Turning Consumers Green: From Green Marketing Myopia to Our 2020 Vision

Abstract

Sustainability appears to be at a tipping point. Once a marginalized concept, fighting for attention, today thousands of the world's largest corporations and small businesses, national and local governments, professions, universities, and institutions are incorporating sustainability initiatives into their operations and strategic planning.¹ Pressured by government policy, corporate self-interests, and social expectations, leading companies are taking actions across their value chains, potentially redefining their roles in society and pursuing the triple bottom line in order to respect people, planet, and profit. While sustainability warrants significant political and systematic changes throughout society, in this article, we focus on one integral component: consumers. Surveys indicate that 30 to 70 percent of consumers say they want to buy greener, but only 1 to 5 percent actually do.² Consequently, while many businesses have started to make great strides in greening themselves and their supply chains, they have often left customers out of their calculus. This must change. For 2020 and beyond, we encourage businesses to incorporate consumers into their sustainability agendas by persuading them to act more responsibly and adopt environmentally-preferable products. We offer businesses five principles, drawn from case studies, marketing trends, and the academic literature, to help nudge consumers to go green. Our principles may serve as an initial guide for businesses to identify strategies to meet customer needs and convince them of the benefits of living more sustainably.

Introduction

David Kwen, owner of East West Market in Vancouver, British Columbia, wanted his customers to bring their own reusable shopping bags and thought some mischievous fun might nudge them along.³ In 2019, Kwenre placed the East West Market logo on his store's single-use plastic bags with gag store names—“Dr. Toews' Wart Ointment Wholesale,” “Colon Care Co-op,” and “Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium”—with the tagline: “Avoid shame. Bring a reusable bag.” On Instagram, Kwen explained his goal was to embarrass consumers for using single-use plastic bags. “It's hard to always remember a reusable bag,” he wrote, “We redesigned our plastic bags to help you never forget again.”

The stunt backfired. Word spread about Kwen's comical bags, and people flocked to his store, paying 5 cents each, to collect them! Kwen's story of unintended consequences went viral across newsrooms and social media, sparking conversations not just about single-use plastic bags, but also the role businesses should play in prodding consumers to go green. Should businesses encourage customers to act more responsibly, or just give customers what they want to keep their business? After all, aren't customers always right?

The Mainstreaming of Corporate Sustainability

The pursuit of sustainability is a complex issue, warranting significant political and systematic changes to address the climate crisis, which is spurred on by deforestation, soil exploitation, loss of biodiversity, and rampant consumerism. Corporations across the world are starting to recognize the challenge and are embracing sustainable practices. Their motivations vary.

While government policies and tax incentives often push companies to go green, many find that such practices typically lead to efficiencies, waste elimination, and long-term cost savings. In best-case scenarios, sustainable practices often reduce risks and liabilities and bolster corporate reputations.⁴ Company leaders can shape industry standards ahead of competitors and government mandates, and going green can even boost employee morale and help recruit and retain key talent.⁵ Introducing novel, green products also improves consumers' attitudes toward the overall brand.⁶ Toyota's celebrated Prius, for example, bolstered Toyota's overall image as an innovator.⁷ Finally, while much still needs to be achieved, many companies see that going green is simply the right thing to do. Taking action to improve environmental performance is recognized as smarter than inaction.

GreenBiz (in partnership with Trucost) has been tracking corporate sustainability for over a decade. Its 2019 State of Green Business Report described that despite dour headlines about various environmental crises and the lack of political will to address them among some of the world's largest economies, there are positive signs. For example, the report found that corporate awareness of climate and environmental issues appears to be increasing rapidly, with 80 percent of companies reporting exposure to physical or market transition risks associated with climate change. A circular economy is emerging in some industries, including heightened concern over food waste, emerging markets for carbon-removal technologies, and the acceleration of corporate clean energy purchases.¹ For example, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Walmart, General Motors, and Google are a few major corporations that have invested significantly in solar and wind energy, striving to have their operations powered completely by clean energy.⁸

Automakers around the world have promised to release dozens of electric vehicle models in the next few years. The elimination of plastic waste has also become a global cause, ranging from the symbolic eradication of plastic straws and single-use bags to improving ways to recycle plastic bottles and consumer goods. For instance, Adidas recently announced its plans to use only recycled plastic in its apparel by 2024,⁹ and Coca-Cola and Pepsi have ended their memberships with the Plastics Industry Association, a lobbying group which has advocated against plastic bans, and announced their commitments to use packaging that is recyclable, reusable, or biodegradable by 2025.¹⁰ Given the market power of Adidas, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi, their actions could influence other corporations and transform the future of plastic use.

