Green marketing promotion tools and Indian consumers' green purchase intentions

Barriers to consumer adoption of sustainable products – an empirical analysis

“…the 1990s, Carlson et al (1991) observed that promotions or advertisements related to sustainable products that are extremely technical in nature are perceived to be deceptive by the end consumer, and this subsequently leads to lower credibility of the sponsor. Subsequent investigations revealed that when consumers do not fully trust on sustainable promotions such as green advertisements, this leads to less attention paid by the end consumer (Rahbar and Wahid, 2011; Nath et al , 2014a). The main reason reported for low perceived credibility of promotions is the vague claims made by corporations about a product that does not bear a sustainable image (Chan, 2004).…”

“…Furthermore, consumers feel that small and niche producers of sustainable products and services do have the required capacity/infrastructure to provide for decent reliability in service delivery like their unsustainable counterparts leading to low functional performance (Salmela and Varho, 2006). Byrne and Polonsky (2001); and Nath, et al (2012) have reported that low functional performance of sustainable innovations such as electric vehicles is a significant impediment toward their adoption. Recently, Tan et al (2016) reported that there is an unfavorable performance perception of sustainable household products and such unfavorable perception may affect sustainable product adoption as perceived performance is a critical factor that determines sustainable product adoption (Tan et al , 2016; Borin et al , 2013).…”

“…Further, Delmonico et al (2018) also highlight the fact that lack or non-existence of suppliers of sustainable products is a major impediment in the procurement of sustainable products in corporate purchasing scenarios as well. Finally, the most damaging fall out of low availability of sustainable products is that when sustainable product alternatives are not available to the end consumer at the time of purchase, then product attributes such as performance and sustainability are overshadowed by inconvenience caused by such lack of availability, and thus, adoption remains low (Coddington, 1993;Bhate and Lawler, 1997;Byrne and Polonsky, 2001;Nath et al, 2012Nath et al, , 2014b. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that:…”

“…In this regard, Lane and Potter (2007) and Thakur and Murgai (2012) report that the unavailability of fueling and maintenance infrastructure is one of the major barriers toward the adoption of sustainable transportation. However, repair and maintenance services for sustainable products for various sustainable product categories are also limited (Nath et al, 2012(Nath et al, , 2014b. Armstrong et al (2015) have reported that in case of sustainable clothing that is sold on the PSS model, the consumers were uncertain and reluctant to commit to such a product because the service support related to sustainable clothing had long wait times and consumers faced complications in customization.…”

“…Past studies on consumer behavior regarding sustainable products reported that consumers find it difficult to integrate sustainable products in their day to day life and routines Nath et al, 2014b). Nath et al (2012Nath et al ( , 2014b reported that consumers find it inconvenient to use eco-friendly packing in place of plastic bags as eco-friendly packing is usually made up of paper, which is not water-resistant. Also, electric vehicles take much time to charge, which causes inconvenience to the end consumer.…”