Greenwashing and brand perception - a consumer sentiment analysis on organisations accused of greenwashing

This study analyses public sentiment from data mining twitter posts, both before and after greenwashing accusations were proven against eight established, well-known brands. The purpose of the exploration is to discover the extent to which greenwashing practice has a detrimental effect upon the consumer brand relationship. This effect is measured through customer comments via sentiment analysis. Applying data scraping techniques, data mining and sentiment analysis the authors measured the differences in consumer sentiment and positioning towards brands before and after the greenwashing scandals. Findings revealed that most brands showed a reduction in the number of Tweets directly after the greenwashing ruling. We apply brand transgression theory to explain our findings, which could be interpreted as consumer avoidance, in short, less engagement with the brand is evident, demonstrating consumer disapproval. Negative sentiment increased in the Tweets analysed, post greenwashing ruling for all brands, however, surprisingly, consumer trust with the brands was not altered and actually increased in the majority of cases.