvironment.

Received 5 November 1998Revised 13 December 1999Accepted 13 January 2000

INTRODUCTION

Marketing as a philosophy, a manage-ment discipline and a managementfunction has found itself at the fore-

front of the debate about the greening ofbusiness. This is not necessarily a comfortableposition for marketers since marketing hasoften been blamed as a key force in drivingunsustainable over-consumption (Durning,1992). Although the concept of green market-ing is viewed by some as an oxymoron, therehas been a genuine attempt among marketersto address the ‘green challenge’. Since thebasis of the marketing philosophy is to orien-tate the entire business around the wants andneeds of customers, the starting point of thisresponse has been to try to search for, identifyand respond to the ‘green consumer’. Formarketers this moves the debate away fromdifficult territories relating to responsibilitiesand the consequences of consumption andproduction, back onto home ground. How-ever, before we embark on a hunt for thegreen consumer, the hunting party needs toask itself some fundamental questions aboutwhether their quarry is a real or mythicalcreature; what they would do with one if theycaught it; and whether the hunt has a realpurpose or whether it follows a strong hunt-ing tradition of symbolic rituals (Cox andHallett, 1994).

* Correspondence to: Professor Ken Peattie, Cardiff BusinessSchool, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF1 3EU,UK.

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K. PEATTIE

THE GREEN CONSUMER – ANIMPORTANT PRIZE

In the emerging ‘enviropreneuring’ literature(Menon and Menon, 1997) it is becoming ac-cepted that competitive advantage can beachieved through environmentally motivatedinnovation. By responding to the environmen-tal concerns of customers this allows the cre-ation of ‘win–win’ strategies, which are goodfor the firm and the planet. In the late 1980sand early 1990s there were a number of sur-veys that reported that consumers consideredthe environment when making purchasingdecisions, and would pay a premium forgreener products (Saltzman, 1991; Ottman,1993). Green consumers have been portrayedin several ways. The Green Consumer Guide byElkington and Hailes (1988) cast them as po-tentially threatening creatures, likely to stam-pede away from products such as CFC-drivenaerosols with strong and negative socio-envi-ronmental impacts. They can be portrayed asrather sleepy creatures, only really dangerouswhen roused by issues such as Shell’s BrentSpar (Strong, 1995). Others have seen them asa vast herd of consumers grazing for prod-ucts, among whom concern for the environ-ment acts as a ‘tie-break’ in choices betweenbrands with increasingly narrow technicaland economic differences between them intoday’s fast-moving and globalizing economy.Others (e.g. Neilssen and Scheepers, 1992) seethem operating in small but clearly definedgroups. These groups represent an ‘ultra-green’ segment of consumers, who consis-tently and primarily discriminate in favour ofthe environment. Many trackers predict thisgroup will grow to become an increasinglyworthwhile target for companies.

For marketers, and marketing orientatedcompanies, the challenge has been to under-stand how the environment has impactedconsumer behaviour in a way that will allowthem to segment and respond to the market,according to environmental concern. How-ever, so far the hunt for the green consumerhas proved difficult. Back in 1975 Websterblamed the problems of predicting green con-sumer behaviour on a tendency for research

to use inaccurate measures or to be based oninvalid theories. Twenty-five years later wedo not seem very much wiser. Perhaps thesedifficulties stem from a tendency to makeassumptions about consumers and the envi-ronment, and to try and integrate the greenchallenge into the existing way of marketing,rather than recognizing it as a challenge to theexisting marketing paradigm.

