Are consumers sensitive to large retailers' sustainable practices? A semiotic analysis in the French context (original) (raw)
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Advances in marketing, customer relationship management, and e-services book series, 2017
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International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 2015
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine and explain what organizes the marketing of retail sustainability. Design/Methodology/Approach: Theoretically, this paper takes a marketing-aspractice approach and makes use of practice theory to conceptualize the marketing of sustainability. Methodologically, an ethnographic study of three Swedish retail chains and their marketing work has been conducted. Interviews with management, observations made at the stores of these three retailers and various marketing texts and images produced by these retailers form the material analysed. Findings: This paper illustrates three different ways of marketing and enacting sustainability. It shows that sustainability is framed differently and, indeed, enacted differently in order to fit various ideas about who are the responsible consumers. The argument is that rather than consumer demand, supply pressure or media scandals, the marketing of sustainability is in each of the cases studied configured around a specific notion of the responsible consumer. What sustainability work is marketed, through which devices it is marketed, and how it is framed is guided by an idea of whom the retailers' responsible consumers are, what their lifestyles are, and what they will be interested in. Images of responsible consumers work as configuring agents around which retailing activities and devices are organized.
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Background: The green consumption can be defined as the consumption that includes, in addition to price and quality variables in the decision of consumption, the environmental variable. Thus, one of the actions taken by companies to change this scenario has been the investment in marketing and advertising actions, both at sale point as an institutional basis. It is important to understand whether among the strategies adopted by companies, which it can result in a concrete action in terms of consumption of green products in retail. We conducted a survey comprising 1,233 Brazilian consumers to observe their effect in the relationship between intention and declared purchase of green products and understand the consumer's willingness to turn his environmental concern and his confidence in the green product appeal in a practical action. The collected sample was sufficient to detect the desired effects of Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Squares Method (Partial Least Square - PLS) using the SmartPLS 2.0 M3 software. Objective: In order to analyze the influence of skepticism and environmental concerns in the perception of the individual to the purchase intent and declared purchase of green products at retail. Results: As a result, it was observed that the consumer takes more account of his purchase routine and his past experience than environmental concerns and influence of advertisements with green appeal. Conclusion: consumption of green products in the retail needs mechanisms aimed at the change of habit and the break of paradigms (consumer and retailer).
Consumer’s Intention of Purchase Sustainable Products: The Moderating Role of Attitude and Trust “, 2015
Awareness about environment has found its place in consumer's mind set. During the past decades, consumers considered issues such as environmental issues and social issues (e.g. label's right or child's right) while purchasing products. Hence, this group of consumers are looking forward the alternative products such as sustainable products which could be presuming environmental issues and social issues. Sustainability is a vital element which is a challenge for product developers nowadays. On the other hand, companies put efforts to meet the demand of this group of consumers where the competition is high. While, there are available sustainable products in the markets, consumer's intention of purchase these products is imprecise. Besides, the attributes of these products are not categorised yet by scholars. Therefore to understand consumer's intention, the present study aims (i) to categorise the sustainable products; (ii) to extract the influential factors on consumer's intention to purchase sustainable products; and (iii) to develop a conceptual model of consumer's intention to purchase sustainable products. By reviewing literature, the factors of belief, knowledge, attitude, company's sustainable responsibility (i.e. economic, environment and social), trust and perceive quality are founded to be as the influential factors on consumer's intention to purchase these products. Besides, the mediating roles of attitude and trust on consumer's intention to purchase sustainable products are considered in this paper. Eventually, the conceptual framework of consumer's intention to purchase sustainable products is proposed.
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Consumers (mis)trust: the role of trust in the establishment of a real sustainable market
Caroline Sanchez, 2020
A significant number of studies (Bray et al. 2011; D'Souza et al. 2007; MacKenzie 1991; Peattie 1995; Schlegelmilch et al. 1996; Aarset et al. 2004; Bech- Larsen and Grunert 2001; Janssen and Hamm 2012; Vermeir and Verbeke 2006) states that trust is a necessary prerequisite for the establishment of a true sustainable market, especially if “green” products have a higher cost than the ones which are not “green”. The progressive movement of distrust of the consumer can be considered as a historical fact, which begins to take root starting from the industrial era, passing through the nineties with the food scandals and arriving at today's confusion produced by the misleading information that is given to consumers inside the supermarket. Trust, however, is a factor of no small importance, since knowledge that does not belong to the secular individual is needed to understand today's agri-food supply chain (Norberg-Hodge, 2007). Where consumer knowledge is exhausted, trust in the manufacturers and brands begins (Hansen et al, 2003). For the establishment and expansion of a truly sustainable market, consumers need to trust that they are buying a truly eco-friendly product, otherwise there is a possibility that they will lose interest in purchasing these products (Chen and Chang, 2013). Trust also lies at the basis of acceptance of new food technologies and novel food (Bearth et al., 2014). To improve consumer confidence levels, it is necessary to improve the transparency and clarity of information. To do this, it may be useful to promote information campaigns that teach how to correctly read the labels and information displayed on the product packaging. In addition, in order to lower the levels of confused information to which the consumer is subject, and to penalize brands that exploit the lack of strict regulations, it is important to promote labels certified by third parties and which take into account the environmental impact that all the realization of the product has gone through.
Consumption Markets & Culture, 2012
To explain inconsistent behaviour that is well documented in green-marketing and consumption, the authors develop the (neo)structuralist model of meaning co-creation that is based on the signifying practices of hybrid car manufacturers and consumers. The model reveals that market agents are recruited into a symbolic order that requires the perpetual reinforcement of self-opposing meanings as a condition for signification. The main problem of green practice is not the issue of market agents' authenticity/hypocrisy. Rather it represents a more interactive phenomenon – the common structure of meaning-creation – which silences important transformative action choices and thus defeats its own purpose.
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