Finally, the 2019 State of Green Business Report noted that concepts that seemed fringe not long ago are becoming commonplace, such as regenerative agriculture, the reuse of post-consumer resources, and “recommerce.” General Mills and Land O'Lakes, for example, are just two corporations working to improve land management and soil among their suppliers. Timberland has partnered with tire maker, Omni United, to reuse old tires for its footwear.¹¹ And Patagonia's popular Worn Wear initiative illustrates the growing recommerce movement in which consumers return used goods to manufacturers for refurbishment and resale.¹² In short, GreenBiz's tracking of corporate practices shows that sustainability is becoming more deeply embedded in companies' strategies, operations, and supply chains.

The one sector of society stubbornly out of sync, however, is end consumers.

The Trouble with Consumers

GreenBiz's executive editor and chairman, Joel Makower, has been following polls on consumer attitudes on sustainability issues for years. Despite progress on corporate sustainability, Makower hasn't seen much change among consumers. As proof, he asserts that aside from money-saving LED light bulbs, which are expected to account for 70 percent of global lighting sales in 2020,¹³ virtually no green consumer product commands significant market share. Consequently, he has grown increasingly dismissive of pollsters' “everyone-is-going-green” hype and decided to quit tracking such polls, explaining in 2019:

Why did I stop? The survey results became numbingly repetitive: Yes, majorities of Americans are concerned about air and water quality, climate change and other issues. Yes, they want to work for and buy from companies that they perceive to be proactive on these issues. Yes, they are willing to make personal changes in the name of protecting the planet. But no, they don't want to pay more or suffer (m)any inconveniences when doing so.¹⁴

The seeming paradox of high poll numbers proclaiming consumers' green attitudes and more sobering statistics of actual green product demand has been confirmed in the consumer behavior literature. Dara O'Rourke and Abraham Ringer, for example, report that while surveys indicate that 30 to 70 percent of consumers say that they want to buy greener, healthier, more socially-responsible products, only 1 to 5 percent actually do.² This intention-behavior gap appears to be driven by consumers' myopic and often willful ignorance about product ethicality, brand loyalties that inhibit change, and a lack of credible information about the environmental and social performance of products. Consumers are also skeptical of green products' quality, believing that they can't make a difference, and they are generally unwilling to pay more for greener options.²

But aren't younger consumers going green? Many analysts assert that Millennials, the demographic cohort of individuals born between the early 1980s and 2000 who reached young adulthood in the early 21st century, are expressing stronger environmental awareness and favor brands that are regarded as having a positive effect on the environment.¹⁵ At more than 83 million, Millennials are the largest generation in the United States, and they grew up during a time of technological change (Internet, mobile phones), globalization, and economic disruption (two economic recessions), giving them a different set of values, behaviors, and experiences compared to their parents.

Research on Millennials, however, tells a different story. A 2018 study by Iman Naderi and Eric Van Steenburg entitled, “Me First, Then the Environment: Young Millennials as Green Consumers,” says it all. The researchers surveyed college Millennials from a large U.S. public university and found that Millennials tend to “go green” only when the benefits to themselves outweigh the costs, showing that altruistic green attitudes were not a significant predictor of their green behavior.¹⁵ Thus, when selling green products such as LED lights, water-saving shower heads, reusable coffee cups, or electric vehicles, “save the earth” marketing messages need to be put aside in favor of money-saving promotions to compel adoption.¹⁵ Likewise, a 2019 industry report by CouponFollow found that discount coupons and prices largely governed Millennials' buying behavior.¹⁶

Makower asserts that because many businesses have made great strides in greening themselves and their supply chains, consumers have become greener despite their ambivalence. But ignoring consumers and accommodating their unsustainable behaviors (e.g., by supplying single-use plastic bags) are simply obviating their efforts.

