Marketing for Sustainable Development

7The Effectiveness of “Provocation” in Environmental Advertising: Beware of “Greenbashing”

Sihem DEKHILI¹ and Samer ELHAJJAR²

¹ CNRS – BETA, University of Strasbourg, France

² University of Balamand, Tripoli, Lebanon

7.1. Introduction

The emergence of a new generation of responsible consumers concerned about the environment is pushing companies to reconsider their business models and implement environmental initiatives. As a result, numerous brands in different sectors of activity are on the path towards a “green” status (Erdman 2008).

In order to valorize their responsible actions, companies choose environmental advertising. This is a tool aimed at promoting environmentally-friendly offers, informing and reassuring consumers of the ecological quality of products and encouraging responsible purchases. By means of such a communication strategy, companies are seeking, above all, to differentiate themselves from the competition and gain economic advantages (Banerjee et al. 1995). These methods of communication are more than necessary, given that ecological products are credence goods which are characterized by a high cost in the search for information on their environmental quality. Consumers are never sure about the product’s ecological characteristics, even after consuming it (Van Amstel et al. 2008).

However, opportunistic behaviors have emerged in this area: companies have attempted to spread distorted information about their actual environmental performance, leading to what ...