Constructing The Green Consumer: Beyond The Obvious

Customers, through their purchases, play a central role in sustainable development. As public concern for the environment increases, opportunities emerge for marketers to produce the green products that consumers desire. However, there is growing skepticism about green claims, and despite many consumers being pro-environmental, most do not translate this into purchases. These factors pose problems for organisations, therefore in order to take advantage of the available opportunities, companies need to understand green consumer behavior in more depth. This paper will critically analyse the conventional literature on green consumption, but will also synthesise the recent research which covers exclusion, conspicuous consumption and cheating. Green purchasing might be different from other types of consumer behaviour due to the underlying motivations, and as such we are beginning to discover more about the experiential and symbolic benefits of green products. Buying green products can be considered as a new form of conspicuous consumption, which denotes the consumer as caring, informed and well- off . In addition, certain green consumption patterns may be used to reinforce symbolic boundaries. For instance, simultaneously including the consumer as green, but also excluding the consumer from the non-green consumption patterns which are said to have contributed to global warming etc. These findings appear to contradict the previous literature which has consistently indicated that values such as universalism and benevolence are positively related to environmentally friendly behaviours, and others such as power, achievement and hedonism are negatively related. It also seems that the ‘greener’ people are, counter-intuitively, the more likely they are to lie and cheat. The “halo of green consumerism” appears to be a licensing effect which allows people to behave less well in other areas of life. This literature review will consider the implications for green marketing, particularly focusing on exclusion, conspicuous consumption and cheating.