From MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
From recycling to reusing hotel towels, consumers who participate in a company’s “green” program are more satisfied with its service, finds a new study co-led by a Michigan State University researcher.
Doing good makes customers feel good, and that “warm glow” shapes opinion, said Tomas Hult, Byington Endowed Chair and professor of marketing in the Eli Broad College of Business. But it gets more complicated when companies throw incentives into the mix.
“Companies are increasingly adopting sustainability initiatives and ultimately these ‘green’ programs are intended to be good for the environment and also increase customers’ satisfaction,” said Hult, who is director of MSU’s International Business Center. “Our research helps strike the right balance between incentivizing customers to participate in green programs and focusing on the bottom-line performance of the company.”
Hult and researchers from Cornell University and Florida State University conducted four studies in three service settings: restaurants, hotels and online retailing. They found the types of rewards offered by companies to participate in sustainability programs could affect satisfaction.
The researchers tested two types of incentives: those that benefit solely the consumer (i.e. loyalty points) and those that benefit another organization (i.e. charitable donations).
For green program participants, rewards that benefit another organization created the highest rate of satisfaction about the business.
And for those who chose not to participate in a green program, self-benefiting rewards cast doubt about the motive of a program. That scenario offers nonparticipants an opportunity to rationalize their decision to not participate, and lack of guilt translates into feelings of satisfaction about the business, Hult said.
People will interpret incentives in whatever way best suits their egos, he said. So for both groups to be happiest, a company should allow customers to choose between a reward that benefits themselves or another organization.
Many managers, particularly in the hospitality industry, are reluctant to introduce sustainability initiatives that might negatively influence the guest experience, Hult said. But this research, one of the first of its kind, provides managers with guidance on how to best design such programs as well as best practices for “green marketing.”
###
In addition to Hult, the research team comprised Michael Giebelhausen and HaeEun Helen Chun, both assistant professors of marketing at Cornell University, and Joseph Cronin, John R. Kerr Eminent Scholar Chair in Marketing and Service Innovation at Florida State University.
The study is published in the July edition of the Journal of Marketing.
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Marketing to make a product appear socially positive seems to work best with luxury items, and I expect that it works by assisting consumers to overcome the guilt they feel about frivolous spending. Blowing 10$ on a cup of coffee is a waste, but if the consumer can believe that at least part of that money goes to a worthy cause, sales resistance is lowered.
With Green marketing, the company in question doesn’t even have to donate any of their profits to a charity–just by being Green (which is never rigorously defined) the customer can feel good about a 10$ cup of coffee because it helps the environment. Following the logic would of course conclude that if the environment is harmed less by a 10$ cup of coffee than the 2$ cup down the street, forgoing coffee entirely would be even more helpful, but helping the environment (another term never rigorously defined) isn’t the goal, the goal is to sell luxury items.
Good point. A Prius uses gasoline, just like my Mustang GT. Pride should begin when they use no gasoline.
Me, I’m happy to be restoring carbon to the atmosphere to feed the hungry plants in Africa.
If I see the words “Go Green” on an advertisement, I general go the other way. I refuse to participate in that feel good nonsense. It’s like if you do this, you will help save a tree. What? Trees are renewable crops and have been for decades. The U.S. has more trees now than when the first Europeans came over here. This whole green movement just shows how gullible people are.
Speaking of crops: “Recycle your breadcrumbs! Save the wheat!”
“Much. much more efficient market solution compared to Carbon taxes.”
Ahhhhhhh…..but gubermints and eco-green terrorists do not care about the market. It’s all about making their own green and controlling you.
Yes, bur some consumers have more sense than others! An old blurb
Learn from the Amish! Phase out the CFL light bulb!
The Lord leads in mysterious ways. In 2001 we moved to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Leacock Township no less, the township with the highest Amish population anywhere. The soil was worked by horses and mules, the buggies were everywhere and the clotheslines revealed their plain clothes waving in the wind. … https://lenbilen.com/2013/09/22/learn-from-the-amish-phase-out-the-cfc-light-bulb/
Beer is green. Sometimes. Well…once a year.
Green beer is a good thing though… Then again so is brown beer and red beer and gold beer and black beer and well, just beer in general… Except IPA’s, I’m not fond of IPA’s.
No worry, SMC.
I’ve got your slack, lame-ass on IPAs.
You just have to realize there are a lot of shitty IPAs out in world. That leaves a lot of great IPAs still though to find.
Joelobryan, you can have the IPA’s… unless they’re free. As every civilized beer drinker knows, or should know, Free Beer is the best beer (even if it is an IPA).