Our 2020 Vision

Businesses should abandon the old the-customer-is-always-right mantra and encourage consumers to act more responsibly and adopt environmentally-preferable products—for the good of people, planet, and profit. Unilever estimates that almost 70 percent of its greenhouse gas footprint depends on which products consumers choose and how they use and dispose of them (e.g., by conserving water and energy while doing laundry, recycling containers after use, etc.).¹⁷ Research indicates that service sector businesses, such as airlines, hotels, and restaurants, can achieve significant monetary savings by educating guests to conserve resources, from reusing towels to switching off lights.⁴ For example, Marriott estimates that it saves 11 to 17 percent on water and sewer costs through its hotel towel reuse program.¹⁸ Thus, consumer behavior drives corporate sustainability outcomes.

Because businesses know their customers, they are in the best position to develop greener products and processes that can both satisfy consumer needs and reduce waste. Stronger consumer demand for environmentally-preferable products and processes could better drive the market's entire value chain to foster a more circular economy, rooting out waste and pollution and keeping products and materials in use. This would allow businesses to better reap the cost-savings, innovation, and waste- and risk-reduction rewards of sustainable practices. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reported that annually the fashion industry is responsible for nearly 20 percent of all industrial water pollution and 10 percent of carbon emissions and uses a fourth of all chemicals produced worldwide.¹⁹ Frustratingly, consumers dispose of over half of their “fast fashion” garments (inexpensive apparel that is produced quickly to capitalize on the latest clothing trends) in less than a year. If the apparel industry encouraged consumers to return used clothing for refurbishment or recycling, it could recapture over $500 billion in value annually and significantly mitigate the industry's outsized environmental impacts.²⁰

But short of hotel managers asking guests to limit their showers or reuse their towels, how can businesses nudge indifferent consumers to go green? The academic literature offers some insights. Ironically, one of the biggest problems with green marketing in practice has been its myopic emphasis on green.

Avoiding Green Marketing Myopia

In the 1990s, Philips launched the Earth Light™, an early compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb. Initially, consumers didn't care for the CFL's illumination quality and bulky shape. Despite improvements, sales languished. Philips asked consumers why they weren't buying the energy-efficient bulbs and discovered that the name Earth Light just wasn't reaching them. “Environmental responsibility was the number four or five [purchase] criterion,” noted Steve Goldmacher, director of corporate communications for Philips Lighting in the United States. “Number-one [was] that they wanted the bulb to last longer.”²¹ Consumers wanted fewer trips to the store to buy bulbs and up the ladder to change them. In 2000, Philips scrapped the environmental angle and rebranded the CFL as Marathon™ to accentuate its seven-year life over incandescent lighting. Sales eventually took off.²² The lesson? Long-life convenience trumped greenness.

Earth Light's initial environmental emphasis illustrates a common problem with many green marketing initiatives in what Jacquelyn Ottman and her colleagues called “green marketing myopia”—focusing too much on product greenness over what's in it for most consumers.²³ Businesses need to recognize that green may be a product feature, but it must be linked to a consumer benefit. Given that green consumers only make up a tiny fraction of the broader market (e.g., O'Rourke and Ringer's claim that only 1 to 5 percent of consumers are green²), to encourage widespread adoption and make a difference, marketers need to leverage green products' mainstream value to satisfy the needs of broader markets. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy expects that the energy saved and pollution eliminated by widespread adoption of LED bulbs will be the equivalent to the annual power production of 44 large electric power plants, totaling over $30 billion by 2027.²⁴ Imagine the money savings and pollution reductions if other environmentally-preferable products and processes, such as organic foods and recommerce, were widely adopted and became mainstream! How can they? Our five principles strive to promote this goal.

Principle #1: Promote the Consumer Value of Green Products

Philip's Earth Light turnaround centered on offering sought-after, non-green consumer value, such as convenience and cost savings. When consumers are convinced of those desirable benefits of environmentally-preferable products, they are more inclined to adopt them. Ottman and her colleagues identified six mainstream value propositions that can enhance the consumer appeal of green: 1.) money savings; 2.) health and safety; 3.) performance; 4.) status; 5.) convenience; and 6.) bundling, where consumer value is added to green products.²³ Each of these are discussed in turn.

