Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

Examining the association between Green Experience and Green Brand Equity: - A study in Indian greenhotel industrySubmitted for presentation at the2012 AIM International ConferenceAnsh Gupta (Doctoral student Marketing area, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, E-mail:ansh.gupta@iiml.ac.in) [Presenting and corresponding author]Satyabhusan Dash (Associate Professor-Marketing Area, Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, E-mail:satya@iiml.ac.in)Introduction:Globally, a general deterioration in the physical environment is driving individuals and organizations to implementchanges for improving the worsening state of the environment. There is a growing amount of evidence indicatingthat consumers are choosing products or avoiding others based on their impact on the natural environment (Rios etal. 2006). This increasing concern for the environment has not been overlooked by business fraternity as a resultmore and more companies are jumping on „Green‟ bandwagon to catch the opportunity (Ottman, 2008). Marketopportunities exist for companies that consider the genuine environment friendliness in their product/servicesdevelopment and endeavor to develop a „Green‟ brand (Chen, 2010). Image Power Green Brands Survey (2011) hasshown that consumers in emerging countries like China and India are more likely to purchase greenproducts/services. With the ideology of promoting sustainable consumption practices in emerging markets right frombeginning, the Green wave has reached India (Jain & Kaur, 2006).Green marketing has been the topic of academic interest for nearly four decades (Chamorro et al. 2009), but veryfew studies focused on formation of green brand equity. Hence, there is an urgent need to understand the factors thatresult in strong and positive Green branding (Ottman, 2008). The contemporary times have seen the parallel growthin environmental consciousness of consumers as well as skepticism about green claims. Thus, it is imperative toexplore the process of formation of positive green brand equity.The current study looks at Green branding through the lenses of the evolving concepts of experiential marketing,which is considered as a common factor in the success of various products/services and brands (Pine and Gilmore,1999, Brakus et al. 2009). Because of the inherent intangible nature of services, customer experience is moreimportant for branding of services than for products (Kayaman and Arasli, 2007). The purpose of current study is toexplore the association between of customers‟ „Green experience‟ and „Green brand equity‟ in the Indian greenhotel industry. The associations of personal characteristics (such as demographics, environmental concern andpurpose of travel) of Indian consumers are also studied.Literature ReviewLiterature on customer experience talk about two approaches: Emotion approach (Holbrook, 1986; Westbrook andOliver, 1991) and Customer value approach (Holbrook; 1994, 2006; Mathwick, Malhotra and Rigdon, 2001; Barskyand Nash, 2002). In the first approach customers‟ emotions are the mainstay of conceptualizing experience. While inlatter, customers‟ perceived value is the central point of customers‟ perceived experience. According to Holbrook(2006), the exploration of the customer experience actually builds a path to insights into the concept of customervalue. Holbrook (2006) defined customer value as an interactive relativistic preference experience. He further arguesthat consumption experiences underlie the creation of all customer value. According to this work, Holbrookemphasized that customer experiential approach actually examines the customer value that is attached to theconsumption. This means that in order to create customer experience it is important to indentify customer value.Following the Holbrook‟s argument, this study takes the customer value approach in conceptualizing the greenexperience.Referring to works of Holbrook (2006) and Mathwick et al. (2001), we conceptualize four typologies for greenexperiential value: Economic, Hedonic, Social and Altruistic. In context of green consumption the economic valuemeans the utilitarian benefits (excellence of the service provider in protecting environment), the social value means