GOLDEN RULES OF HUNTINGNUMBER 1: IDENTIFY YOURQUARRY, GET TO KNOW IT ANDITS HABITS

A great deal of research has been conductedto try and identify and understand green con-sumers and green market segments. A fa-vourite approach, particularly among marketresearch companies, has been to define greenconsumer segments primarily in demographicterms. For example, ‘The typical green con-sumer is educated, affluent and politicallyliberal. She is likely to be between ages 30–49,(and) has children six years old and older’(Ottman, 1993). However, the results of at-tempting to link environmental concern andpurchasing to socio-demographic factors haveproved inconclusive. American academic re-search has typically failed to find a significantrelationship between demographic factors andgreen consumer behaviour (Roberts, 1996).While European research has suggested thatrelationships exist, the findings have beengenerally inconclusive and inconsistent. VanLiere and Dunlap (1981), like many others,found a positive correlation with level of edu-cation, while Samdahl and Robertson (1989)found a negative one. Most studies have re-ported a negative correlation between envi-ronmental concern and age, but some (e.g.Samdahl and Robertson, 1989) have reporteda positive one, and others have shown youth-fulness to be associated more with global is-sues, with maturity linked to local issues (e.g.a study by Research 2000 quoted by Peattie,1995). Gender differences in studies are alsoinconsistent (Schahn and Holzer, 1990), withthe positive relationships found in some (e.g.

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Van Liere and Dunlap, 1981) being reversedin others (e.g. Arcury et al., 1987). As Wagner(1997) comments, ‘Socio-demographic at-tempts to profile the green consumer have notalways yielded strongly indicative results,and the results produced in one study havebeen repeatedly contradicted in another’.

GOLDEN RULES OF HUNTINGNUMBER 2: LOOK IN THE RIGHTPLACE

Although some studies of green consumerbehaviour have examined issues relating toproduct use and disposal (e.g. Pieters, 1991;Dehab et al., 1995), the majority have concen-trated on green purchasing. This conforms tothe emphasis of marketing generally, where acasual dip into almost any standard text willreveal only a tiny fraction of marketing theoryconcentrating on post-purchase issues. Thereis an Arab parable in which a man finds afriend searching outside his house for his lostkey. It transpires that he dropped the keyinside, but decided to search outside where‘the light was better’. Attempting to relate aconsumer’s environmental concern to pur-chases contains an element of looking in thewrong place, although it is the place wheremarketing researchers are most comfortablelooking. Many of the most significant contri-butions that consumers can make towardsenvironmental quality come in product use,maintenance and disposal, or in delaying oravoiding making a purchase through a ‘makedo and mend’ mentality. It is not uncommonto see quantitative research attempting toidentify and isolate green purchasing be-haviour among purchasers of products suchas new cars. A new car is perhaps the lastthing that an environmentally motivated con-sumer would seek to buy, and when they do,the choices within the market are so domi-nated by fleet purchasers, as opposed to indi-vidual consumers, that the available choiceswould have been principally constructedaround the needs of others. The green con-sumer and the green purchaser have generallybeen assumed to be the same creature within

the same habitat, but this is not necessarilythe case. Instead of staking out the supermar-ket tills, those hunting for the green consumershould perhaps be focusing more attention onhomes, recycling depots and hire shops.

GOLDEN RULES OF HUNTINGNUMBER 3: USE THE RIGHT BAIT

So how can the green consumer be attractedto make a purchase? A variety of approacheshave been used including green product re-formulations, green advertising and public re-lations activity and green labelling. Many ofthese baits have proven unsuccessful, and inmany cases have operated more as camou-flage for the activities of the hunters than asanything likely to attract their quarry. Con-sumers have proven to be easily confused bydifferent environmental claims and labels,and they tend to be highly sceptical of overtgreen claims (Siminitiras et al., 1993). Davis(1993) even suggests that clumsy camouflage,in the form of vague and unsubstantiatedgreen marketing claims, will actually scaregreen consumers away.