Actually, the whole thing generally results in my taking my purchasing elsewhere. I dropped Home Depot after learning they buy up farmer’s land in Costa Rica and turn it into tree farms where they graciously allow the farmer to still work. Breyer’s sustainability and no growth hormones turned me off. I buy from only one seed company because of the non-GMO scam (seed companies are not allowed to sell GMO seeds). Any company that goes green immediately turns me off and I look for a rational replacement.
Economics is simply the study of unlimited wants and limited means by which to satisfy them all and associated allocational efficiency. To that end you don’t spend a dollars worth of resources to obtain a $1.50 worth of benefits if spending it elsewhere can get you $2.00 worth (particularly if it’s my taxes) and welcome to marginal analysis and supply and demand. That’s often the quintessential problem for command economies and now the watermelons who often have different motives and demand that only they know best about-
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/
Demand the peasants use spoons and forks rather than fossil fuels and everyone will be employed and happy. Well we can have lots of windmills and solar panels to help out, because if left to our own devices we’d naturally choose the cheaper private/individual cost-
http://articles.mcall.com/2011-05-24/opinion/mc-barrel-oil-explainit-20110524_1_actual-barrels-oil-and-oil-products-btu
and won’t be paying the proper social cost only the watermelons know about from their computer models. (welcome to externalities and the tragedy of the commoners they’d say)
Well they have a point providing they’re right about the computer models and their subsequent calculations of the cost of the externalities, but then there’s also the cost and effectiveness of their alternatives to consider. Well someone so eminently qualified has to work it all out for us and monitor and supervise it all and naturally spare no expense on them as simply part of the necessary overheads, in order to prevent greedy, ignorant bastards like us from absconding without paying all those true social costs they’ve got figured. Economics is a fairly straightforward social science as you can readily see from the summary here and with computing power nowadays, there’s always econometric modelling to help them work it all out for us.
observa
Spot on.
And when They have worked it out, We have to pay.
Please send my doctorate in Economics from Moscow University to my home address, the one I assume Vladimir the Hugely-Wealthy already knows.
Auto – still uncertain if it could be, alternatively, Vladimir the Ruthless Advantage-Taker of Water-Melon-Induced Lunacies. Bit long to go on a three-kopek coin, I suppose . . . .
Why do consumers participate in ‘green’ programs?
Mostly ignorance regarding the actual costs and benefits of such programs as well as all the feel good issues noted here, most of which depend upon that self same ignorance component.
It is simple ‘carrot and stick’ behavioral modification, as explained by B.F. Skinner. AKA ‘operant conditioning’, the *systematic* use of mild rewards and mild punishment during conditioning can ‘program’ the subject to perform any desired action from routine chores to life-sacrificing deeds. It has been around at least since Alexander the Great invented the professional army.
This is why the media is just as guilty as the Imams in encouraging terrorism – the media attention constitutes the reward.
heh- earlier- it was the abrahamists main contribution to human history- they established animal husbandry and immediately applied it to their neighbors and children.
punishment has absolutely nothing to do with justice. it adds to the list of damages.
there is a heirarchy of amelioration when damage is done:
restitution: put it back – undo the damage
restoration: fix it – undo the damage
compensation: pay for a new one – doesn’t undo the damage, but it repairs the situation
punishment: add to the pile – create new claims – fix nothing and destroy more.
punishment is for sadists to persuade horrified onlookers that justice requires additional suffering.
sadists punish. only sadists punish.
only gullible cowards accept punishment.
real men fix what they broke.
get some.
I can see the 23rd century Onion article now: “Serial Killer Pays Cloning Costs for Victims, Walks”
In the 1980’s a trekking companion of mine was publicly called out in the airport at an Aeroflot stopover in Russia, because there was a towel missing from the room. This really is the world the greens want to take us back to.
Since most of these feel good Eco/green programs amount to spoodiddily, it’s typical liberal symbolism over substance.
Right? I don’t see a single one of ’em giving up iPhones, indoor plumbing, shrink-wrapped and bar-coded “food” ready-to-eat, or their addiction to air travel and luxury goods manufactured on the far side of the earth. That’s why I consider their noise somewhere about as serious as the buzzing of flies. Like flies, they can’t help themselves, but it doesn’t mean we let them set policy for the rest of us.
As Lord of the Flies, I ‘resemble’ that!
…Absolute proof that liberals have lost touch with reality…
======= Kerry:…” Air conditioners as big a threat as ISIS” ======
“http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/07/23/kerry-air-conditioners-as-big-threat-as-isis.html”
These people;’s way of thinking is really getting dangerous !