Money savings

Because many green products strive to conserve energy and reduce resources, long-term money savings offer a compelling selling point. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, for example, certifies the energy efficiency of products (such as light bulbs, appliances, and electronics), homes, and buildings, with consumers often willing to pay a premium for products bearing the certification. Another example is Blueland nontoxic cleaning products, which eliminate the costs associated with single-use plastic bottles and shipping of weighty liquid cleaners with its innovative tablets, priced at $2 each (significantly less than traditional liquid cleaners). Consumers simply dissolve the tablets in tap water in reusable bottles to make the liquid cleaning agents.²⁵

Health and safety

Concerns over exposure to harsh or toxic chemicals, hormones, or drugs in products and foods have made health and safety important mainstream product considerations. For example, consumers are often willing to pay a premium for pesticide-free organic foods and products. Method Home, maker of nontoxic home cleaning agents and soaps, has the amusing slogan “Clean like a mother!” to proclaim the idea that good mothers want to protect their families and homes from harmful chemicals.²⁶ Likewise, Green Choice Carpet emphasizes that its baby-safe carpet cleaning formula is safe for young children, pets, and people with allergies.

Performance

The conventional wisdom has been that green products don't work as well as non-green ones, and yet today, many green products perform better than conventional products. Tesla's stated mission is “to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy,” but its electric vehicle marketing focuses on speed, technology, and muscle-car sex appeal to entice its male-dominated target market.²⁷ Aside from energy- and water-efficiency, front-load washing machines clean better and are gentler on garments compared to top-load washers because they spin clothes in a motion similar to clothes driers and use centrifugal force to pull dirt and water away from clothes.²³ By contrast, most top-load washers use agitators to pull clothes through tanks of water, reducing cleaning action and increasing wear on clothing.

Status

Green purchases and behaviors are often motivated by status aspirations. In 2007, CNW Marketing Research surveyed Toyota Prius owners about their motivations for buying their hybrid vehicles. It “makes a statement about me” was the number one reason. Its low emissions came in at number five!²⁸ The quirky-looking Prius became the poster child for being green, and by 2010, Prius accounted for nearly half of all hybrids sold in the United States.²⁹ Vladas Griskevicius and his colleagues have called the Prius phenomenon “conspicuous conservation” as their research found that consumers were more likely to choose green products when doing so in public (but not in private), and that status aspirations often motivate people to choose green products over more luxurious non-green ones.³⁰ TOMS, known for its “one for one” charitable business model in which one pair of shoes is donated to children in developing countries for each pair sold, has made its conspicuously-humble Alpargata shoes a widely-recognized social fashion statement.

Convenience

Many environmentally-preferable products offer inherent convenience benefits that can be publicized for competitive advantage. As mentioned earlier, the infrequent need to replace Philips' Marathon CFL bulbs was what sold consumers on the product. Electric vehicles offer the expediency of at-home battery recharging. Solar-powered calculators, wrist watches, lighting, and other gadgets eliminate the worry of dying batteries or the need to connect to power.

The emergence of the sharing economy—one in which businesses and individuals offer consumers access to a product, such as an electric scooter or bike, for a short time for a small fee—is predicated on consumer convenience. Zipcar is one of several carsharing services that allows users to rent cars by the hour or day, with gas, insurance, and maintenance included. Initially, carsharing was envisioned as an environmental strategy for reducing the need for personal car ownership; nevertheless, academic research has found that consumers are drawn to the services, not for environmental considerations, but primarily for cost savings and utility.³¹

Bundling

Sometimes green products do not offer compelling consumer-desired benefits, allowing savvy marketers an opportunity to add—or bundle—consumer value to green products to make them more desirable. To enhance the appeal of its nontoxic cleansers and soaps, for instance, Method Home packages them in chic reusable bottles to distinguish them from the pedestrian packaging of conventional cleansers.³² Bay Area-based Imperfect Produce delivers seasonal cosmetically-imperfect and surplus produce that otherwise might have gone to waste. For city-dwellers, the added convenience of direct delivery, as well as below-supermarket pricing, is a popular benefit.³³ Ford plans to bundle an electrical outlet onto the battery pack of its forthcoming gas-electric hybrid F-150 truck.³⁴ A survey reported that people who buy F-150 trucks generally don't care much about fuel economy, but they often need portable electric power for work and play. The added convenience of being able to chill beer at tailgate parties, charge power tools in remote places, or run coffee makers on camping trips could be what entices F-150 buyers to buy its hybrid model.