One type of bait that is rarely used is lowpricing. The debate about green marketinghas been underpinned by an assumption thatgreen products will necessarily cost more, andby discussions about how large a premiumthe customer will be willing to pay. In manyinstances this may be misleading because theadditional cost comes from the ‘end-of-pipe’philosophy, which has dominated green tech-nology development in key markets. Addinga catalytic converter to a car must add cost.However, evidence suggests that where a‘clean technology’ approach is followed, de-veloping new technologies that reduce theinputs needed and the amount of pollutionand waste produced, such initiatives can bevery cost effective (Irwin and Hooper, 1992).Although assuming that green products mustcost more is misconceived, in many casesthere are genuine cost burdens that greenproducts have to bear, because they are at-tempting to internalize some or all of themarket ‘externalities’. The reality is not that

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these products are unusually expensive, butthat conventional products are unrealisticallycheap since they are effectively subsidized bythe environment. Unfortunately marketing re-search aimed at tracking down the green con-sumer is reinforcing the prejudice againstgreen products by regularly asking ‘howmuch extra would you be willing to pay forgreener products?’. This is not a neutral ques-tion and it contains a very powerful messagepromoting the image of the environment asan additional cost burden on business andconsumers. It would perhaps be more appro-priate to ask consumers ‘do you want to buyproducts which are inexpensive because theydamage the environment?’.

One of the problems of marketing effec-tively to the green consumer is that the bestway to catch them is to provide full informa-tion about the negative environmental im-pacts of conventional products to highlightthe relative benefits of the greener alterna-tives. However, since most green products areproduced and sold by the same companiesand retailers as the conventional brands, suchfull disclosure would be potentially danger-ous. A much lower risk strategy for them is toproduce a ‘green’ product variant, at a pre-mium price (regardless of whether productioneconomics requires it or not), targeted at themost environmentally concerned consumers.The company, by offering a green product,can be seen as environmentally responsive aswell as customer orientated, while also gener-ating some useful extra margin. Conservativeor sceptical consumers can then continue pur-chasing conventional products, creating, froma traditional marketing viewpoint a ‘best ofall possible worlds’ situation composed ofchoice, responsiveness to consumers andprofit. Sadly this is not necessarily the bestsituation for the real, physical world. Changesin the form of concessions to meet the needsof only the most environmentally concernedwill do little to transform the environmentalimpacts of entire markets. Instead, the maineffect may be to diffuse pressure to makesubstantive progress towards sustainability.For this reason green consumerism, instead ofbeing a force that will create ‘win–win’ solu-tions, has been highlighted as potentially

counterproductive in the quest for sustainabil-ity (Durning, 1992).

GOLDEN RULES OF HUNTINGNUMBER 4: IF YOU DON’T CATCHANYTHING, AT LEAST PUT ON AGOOD SHOW

Given the recent and ongoing social and polit-ical controversies about foxhunting in the UK,hunting may seem an inappropriate metaphorto use for an article such as this. However, aninteresting argument raised in the foxhuntingdebate is that protesters mistakenly focus al-most entirely on the fate of the fox oncecaught, and in doing so they ignore manyother dimensions of the hunt concerning ruraltradition, culture and social cohesiveness.Only about one hunt in six actually catches afox, and many elements of foxhunting, fromthe drinking of the stirrup cup to traditionalhunting attire, are difficult to explain in rela-tion to the aim of catching a fox. An anthro-pological view of hunting reveals a richtradition of ritual and symbolism (Cox andHallett, 1994), which is perhaps being contin-ued in the hunt for the green consumer. Cul-tures in which hunting has long beenabandoned as a significant means of provid-ing food will still maintain the hunt as alargely symbolic activity. Certainly, even forcompanies regarded as among the greenest,there have been accusations that some of theirinitiatives are more symbolic than substantivein their environmental benefits. Body Shop’sTrade not Aid programme, and Ben andJerry’s pledge to donate to charity 60% of theprofits from selling rainforest products (de-spite the fact that the product line operated ata loss for six years generating no profit), havebeen the target of such criticism (Cowe andEntine, 1996).

It would be a mistake to dismiss all the lastdecade’s environmentally related changes totechnologies, laws and companies’ manage-ment systems as mere tokenism. It would alsobe a mistake to believe that their combinedeffect has been to make the global economy atthe start of the new millennium any more

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sustainable than it was at the end of the 1980s.Certainly PR and marketing communicationsactivities have often dominated the corporateresponse to the green challenge thus far overmore radical green corporate reengineering. Acynic might argue that in many cases the roleof the consumer has become a shield for com-panies to hide behind, where the consumer’sunwillingness to change, or to pay more forenvironmentally sound products, is portrayedas the chain holding companies back frommore radical environmentally related change.