I ONLY go with “green” if it saves me MONEY and there’s not very much of it out there that does that!
The area many example of old school habits that are green based on life cycle analysis.
Composting is one example. It does require a little work and knowledge of what not to put in a compost pile. When you consider the fertilizer energy trapped in nitrogen in bacteria cells, composting is a great renewable energy project with zero capital costs.
The city of Seattle did some good research (no really!) that show putting garbage disposals in low income housing is good for the environment. The reason is that food waste gravity drains to the wastewater treatment system. Sewage sludge is used on semi-arid soils reducing wind erosion and increasing wheat yields.
Sewage sludge is just an unpopular form of composting. It does smell really bad.
Anaerobic digestion of animal waste is very green but has high capital cost. Factory farms are very green because the manure on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) is collected and used for fertilizer avoiding runoff into streams.
Recycling aluminum is a no brainer. Plastic, glass, and paper depend on the difference transportation energy between the landfill and where it is recycled. Marginal at best.
The point here is that there are many science based ways to reduce environmental impact. Green washing ignore science and focuses on making those who hate science feel good.
Absolutely!
I’ve worked with micro-organisms that live in manure and it’s wise to be very careful with it.
Germany has had a botulism problem for many years and we don’t need that kind of problem here.
You can’t just dump sludge onto fields. This has to be managed as well.
Thank you Barbara for the scary word of the day. Bad news, everything is dangerous. There are many pathogenic bacteria that are ubiquitous every place in the world.
Everyplace place in the world has a problem with botulism and it has nothing to do with animal waste. It has to do with with improper food preparation.
“You can’t just dump sludge onto fields.”
Nice use of the word ‘dump’. To be sure you can not just dump solar panels on the roofs of homes or dump wind turbines in fields.
Along these lines John Kerry is giving up Refrigeration and A.C. since it it as threatening as ISIS. OOPS I got it wrong he wants the poor people to eats spoiled food and live in sweltering heat and just live with the terrorism while he grows his carbon footprint.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/kerry-refrigerator-chemicals-are-just-as-bad-as-the-islamic-state/article/2597416
Progs’ hearts throb whenever they can get
a green chill up their legs by adopting any
form of environmental quackery. Now the
hated “capitalists” have figured out how to
use it to milk the idjits of their cash. Good Show!
They don’t seem to be accounting MY reaction, as I generally seek to avoid partonizing companies that promote the evil human-hating “green” religion, and tell them so with some regularity. I can’t be the only one.
By embracing the millennial cult of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, the Greens have done themselves and the environment a terrible disservice.
I don’t think any rational being is happy about wanton habitat destruction or reduction in bio-diversity, but then these are linked to the witchcraft of Global Warming most people seem willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Well duh?!!
People do “green” things b/c of “Save the Earth” propaganda.
Not that recycling one plastic bag or 10 billion plastic bags would make one iota of difference to the planet and climate.
I avoid buying products that are labelled natural, or sustainable or green in some way. I view these labels as warnings, they warn the consumer that these products are overpriced and are sub-par performers relative to their normal non-green competitors. So I avoid them.
Same with electric car and solar panel subsidies. When the government has to pay you to buy something, it’s a clear warning that these products are going to suck.
Like my stock response to infomercials: “If this new product is as good as you claim, why do you need to butter it up with 2-for-1 deals and extra “free” gifts? A genuinely useful product can sell itself.”
The two for one deals are to get mucho extra dollars on the shipping and handling. The deals are always two for one “just pay separate shipping and handling”. If you look on the net for complaints about these deals it’s mainly people complaining about the outrageous shipping and handling charges.
So, feeling good is a matter of perception and using a symbol is a good way of manipulating perception. Keen sense of the obvious there.
Hybrid vehicles are ideal for taxi services and similar travel patterns of short journeys in start stop conditions provided you rarely use the vehicle for long runs. It ceases to be a benefit when the vehicle is used fifty fifty mileage for short and long runs from a study I found on the web done by one of the battery manufacturers but annoyingly it seems to have disappeared now.
$0.25 per bag at the store … please hang your towels if you would like to reuse … put your CRVed containers into the trash company’s bin instead of cashing them in … what do all of these have in common. Your money into someone else’s pocket (and / or, less service for the same amount of money).
When my county started doing different bin collections they introduced two separate recycling containers. One for cardboard and one for tins, plastic, and glass. One week later someone filmed the operatives putting it all in the refuse hopper for landfill. That annoyed me.
I personally think that if a company is trying too hard to be ‘green’ I often suspect ulterior motives.