In sum, marketing environmentally-preferable products should not be myopically-focused on green, but rather on inherent or added consumer benefits to reach mainstream consumers.

Principle #2: Win Hearts, Not Just Minds

Winning hearts involves connecting with people emotionally. Businesses need to tailor persuasive messages to tie green behaviors and products to customers' motivational values, sensibilities, and self-perceptions. The celebrated Don't Mess with Texas campaign is a case point.³⁵ Some people think it's the state motto, but Don't Mess with Texas was first coined by Tim McClure of the Austin-based ad agency GSD&M as part of the Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation's 1985 anti-littering campaign. The state was spending $20 million a year on highway clean up, and the primary litter culprits were young Texas males, ages 16 to 24, who didn't think much about the environment. The question was how to convince them to take responsibility.

Texans hold an almost feverish adoration for their state. “I knew we needed to reach into the DNA of Texans, touch their sense of pride,” McClure noted.³⁶ Don't mess with Texas united anti-littering with what was near and dear to the hearts of young Texas men—their love of Texas. The acerbic catchphrase spoke the vernacular of young swaggering Texans, proclaiming that if you started some trouble in their beloved state, someone would likely mess with you back! Pairing the caustic slogan with humor and music, a parade of star Texan-celebrated musicians, actors, athletes, and comedians lent their talents to Don't Mess with Texas commercials to tell a story that trashing Texas was simply unbecoming of “real” Texans. The macho reframing of anti-littering worked. Within a year, littering on Texas highways was down 29 percent, and within six years, it was down 72 percent.

The lesson? Persuasive green messages must resonate with the target audience's values, emotions, and self-perceptions, a conclusion that has been supported by the academic literature. Aaron Brough and his colleagues, for instance, examined the green-feminine stereotype, which often inhibits men's willingness to engage in green behaviors or purchases because it threatens their masculinity.³⁷ Through experiments, the researchers found that branding green products with masculine-sounding names increased their appeal among men. In one experiment, a name change of a nonprofit from Friends of Nature to the more masculine-sounding Wilderness Rangers increased the likelihood of men to donate to the organization.

Additional research has examined ways to frame green messages to appeal to political ideologies. For example, research has found that conservatives' low support for action to address climate change may not come from an inherent disbelief in the scientific evidence, but rather from messages that do not fit their conservative views. Conservative behaviors and attitudes were more strongly pro-environmental when the messages were framed as an obligation to one's nation, when climate change was described in terms of “contamination” and “purity” as opposed to “harm” and “care,” and when solutions to climate change were described as supporting capitalism.³⁸ Matthew Baldwin and Joris Lammers asserted that conservative ideology emerged from a resistance to progressive change, and thus a central feature of conservatives' worldview is a preference for the past over the future. In a series of experiments, the researchers found that conservatives responded more favorably to participation in climate action when messages were past-focused as opposed to future-focused. For example, in one experiment, conservatives were found to be more willing to donate to a charity that communicated “Restoring the planet,” as opposed to one that touted “Creating a new earth for the future.”³⁸ In another study about messaging to encourage recycling, Blair Kidwell and his colleagues found that themes of fairness and avoiding harm to others increased liberals' recycling intentions and behaviors whereas duty and an obligation to adhere to authority were more influential among conservatives.³⁹

In sum, to reach consumers who are indifferent or prejudiced against green, businesses need to seek creative ways to align green messages with those consumers' emotions, worldviews, and motivations.