THE HUNTER’S TALE

The conventional reading of the developmentof the green market is this. Marketers arefaced with a population professing increasedenvironmental concern and a desire to buygreener products from greener companies,even if it means paying a premium price.Most environmental problems are intensi-fying, and, as people become more knowl-edgeable about the environment, so theirwillingness to buy green products should in-crease, so marketers have tried to identify the‘green consumer’, usually in either demo-graphic terms or by following the assumptionthat those who are most concerned andknowledgeable about the environment will bemost likely to make green purchases. Theyhave then developed reformulated productsand green communications campaigns in or-der to take advantage of this opportunity.Results so far have often been disappointing,and researchers are concluding that consumerconcern about the environment must havebeen overstated since it is not translating intoactual purchasing behaviour (Eugene, 1992;Gillespie, 1992; Wong et al., 1996). Researchhas shown that environmental consciousnesscan positively affect consumer behaviour (e.g.Diamantopoulos et al., 1994), but studies fromboth academics (e.g. Troy, 1993) and marketresearch organizations have shown that highlevels of environmental consciousness are notnecessarily reflected in significant changes topurchasing behaviour. Moore (1993) pointedto a large segment of the population that was

unwilling to change its purchasing behaviourdespite its claims to be environmentally con-cerned. As a quarry the green consumer hasproved smaller, shyer, less predictable andless abundant than expected. This interpreta-tion of the story fits very neatly with theexisting marketing paradigm, but is it true?

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW – WE’RENOT HUNTERS, AND THE QUARRYDOESN’T EXIST ANYWAY

The debate about the development of market-ing to the green consumer rests on the as-sumptions that the activity being engaged inis marketing, and that the green consumerexists. Drucker, back in 1960, saw con-sumerism as challenging four key assump-tions about marketing (and concluded thatunless these held good, then marketing wasnot really taking place), and these are worthrevisiting in relation to the green challenge.

� Consumers really know their needs. A USsurvey of 1500 Consumer Reports’ membersshowed that the majority got at least tenout of 16 simple questions about the envi-ronment wrong.

� Businesses really care about those needs andunderstand how to meet them. This is some-thing consumers remain unconvinced of. ABRMB/Mintel survey found that 71% ofUK consumers felt companies were usinggreen issues as an excuse to charge higherprices.

� Businesses provide useful information to allowconsumers to match products to needs. Carl-son et al. (1993) found that 60% of environ-mentally based advertisements featuredunacceptable claims ranging from the am-biguous to the ‘downright false.’

� Products and services really deliver what con-sumers expect and what businesses promise. In1992 a McCann Erickson/Harris survey ofEuropean consumers showed that 31% hadbeen ‘disappointed’ by a green product.

The marketer’s viewpoint on green con-sumer behaviour has been dominated by theextent to which consumers’ environmental

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concerns are (or often are not) being trans-lated into purchases of green products.Drucker’s argument brings into focus the im-portance of what marketers do to how con-sumers behave. The managers interviewed forthe research of Wong et al. (1996) generallyviewed customers as failing to ‘followthrough’, in terms of converting their environ-mental concerns into purchases. They alsotypified much of the early green marketingactivity as involving poorly specified prod-ucts and unclear or misleading productclaims, which ‘have tarnished the credibilityof this cadre of products. . . (leading). . . toboth a backlash from consumers and con-sumer scepticism’. Although Wong et al. makethe connection between poor green marketingand a lack of enthusiasm for green productsamong consumers, the impression created isthat the marketers concerned see this as theconsumer’s fault.

