Green Marketing: The Roles of Appeal Type and Price Level

Environmental sustainability has attracted considerable interest in recent years in improving competitive advantage for both profit and non-profit organizations worldwide. Advertising appeal and pricing strategy for green products offer the potential for substantially improving consumers’ perception of quality, price, risk, and their intention, but previous studies focusing on this issue was relatively scarce and reported divergent and inconsistent results. This study adopted prospect theory to examine the role of appeal type and price level on consumers’ perceptions and purchase intentions toward green products in the context of advertising. By literature review and pre-test, a conceptual model with six postulated hypotheses is proposed. Participants were randomly assigned into six groups in accordance with the two × three (appeal type × price level) research design. A structured questionnaire is designed to collect field data. The results show that green advertising enhances perceived quality, price fairness, and purchase intentions more than non-green advertising appeal does. Simultaneously, low pricing enhances perceived price fairness, reduces financial risk, and strengthens purchase intentions more than high pricing strategies do. Consumers consider both green advertising appeal and low prices as risk-averse conditions. Before introducing a green marketing strategy, the marketer must seriously consider the consumer reactions toward green products have transformed from negative evaluations into positive ones from the consumer’s perspective. This study could provide green marketing implications in terms of how to effectively use advertising appeal and pricing strategy to increase consumers’ perceptions and buying intentions towards green products.