Principle #3: Make Green Normal

Green behaviors and using environmentally-preferable products are often viewed as out of the ordinary and even ridiculed as associated with tree-huggers, inhibiting their mainstream consideration. For example, while acknowledged as a status symbol for some drivers, the Toyota Prius has also been lampooned as a badge of self-righteousness.⁴⁰ Research indicates, however, that consumers will adopt green behaviors and products that they think are normal.⁴¹ For instance, a key predictor of people's decision to install solar panels is whether nearby neighbors have previously done so.¹⁷ Consequently, businesses need to work toward making environmentally-preferable behaviors and products more familiar and visible among mainstream consumers.

Research by Ruth Rettie and her colleagues found that consumers felt more comfortable with green products that were approved and trusted by others and deemed well-established as the status quo.⁴¹ Consequently, green marketing efforts should deliberately shape perceptions of normality instead of emphasizing greenness or targeting a small niche of green consumers. Electrify America's recent, “Electric cars. Yeah, they're totally normal now” campaign strives to educate drivers that, like other novelties of the past such as e-mail or online dating, electric vehicles (EVs) were once weird, but ultimately have become commonplace.⁴² Other researchers have demonstrated that perceptions of normality can be shaped through the use of defaults and social influence.

Green as the default

Cass Sunstein has recommended that encouraging good environmental choices can come from making them the default setting.⁴³ At Rutgers University, for example, printers across campus were set to automatically print double-sided by default. Few people took the trouble to change their printers' default settings, and in the first three years of the new policy, paper consumption decreased by 44 percent—or the equivalent of 4,650 trees! Sunstein also reported on two German electric utilities that offered their customers subscriptions to green and less-green power options and set the green options as defaults. In both cases, very few customers switched from the green option, even when consumers could have saved money by opting out of the green default. By contrast, when other utilities offering green electricity options have required customers to make a pro-active request to opt out of a less green default, consumers overwhelmingly did nothing. In short, automatic green enrollment as the status quo encourages consumers to stick with it.

Social influence

Friends, family, and even strangers can influence consumers, and research shows two forms of social influence that can help nudge consumers to go green.⁴⁴ One is normative social influence, defined as influence in which individuals conform in order to be liked and accepted by others, such as family, friends, and reference groups (e.g., groups in which individuals evaluate themselves or their behaviors). In one experiment, for example, Helen Arce Salazar and her colleagues found that individuals were more likely to choose an environmentally-preferable product (in this case, sustainably-made chocolates) when they were introduced to it by family members or friends or if that product was the choice of a peer reference group.⁴⁵ Roslynn Brain McCann and her colleagues evaluated the outcomes of an annual high school clean air poster contest, and they found that the teen participants not only showed a greater propensity to engage in clean air actions (e.g., refrain from idling, carpool, trip-chain), but in what they call the “inconvenient youth” effect, the teens also influenced their parents to conform to such actions.⁴⁶

In another form of social influence, informational influence, individuals are persuaded by facts obtained from others about what is normal. That is, consumers' green behaviors are influenced by the awareness of others' actions. This was demonstrated in a classic field experiment by Noah Goldstein and his colleagues in which hotel guests were more likely to reuse their towels when exposed to bathroom signs claiming “the majority of guests reuse their towels.”⁴⁷ Subsequent studies of hotel towel reuse have found similar results, including Heesup Han and Sunghyup Sean Hyun, whose study showed that individuals were more likely to engage in eco-friendly behaviors when they perceived that other people acted similarly, when they believed that others expected them to do so, and when they felt a moral obligation.⁴⁸ Thus marketing messages should use these triggers to nudge consumers along (e.g., “Almost 75% of hotel guests reuse their towels” and “Most guests have expressed their approval of our towel reuse program”⁴⁹).

In sum, marketers must strive to establish perceptions of the normality of green behaviors and products by setting green as the default and making sustainable behaviors more evident to others.

