Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

Types of Value and Cost in Consumer Relationships with Green Brands
Erifili Papista, Athens University of Economics & Business, Greece
Athanassios Krystallis, Aarhus University, Denmark
Purpose
Growing concerns for the natural environment at seemingly all levels of society have led to a considerable increase in
the number of products marketed as environmentally friendly (Jansson, Marell, & Nordlund 2010; Webb, Mohr, &
Harris, 2008). The supportive consumer behaviour towards green brands is nowadays a market reality that results in an
important growth of the sales of such brands (Bonini & Oppenheim, 2008; Chen, 2010; Roper, 2007). The academic
research tough lacks insight on the factors that contribute to the repetitive purchase behaviour toward green brands.
Findings on the drivers of the consumer-brand relationship have received limited empirical evidence in this specific
context; thus, consumer relationships with green brands is a very special category of consumer-brand relationships that
remains yet unexplored.
Earlier studies have focused on describing the underlying values, attitudes and intentions towards environmentally
friendly products (Follows & Jobber, 2000; Minton & Rose, 1997; Montoro Rios, Martinez, Moreno, & Soriano, 2006)
applying mostly the Theory of Reasoned Action (Azjen & Fishbein, 1980), the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen,
1985) or different ―loose‖ versions of values-beliefs-attitudes-behaviour models. Findings suggest that although
individuals do perceive environmental issues as serious and support environmental protection, their environmental
attitudes do not consistently translate into environmental behaviours (Bamberg, 2003; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002). Even
the most environmentally conscious consumers do not choose brands merely on the basis of their environmental
aspects; rather, the choice is always a multi-attribute choice where the consumer has to trade off between various
product attributes (Rokka & Uusitalo, 2008).
In the present paper we postulate that environmental consumer behaviour should be embodied in a more realistic choice
situation, in which consumers have to balance their preferences over different product benefits. The paper applies the
Customer Value (CV) approach in an attempt to identify all possible factors that facilitate or hinder the adoption of
green brands by the consumers. After all, recent research into the relationship marketing area regards CV as a
prerequisite for relationship development (e.g. Moliner, Sanchez, Rodriguez, & Callarisa, 2007; Oh, 2003; Parasuraman
& Grewal, 2000).
Our conceptual framework, as presented in Figure 1, integrates Zeithaml‘s (1988) view that value and sacrifice
perceptions drive purchase decisions. In an attempt to include all possible types of value that contribute to the adoption
of green brands, our framework incorporates insights from Holbrook‘s (2006) conceptualization of types of value,
which is considered the most extensive in describing types of value in comparison to other conceptualizations (e.g.
Sheth, Newman, & Gross, 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001). The overall sequence of effects in our model is that types of
value and sacrifice influence perceptions of CV of the green brand, which in turn affects relationship quality and
consumer loyalty toward the green brand.
The types of value, as proposed by Holbrook (2006), fall into the broad categories of economic, social, hedonic and
altruistic value. Economic or functional value describes the perceived utility acquired from an alternative‘s capacity for
functional, utilitarian or physical performance (Sheth et al., 1991), which is also similar to product quality, having a
positive effect on CV (Baker, Parasuraman, Grewal, & Voss, 2002; Bolton & Drew, 1991; Dodds, Monroe, & Grewal,
1991; Grewal, Monroe, & Krishnan, 1998). Social value, defined as the perceived utility acquired from an alternative‘s
association with one or more specific social groups (Sheth et al., 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001), has been
demonstrated to contribute to brand commitment and loyalty (Ponder & Barnes, 2004). Hedonic value arises from
consumers‘ own pleasure in consumption experiences appreciated for their own sake as ends in themselves (Mathwick,
Malhotra, & Rigdon, 2001; Sheth et al., 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001), having received little support in the general
context of consumer-brand relationships. Finally, altruistic value is experienced when engaging in ethically desirable
practices in which ―virtue is its own reward‖ (Holbrook, 2006). All the above presented types of value have a direct
effect on the CV component (Blackwell, Szeinbach, Barnes, Garner, & Bush, 1999).
On the other hand, the literature on perceived value lacks a similarly inclusive, well-recognized typology of costs, as
with the case of types of value. Thus, in an attempt to be exhaustive in all types of relationship costs that have been
identified by branding literature, we propose the following 6 categories of costs that negatively affect the perceived CV
of green brands and thus, the relationship development.
Previous studies examining the impact of price consistently suggest a negative linkage to CV (e.g. De Pelsmacker,
Driesen, & Rayp, 2005; Dodds et al., 1991; Grewal et al., 1998; Petrick, 2002), although environmentally concerned
consumers express a tendency to accept higher prices (e.g. Creyer & Ross, 1997; D‘Souza, Taghian, & Khosla, 2007).
36