The effectiveness of environmental claims for services advertising
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore how different types of environmental claims may affect the communication effectiveness of environmental advertising. Two two moderating variables include the perceived eco‐friendly image of the originating country and consumer involvement.
Design/methodology/approach
The examination involves the analysis of the responses of 1,200 subjects in Shanghai, China, to mock advertisements containing environmental claims using a 2 x 3 factorial design.
Findings
Environmental claims enhance the communication effectiveness of advertisements for both high‐ and low‐involvement services. For high‐involvement services, substantive environmental claims generate more favorable attitudinal responses than do associative environmental claims.
Research limitations/implications
This research focused on a single Chinese city and on two service categories with contrasting degrees of involvement. While such a confinement can enhance the internal validity of the findings, their external validity has yet to be established.
Practical implications
These findings suggest that marketers should adopt a situational perspective by taking into account environmental claim type, country disposition, the degree of environmental consciousness of their target consumers, and service type when designing their environmental advertising campaigns.
Originality/value
Although a number of previous studies have focused on the application of environmental claims to advertise products, similar investigation into how these claims may help advertise services is virtually non‐existent. In this respect, the present study can be viewed as the first empirical work devoted to closing this research gap.
Keywords
Citation
Chan, R.Y.K., Leung, T.K.P. and Wong, Y.H. (2006), "The effectiveness of environmental claims for services advertising", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 233-250. https://doi.org/10.1108/08876040610674580
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited