Logic vs Aesthetic: The Effect of Environmental Claim and Visual Design in Green Advertising

Hashella Kostan; Alice Salendu

doi:10.24856/mem.v35i2.1468

Logic vs Aesthetic: The Effect of Environmental Claim and Visual Design in Green Advertising

Hashella Kostan, Alice Salendu

Abstract

The surge in demand for green products leads to rampant practice of “greenwashing”, in which marketers deceitfully try to position their brand as more eco-friendly than it actually is. Past studies on green advertisements have indicated that visual cues in the advertisements can also play a part in affecting consumers’ evaluation of the product and its eco-friendly feature. This study was conducted to examine the effect of two essential elements in a green advertisement, which are the overall visual aesthetic quality of the advertisement and verbal environmental claim. The study was conducted using an experimental vignette method. Two hundred seventy-six respondents participated in this study. Through MANOVA statistical analysis, it was found that both aesthetic quality and environmental claim type used significantly affect green brand associations, as well as the attitude respondents, have towards the brand. However, this significant effect of ads visual aesthetic quality can be concerning since it might hinder consumers to objectively evaluate the environmental claim of the product.

Keywords

green advertisement; aesthetic quality; environmental claim; green brand associations

Full Text:

PDF

References

Atzmüller, C., & Steiner, P. M. (2010). Experimental vignette studies in survey research. Methodology.

Baum, L.M. (2012). It’s not easy to be green… or is it? A content analysis of environmental claims in magazine advertisements from the United States and the United Kingdom. Environmental Communication 6(4): 423–440.

Bhatia, M., & Jain, A. (2013). Green marketing: A study of consumer perception and preferences in India. Electronic Green Journal, 1(36).

Carlson, L., Grove, S. J., & Kangun, N. (1993). A content analysis of environmental advertising claims: A matrix method approach. Journal of advertising, 22(3), 27-39.

Chan, R. Y., & Lau, L. B. (2004). The effectiveness of environmental claims among Chinese consumers: influences of claim type, country disposition, and ecocentric orientation. Journal of Marketing Management, 20(3-4), 273-319.

Chan, R. Y., Leung, T. K. P., & Wong, Y. H. (2006). The effectiveness of environmental claims for services advertising. Journal of Services Marketing, 20(4), 233-250.

Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Deng, L., & Poole, M. S. (2012). Aesthetic design of e-commerce web pages–Webpage Complexity, Order and preference. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 11(4), 420-440.

Dethier, J. J. (2017). Trash, cities, and politics: urban environmental problems in Indonesia. Indonesia, (103), 73-90.

Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics using SPSS. Sage publications.

Finch, H. (2005). Comparison of the performance of nonparametric and parametric MANOVA test statistics when assumptions are violated. Methodology, 1(1), 27-38.

Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (2011). Predicting and changing behavior: The reasoned action approach. New York: Psychology Press.

Hair, J. F., Anderson, R. E., Babin, B. J., & Black, W. C. (2010). Multivariate data analysis: A global perspective (Vol. 7).

Hartmann, P., Ibáñez, V. A., & Sainz, F. J. F. (2005). Green branding effects on attitude: functional versus emotional positioning strategies. Marketing Intelligence & Planning.

Hu, H. H. S. (2012). The effectiveness of environmental advertising in the hotel industry. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 53(2), 154-164.

Kung, F. Y., Kwok, N., & Brown, D. J. (2018). Are attention check questions a threat to scale validity?. Applied Psychology, 67(2), 264-283.

Hartmann, P., & Apaolaza-Ibáñez, V. (2009). Green advertising revisited: Conditioning virtual nature experiences. International Journal of Advertising, 28(4), 715-739.

Matthes, J. (2019). Uncharted Territory in Research on Environmental Advertising: Toward an Organizing Framework. Journal of Advertising, 48(1), 91-101.

Natadjaja, L., Cahyono, Y. B., & Yuwono, E. C. (2009). Kondisi desain kemasan produk makanan ringan dan minuman instant pada industri kecil skala rumah tangga (micro industry) di Kabupaten Kediri. Nirmana, 11(2), 93-105.

Nunnally, J. C. (1978), Psychometric Theory, New York, McGraw-Hill.

Olson, C. L. (1974). Comparative robustness of six tests in multivariate analysis of variance. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 69(348), 894-908.

Ottman, J. A., E. R. Stafford & C. L. Hartman. (2006). ‘Green Marketing Myopia’, Environment 48(5), 22–36.

Pieters, R., Wedel, M., & Batra, R. (2010). The stopping power of advertising: measures and effects of visual complexity. Journal of Marketing, 74(5), 48e60.

Pickett-Baker J, Ozaki R. 2008. Pro-environmental products: marketing influence on consumer purchase decision. Journal of Consumer Marketing 25(5): 281–293

Robins, D., & Holmes, J. (2008). Aesthetics and credibility in web site design. Information Processing & Management, 44(1), 386-399.

Schmuck, D., Matthes, J., & Naderer, B. (2018). Misleading consumers with green advertising? An affect–reason–involvement account of greenwashing effects in environmental advertising. Journal of Advertising, 47(2), 127-145

TerraChoice. (2010). The Sins of Greenwashing: home and family edition. TerraChoice Group, Inc. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

The National Agency for Food and Drugs of Indonesia.(2011). Konsumsi Berkelanjutan: Gerakan Gaya Hidup Hijau, “Menuju Ekonomi Hijau: Pembelajaran pada Tahap Transisi”. Bappenas.

Tucker, E. M., Rifon, N. J., Lee, E. M., & Reece, B. B. (2012). Consumer receptivity to green ads: A test of green claim types and the role of individual consumer characteristics for green ad response. Journal of Advertising, 41(4), 9-23.

Xue, F. (2014). It looks green: Effects of green visuals in advertising on Chinese consumers’ brand perception. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 26(1), 75-86.

Van der Heijden, H. (2003). Factors influencing the usage of websites: the case of a generic portal in The Netherlands. Information & management, 40(6), 541-549.

Wagemans, J., Elder, J. H., Kubovy, M., Palmer, S. E., Peterson, M. A., Singh, M., & von der Heydt, R. (2012). A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: I. Perceptual grouping and figure–ground organization. Psychological bulletin, 138(6), 1172.

Wasserbauer, M., & Herák, D. (2016). A review of Municipal Solid Waste Management in Indonesia. In 6th International Conference on Trends in Agricultural Engineering (pp. 708-713).

Wei, C. F., Chiang, C. T., Kou, T. C., & Lee, B. C. (2017). Toward sustainable livelihoods: investigating the drivers of purchase behavior for green products. Business strategy and the environment, 26(5), 626-639.

WWF. (2018, October 24). Acceptance of environmentally friendly products in Indonesia. WWF-SCP. Retrieved March 14, 2019, from https://www.wwf-scp.org/acceptance-environmentally-friendly-products-indonesia/

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24856/mem.v35i2.1468