In hunting for specifically green consumers,marketers have perhaps been hunting for amyth by overlooking a point made by Kar-dash (1974). He characterized all consumers(barring a few who enjoy contrariness for itsown sake) as ‘green consumers’ in that, facedwith a choice between two products that areidentical in all respects except that one issuperior in terms of its eco-performance, they

would differentiate in terms of the environ-mentally superior product. If we accept Kar-dash’s proposal that, all other things beingequal, most customers would differentiate infavour of greener products, then understand-ing environmental purchasing behaviour (andoften the lack of it), is assisted by looking atthe perceived extent to which other things arenot ‘equal’. This means that instead of tryingto understand green consumption by under-standing the purchaser, we instead try to un-derstand the purchase.

An alternative approach to understandinggreen consumer behaviour, or at least thepurchasing stage of it, is reflected in Figure 1.This matrix brings together two key variablesthat affect the likelihood of any purchaser(whatever the intensity of their environmentalconcern – or ‘shade’ of green) being influ-enced by environmentally related criteriawhen considering a purchase: the degree ofcompromise involved and the degree of confi-dence generated in the environmental benefitsof a particular choice. Many green purchasesinvolve some form of compromise over con-ventional purchases. The compromise cantake a variety of forms including

� paying the green premium, whether it isimposed by economic necessity or by mar-keting strategy,

Figure 1. The green purchase perception matrix.

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� accepting a lower level of technical perfor-mance in exchange for improved eco-performance (e.g. green detergents) and

� travelling to non-standard distribution out-lets (e.g. the Out of this World organicsupermarket chain).

The importance of such trade-offs has beenrecognized in some of the ‘lifestyle’ segmenta-tions made within the green market, whichhas included descriptors such as ‘no-cost ecol-ogists’ and ‘convenient greens’ (Wagner,1997). The willingness of customers to makesuch compromises has caused some debate.The enviropreneuring literature began by pro-moting ‘win–win’ solutions as opportunitiesfor premium pricing, but more recently hasemphasized the creation of products whichare affordable, environmentally superior andtechnically as good as, if not better than, con-ventional brands. Often this does not happen.A 1992 Roper Organization survey found that34% of Americans felt green products to betechnically inferior. Certainly it is importantto ensure that the nature of any compromisebeing made by consumers is acceptable tothem. Recent market research from America(Phillips, 1999) suggests that consumers, in-cluding the greenest, are increasingly unwill-ing to accept higher prices for greener goods,but are increasingly willing to alter theirlifestyles and buying patterns.

The willingness to compromise and accepttrade-offs will be determined by a number offactors including environmental awarenessand concern (and of course all of those famil-iar socio-demographic and psychological fac-tors that may or may not encourage it).However a crucial, but often neglected, factorthat will determine whether or not customerswill pay more, or accept reduced technicalperformance, is the confidence they have inthe environmental benefits involved. Buyerswill need to be confident that

� the environmental issue(s) involved arereal problems,

� the company’s market offering has im-proved eco-performance compared to com-petitor or previous offerings and

� purchasing the product will make somesort of material difference.

Although a tendency to over-report socialand environmental concerns will undoubtedlyexplain part of the discrepancy between envi-ronmental concern and purchaser behaviour,a vital but often overlooked factor is the confi-dence that customers have in companies’green marketing offerings. When Dutch con-sumers were posed the question ‘whom doyou believe about the environmental compati-bility of products?’ only 5% described themanufacturer as ‘believable’ compared to 89%for leading environmental groups (Einsmann,1992). Mintel’s 1991 UK Green Consumer Sur-vey showed that 90% of UK consumers werehighly sceptical of green promotional cam-paigns. In searching for an explanation for thediscrepancy between environmental concernand consumer actions, this is potentially avery significant component (Gray-Lee et al.,1994; Mohr et al., 1998).

Figure 1 suggests how green purchases forspecific products may vary according to thepurchaser’s confidence and willingness tocompromise.