Principle #4: Leverage Mainstream Social Media Influencers

Today's wide use of online ad-blockers and media streaming services such a Netflix and Spotify allows consumers to tune out traditional print, radio, and television advertising. Indeed, a 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report surveying consumers from Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States noted that 74 percent of consumers actively avoid advertising, and 63 percent say that they trust what social media influencers say about brands much more than brand advertising.⁵⁰

Social media influencers are bloggers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Vine, and LinkedIn who create compelling content (usually via cell phone videos, pictures, and articles) and tell engaging stories to build a loyal following in various fields, such as fashion, cosmetics, fitness, travel, nutrition, and the like. Unlike movie star or sports celebrity endorsers, influencers are otherwise ordinary people who have spent time building their reputations through social media to become expert or guru micro-celebrities⁵¹ among their devoted online communities. Influencers have become the new word-of-mouth at scale, with many hosting thousands (if not millions) of followers. Intimate photos and videos give followers a lens into the influencers' lives, encouraging followers to interact and feel personally and emotionally connected to them as friends. Ultimately, followers want to emulate influencers as a reference group (see Principle #3—Social influence).⁵² Consequently, influencers can sway potential buyers through their credible product reviews, recommendations, and use of goods and services on their social media.

Given the amount of time people spend on social media, marketers have increasingly steered their advertising away from television and print toward partnering with the right influencers to reach target audiences. With their intimate knowledge of their followers, influencers can help promote products creatively and authentically from a single picture or review to a series of posts to create stories to engage follower interest. Real time and post-campaign data and analytics can help influencers and marketers identify ways to refine future campaigns and return on investment. In short, influencers have become pivotal for reaching target audiences. Research by Leanne Johnstone and Cecilia Lindh found that influencers are important for building sustainability awareness, especially among Millennials. Consequently, promoting ethical products via trustworthy influencers may not only increase sales, but also contribute to a more sustainable society.⁵³

Which influencers should green marketers target? Marketers should study the influencers' stories and the degree of interaction with followers of those posts. While there are many bloggers focused on sustainability, such as @sustainabledaisy (15,000 followers), green advocate @greensuitcasetravel (16,000 followers), and eco-travel tourism blogger @tommie.travels (18,000 followers) to name but a few, they tend to have a narrow following of green-oriented consumers that may limit green marketers' ability to reach mainstream consumers. By contrast, actors, models, lifestyle icons, and travel influencers who showcase a variety of subjects and incorporate green behavior as normal (see Principle #3) are better at convincing their mainstream consumer followers to go green. For example, actor/model/United Nations ambassador Amanda Cerny of @amandacerny (over 35 million followers) advocates plant-based nutrition and fitness beside other lifestyle posts; and wanderlust travel blogger couple Marie Fe and Jake Snow of @mariefeandjakesnow (563,000 followers) incorporate the fight against plastic waste along with images and blogs about their glamorous travel adventures.

Green marketers should leverage mainstream influencers to promote green as exciting, trendy, healthy, and the right thing to do. Adidas, for example, has partnered with Parley for the Oceans to keep post-consumer plastic from entering the oceans and has used recycled plastic bottles to make its high-performance UltraBoost™ running shoes. Fusing performance-oriented footwear technology with progressive eco-innovation, Adidas has partnered with high-profile athlete influencers such as swimmer Ian Thorpe of @ian.thorpe (49,600 followers) and rugby player Beauden Barrett of @beaudenbarrett (442,000 followers)to showcase UltraBoost's quality and performance while also raising awareness of the ocean plastic crisis.⁵⁴

Principle #5: Dialogue with Public Policy Makers

Finally, government policy can facilitate change quickly and influence consumer behaviors and choices in the marketplace through taxes on less sustainable products, such as plastic bags and carbon-based fuels, and subsidies and tax rebates on more environmentally-preferable choices, such as solar panels and electric vehicles.⁵⁵ Businesses must play a role in helping shape those policies.

As mentioned earlier, LED light bulbs are expected to achieve 70 percent market share worldwide by 2020,¹³ saving consumers billions of dollars in energy (an executive order to roll back energy efficiency standards of light bulbs in September 2019, however, could impact LED demand and energy savings in the United States).⁵⁶ LEDs are perhaps the most widely-adopted environmentally-preferable product on earth! This achievement came about through a combination of rapid technological improvements and cost reductions, spurred by government energy-efficiency mandates from around the world that phased out energy-guzzling incandescent lighting.⁵⁷ The transition to LEDs in the United States, for instance, accelerated after President George W. Bush signed the sweeping Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, decreeing a host of efficiency measures to help the nation become more energy independent. The provision requiring light bulbs to become three times more efficient by 2020 signaled the end of incandescent bulbs because they could never achieve the new standard, and other technologies, such as halogen and CFL could not match LEDs in terms of efficiency, color, and functionality. (CLFs, for example, did not work well with dimmer switches, contained mercury, and could easily break, posing a potential health hazard.) Ultimately, the law made LEDs the default option (see Principal #3—Green as the default).⁵⁸