Products in the win–win section of themodel, which offer clear benefits in terms ofenvironmental credentials and require littlecompromise on the part of the purchaser, areunlikely to struggle in the market place. Simi-larly purchases that offer good technical per-formance while saving money, such asdetergent refills, will find market acceptancerelatively easily even if their environmentalbenefits seem marginal. Products that ask forconsiderable compromises need to instil highlevels of confidence among purchasers abouttheir environmental advantages. Body Shop’sproducts are typically more expensive thanconventional high street rivals and some othergreen ‘me too’ brands, but, despite periodicmedia attacks, their credibility has remainedstrong. A product such as non-disposablenappies has considerable disadvantages interms of user convenience, and has seen theconfidence in its environmental advantageseroded by research findings (albeit sponsoredby Procter and Gamble), suggesting the waterand energy costs associated with washingmay give disposables the upper hand envi-ronmentally despite their disposal costs(Buck, 1989).

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IMPLICATIONS

There are several implications and potentialbenefits of looking at green purchasingthrough the lens of this model.

� A return to rationality. By focusing on howthe purchaser views the costs and benefitsof green purchasing, this approach takesconsideration of green consumption in avery unfashionable direction, towards ra-tionality. Since environmental issues areseen as ‘soft’ and emotive, and, since neo-classical rational economics takes much ofthe blame for past environmental degrada-tion, green purchasing is usually viewed asruled by emotion and psychology.

� A move beyond price. Where the rationalityof green purchaser behaviour has beenconsidered, it is usually in terms of price/quality trade-offs (e.g. Crosby et al., 1981;Sririam and Forman, 1993). By consideringthe broader concept of purchase compro-mise, it allows other non-price based coststo be included. These can include the effortthat the purchaser has to make in terms ofgathering and analysing information, mak-ing a purchase and disposing of or usingthe product in a certain way (Dehab et al.,1995). This broad view of costs is in linewith transaction cost theory (TCT), whichembraces all forms of cost within a transac-tion or event, including issues of risk, timeand psychological effort, as well as mone-tary costs. Although usually applied toorganizational decisions such as di-versification, investment abroad or out-sourcing decisions, TCT approaches are be-ginning to be applied directly to consumerpurchasing, for example in studying howand why consumers accept or reject theinternet as a means of purchase (Liang andHuang, 1998).

� An emphasis on context. The hunt for thegreen consumer has tended to stress theidea of identifying and targeting peoplewho will make green purchases, a processthat stresses a consistent target. The pur-chase matrix emphasizes the idea that cer-tain purchases and purchase situationslend themselves to green purchase be-

haviour. This approach is in line with theresearch of Berger and Corbin (1992),which showed that perceived consumer ef-fectiveness is context specific and variesbetween purchases. So the same consumermay purchase free-range eggs, becausethey believe it will make a difference, butreject a CFC-free fridge because they be-lieve that it will not.

� Demystifying the knowledge/behaviour rela-tionship. The dynamics of this model mayhelp to explain one of the mysteries of thegreen market, the relationship between en-vironmental knowledge and green con-sumption. The assumption has been thatincreasing levels of environmental knowl-edge will increase environmental concernand thereby increase green consumption(Oskamp et al., 1991). However, a range ofstudies trying to relate the two, many ofwhich were included within the meta-anal-ysis of Hines et al. (1987), have failed tofind a significant relationship between thetwo. Various explanations have been pro-posed for this lack of connection, includinga lack of knowledge among purchasers,problems with measurement and a ten-dency to measure general environmentalknowledge, even though knowledge ofspecific issues may be a better predictor(Schahn and Holzer, 1990). In practice therelationship may reverse expectations, inthat increasing environmental knowledgemay actually reduce the purchasers’ confi-dence in the suitability of market basedsolutions for environmental challenges,and it may make them more aware of theshortcomings of products seeking to mar-ket themselves on a green platform. It istherefore perhaps not surprising that re-search trying to link knowledge to be-haviour has been typified by contradictoryresults and low correlations (Diamanto-poulos et al., 1994). Increased knowledge ofenvironmental issues will tend to alert pur-chasers to the complex problems that liebehind them. Any increased tendency tobe green in one’s consumer behaviour isquite likely to be counterbalanced by atendency to be less of a consumer.

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� Reconsidering the importance of information.The degree of confidence side of themodel stresses the influence that informa-tion has on green purchases. This doesnot simply involve non-price informationabout the product, but includes informa-tion about the physical product life-cycle,the production system which creates it,the organization responsible for produc-tion and the environmental issues towhich they relate. As such the commonapproach of considering eco-performanceas simply another product feature, orcomponent of product quality, seemsrather inadequate. The important of non-product information also calls for a freshlook at the economics of informationfrom the consumer’s viewpoint. Nelson(1970) argued that customers would treatparticular purchases as either ‘search’goods, which warranted prior research,or ‘experience’ goods, which were boughton a ‘suck-it-and-see’ basis. Consumerswould gather information according tothe costs involved and the perceived ben-efits of becoming better informed. Porter(1976) classified goods as low-cost con-venience goods, where consumers reliedon experience, and high-cost, non-con-venience goods, which would be re-searched. Laband (1991) tried to unitethese two themes by relating consumers’efforts to become informed to the cost ofpurchase, and therefore the significanceof making a poor choice. All of these per-spectives view the effort the consumer iswilling to expend to become informed asa function of the product itself, its mone-tary price, the consumer’s expectationsand experience of using it and the costsincurred by the consumer. A green pur-chase perspective involves the consumer’sinterest in non-monetary costs incurredby the environment and society, and inmore than just the product and how itperforms. Therefore consumers mighttake the trouble to become better in-formed about which tin of tuna theyshould buy, despite the fact that rod-and-line-caught tuna is a low-cost, conve-

nience good that will taste just like net-caught tuna. One of the difficulties forconsumers (and those studying them) isthe extent to which trying to consider theenvironment within purchasing requiresinformation that is new, complex and in-volves inconsistencies and contradictionsin terms of claims from environmental-ists, governments and companies. An-other interesting perspective from Nel-son’s (1970) work on information eco-nomics is that he relates the tendency formarketers to make unsubstantiated claimsto the ability of consumers to verify themprior to purchase. The harder it is to ver-ify a claim, the more likely it is to beexaggerated. The problems consumersmay have in verifying environmentalclaims perhaps explains the tendency ofcompanies to mislead found by Carlsonet al. (1993). Although there have beensuggestions during the recent controversyover genetically modified food that con-sumers are becoming over-stretched interms of the number of issues they arebeing asked to take an interest in whenpurchasing, evidence persists that con-sumers are curious about the environ-mental impact of products. The 1999 USGreen Attitudes survey found that 50%of all Americans look for environmentallabelling information when shopping(Phillips, 1999). Perhaps the popularity ofgreen consumer guides reflects, in addi-tion to environmental interest among con-sumers, a desire for the green purchasingprocess to be made simpler by providingadvice from trusted experts that can beused to create straightforward decisionrules.

� Setting a practical agenda. The matrix alsogives companies a relatively simple two-dimensional agenda to address in termsof developing green market offerings. Al-though there are many aspects to success-fully developing and marketing greenproducts, success will be largely dictatedby the company’s success in boostingconfidence and reducing compromisefrom the consumer’s viewpoint.

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THE GREEN PURCHASER AND THEGREEN CONSUMER – TWOSPECIES?

Another potentially helpful approach to un-derstanding green consumption is to separatethe consumption process out into stages, andto consider the environmental orientation ofconsumers at different points in the process.There are clearly some consumers with littleinterest in the environment, who are scepticalabout environmentalists’ claims and happy totrust science to resolve any problems that dooccur. Such ‘grey’ consumers match the de-scription by Neilssen and Scheepers (1992) of‘consistent non-ecologists’. At the other end ofthe scale are the ‘consistent ecologists’, whoselifestyle, purchasing and consumption are allinfluenced and informed by environmentalconcerns. In between will lie different shadesof green and grey, reflecting different levels ofenvironmental orientation throughout theconsumption process. Given that marketersemphasize the actual purchase, and also thatenvironmentalists have often portrayed anygiven purchase as a vote for or against theenvironment, there may be many consumerswho are willing to make greener purchases onthe basis of green labels or consumer guiderecommendations without any intention ofchanging their lifestyles, or the way theythink about consumption or the use and dis-posal of products. Figure 2 maps out threehypothetical paths through a very simplifiedconsumption process in terms of consciousenvironmental orientation. Although the ‘fitand forget’ green consumer might buy a simi-lar product to a consistent ecologist, theirneed for pre-purchase information and post-purchase opportunities to repair, reuse or re-cycle the product may vary considerably.