Initially, many conservatives lambasted the law because it limited consumer choice,⁵⁹ but light bulb manufacturers, through the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, supported the mandate as it circumvented a patchwork of conflicting state efficiency laws and encouraged companies to invest with confidence into LED technology for improvements and cost reductions. Since then, similar polices around the world have helped bolster LEDs as the global industry standard.⁶⁰

While the public is often leery of corporate influence on government, the reality is that policy makers often turn to businesses for answers about sustainability challenges, the feasibility of technologies and policy proposals and their potential impacts on consumers, jobs, and profits. Companies seen as obstructing public interests risk accusations of duplicity, consumer backlash, and a loss of public trust and credibility. Consequently, businesses should provide constructive leadership through expert consulting and participation in government committees, research, writing of proposed legislation, collaborations with multiple stakeholders, and lobbying.

One of the most significant policy issues facing the United States today is the debate over extending federal tax credits for EVs, which have been instrumental in building the domestic EV market.⁶¹ Broad adoption of EVs has the potential to wean the transportation sector from oil and drastically reduce carbon emissions. Currently, the federal government provides a tax credit of $7,500 to buyers for the first 200,000 electric vehicles sold by each carmaker. After a carmaker sells that first allotment, the tax credit drops by half for cars sold over the next six months, and then by half again for the next six months before disappearing entirely. Tesla and GM have crossed the 200,000 car-threshold, and Nissan and Toyota are expected to reach that total by 2021.

The proposed bipartisan Driving America Forward Act would augment the existing $7,500 tax credit on each company's first 200,000 cars with a $7,000 credit for the next 400,000 cars. While this legislation was not included in the latest U.S. Congressional budget of 2020, it may be considered in the future.⁶² Tesla and GM, along with other automakers, including the industry's main trade associations, electric utilities (which stand to benefit from higher electricity demand as the EV market grows), and environmental organizations (which seek to cut carbon emissions and improve air quality) have been lobbying for the bill.⁶³ Oil companies oppose the bill, claiming it simply benefits luxury car buyers.

“When we go to lower-priced [electric] cars and a bigger market,” noted Gil Tal, director of the Plug-In Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California, Davis, “we're hitting more and more consumers for whom incentives are crucial to their decisions to buy cars. When we sell a $40,000 car, the sensitivity to the incentive is much higher.”⁶³ In short, extension of the tax credits may not only entice drivers toward EVs, but it also could help solidify the nation's EV market, production, and supply chain in the coming decade. Businesses must engage government bodies to set policies that normalize greener behaviors and product choices and lead society onto a more sustainable path.

Nudging Customers at the East West Market and Beyond

Our vision for 2020 is that businesses can no longer ignore their otherwise indifferent customers and must strategize about how to integrate them into corporate and supply chain sustainability initiatives for the good of people, planet, and profit. As described earlier about the East West Market's efforts to encourage their customers to bring their own reusable bags, David Kwen decided to capitalize on the frenzy over his comical plastic bags by reprinting the gag store names onto reusable canvas tote bags, and so far, they've become a hit with his customers! “If you talk to people in a nice, humorous way,” he said, “I think they listen.”³ Kwen may be onto something. There's an extensive literature on how humor can evoke positive feelings about an issue,⁶⁴ and Kwen's experience shows that bundling (see Principle #1) humor with shopping bags can make them more desirable. Perhaps humor will become an important tool to nudge consumers to go green.

Together, our principles, rooted in case experience, the latest marketing trends, and the academic literature, may serve as a guide to help businesses identify strategies to meet customer needs and convince them of the benefits of living more sustainably in 2020 and beyond.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Cathy Hartman, Sarah Klain, and Alexi Lamm for their insightful comments on a previous draft of this article.

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