CONCLUSIONS

Why should these models throw any newlight on the hunt for the green consumer? Thekey benefit is that it shifts the debate awayfrom the consumer to the purchase itself, andthen beyond purchase as an activity, to con-

sider consumption as a total process. Theproblems and complexities of marketing tothe green consumer are well documented, anda wide variety of potential influences ongreen consumer behaviour have been exam-ined by many different researchers. This pa-per tries to provide insight by discarding thesocio-demographic and personality-based in-fluences that have been the prime researchfocus for the last 20 years (Diamantopoulos etal., 1994). Instead, it follows the example ofother researchers looking at the importance ofsituational factors relating to the purchase it-self. The green purchase perception matrixbrings together two of the factors that havemost often shown a positive link with greenpurchase behaviour in academic research –perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) andcost/benefit trade-offs. PCE represents an in-dividual’s belief in their ability to exert aninfluence in their role as a consumer. It is onemeasure that has consistently been linked togreen consumer behaviour in research studies(e.g. Berger and Corbin, 1992), and it is acrucial component in green consumer confi-dence. The issue of trade-offs is importantbecause they are often (although not always)involved in green consumption. This couldrefer to the extra time and effort involved inrecycling (Dehab et al., 1995) or to sacrificingquality or cost in purchasing (Sririam andForman, 1993), and if the perceived cost ex-ceeds the perceived benefit, the consumer willnot act to conserve the environment, despite afavourable attitude towards it. Similarly aconsumer who was very interested in buyinggreen products may not make a purchase of aspecific green product because to do so wouldinvolve a 50 mile round trip to a specialistoutlet, and the fuel burnt in getting theremight negate the environmental advantagesof the product.

The matrix helps us to move away from thequestion of who the green consumer is, toconsider why green purchases are, and oftenare not, made. Interestingly the matrix bringstogether the four universal green consumerneeds identified by Ottman (1993): the needfor information; the need for control; the needto make a difference and the need to maintaincurrent lifestyles.

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Figure 2. A simplified model of environmental orientation during the consumption process.

The consumer will remain central to thegreening of business for two very importantreasons. Firstly, the consumption undertakenby private households accounts for a largeproportion of the economy’s environmentalimpact (Grunert, 1993, estimates it at 30–40%). Secondly, consumption must also formpart of the solution within free marketeconomies in which consumer sovereignty isenshrined, and where the majority of compa-nies profess to have a marketing orientation.However, continuing within the conventionalmarketing paradigm (and with a hunting

mentality of identifying and targeting thegreen consumer with bait, traps and a littlecamouflage) is unlikely to create significantprogress towards sustainability. Perhapsmore importantly companies need to createthe right habitat in which green consumptioncan thrive. Instead of acting as hunters, ag-gressively trying to benefit from the emer-gence of green consumers by targeting them,they could act more like gamekeepers whonurture and facilitate growth in the popula-tion of green consumers. This can be achievedby boosting consumer confidence and by

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reducing the level of compromise they mustmake through openness, the provision of fullinformation and consumer choice, environ-mentally realistic pricing and the developmentof innovative clean technology solutions.

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BIOGRAPHY

Ken Peattie is Professor of Marketing atCardiff Business School, Aberconway Build-ing, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF1 3EU, UK.Tel.: +44 2920 875699Fax: +44 2920 874419E-mail: Peattie@Cardiff.ac.uk

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