Overview of the Study

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Overview of the study

Customer Profiling

A demographic profile identifies your target customers, their characteristics, and their

geographic locations. An example of this might be

Customer is married, has children, lives in an affluent neighborhood, and reads The

Guardian

Demographics are important considerations in attracting customers and generating

revenue in the first stages of a project, particularly if you plan to retail online

One way of beginning to define your target audience is by creating a list of media you

plan to target for your product. There are several elements to consider here;

- What is the price point for your product and which magazines/fashion pages tend

to feature products in your price range?

- Which publications show a particular interest in ethical/environmentally friendly

products?

- Are you targeting a high fashion or a high street market? Which publications will

allow you to target the appropriate audience?

Create a list of five target publications you would ideally like to feature your product in

the first year of trading.

Publication Readership/ target age group


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Once you have a list of target media you can start to put together a profile of your

customer. Defining where your product fits in will help you to understand the customer

you are targeting and to be specific about when and how your product will be best

featured in media.

You may have more than one customer group. Identify the most important groups.

Then, for each customer group, construct what is called a demographic profile:

Age

Gender

Location

Income level

Social class

Occupation

Education

If you are planning to wholesale, complete a similar process for your potential business

customer; for example large high street retailers ranging to small exclusive boutiques;

the demographic factors might be:

Location

Size of retailer

Target customer for retailer

Brands already stocked


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Price ranges

THE CONCEPT OF ECO FRIENDLY

With the emergence of green consumerism, businesses have been under growing

pressure of producing green products. To some manufacturers, it is not a threat but an

opportunity because it suggests that products with environmentally friendly nature would

attract consumers to buy. To convey the message that a product is environmentally

friendly, marketers have been using advertising and/or packaging as the media for

communication. When packaging is used for such purpose, certain form of eco-label onproduct packaging certified by a third-party program serves as a proof of environmental

performance of the product. While literature suggests that consumers respond

positively to environmental claims, many of which in the form of eco-label (e.g., Chase

and Smith 1992; Hayhurst 2000; Salzman 1991; Wiltberger 1999), the true behaviours

as displayed in their actual purchases have not been fully investigated.

This research attempted to simulate a web-based shopping environment in which

how the actual purchase intention of Chinese consumers is to be affected by the

presence and absence of eco-label on product packaging was investigated. An

experimental design was employed in an attempt to enhance internal validity, and

considerable effort was made to obscure the purpose of the study in order to avoid

issues related to hypothesis guessing and social desirability bias. The context of this

study is important for three reasons. First, the condition of the natural environment in

China is among our greatest global concerns (Sims, 1999; World Bank, 1997). Second,China has the worlds largest population. Consequently, the aggregated behaviour of

Chinese consumers has a tremendous potential impact on the environment. Third, the

growth of ISO 14001 EMSs in China is growing exponentially to a point that an empirical

link between eco-label and purchase intention should be established.


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The concept of branding the eco friendly products in Ludhiana. The study will evaluate the

impact of the eco friendly advertisement on the branding of the products.

Literature ReviewEnvironmental protection has become an issue of both regional and global

importance (e.g., Asprion, 2000; Dunlap et al., 1993; Dunlap and Saad, 2000; Kornblut,

2001; McDaniel and Rylander, 1993). Although surveys typically suggest that

consumers would favour green products (e.g., Bhate and Lawler, 1997; Dagnoli, 1991;

Freeman and Dagnoli, 1990), actualconsumer response to green marketing efforts has

often fallen short of expectations. Reasons for the gap between reported preference for

green products and the actual purchase of such products are cited in many studies(e.g., Ellen, 1994; Morris et al., 1995; Walley and Whitehead, 1994). Some of the

explanations that have been proposed include excessive price premiums for

environmentally friendly products, reluctance to change purchasing habits, little societal

pressure to conform and inability to identify the real environmental attributes.

Most surveys in Europe and North America do indicate that consumers are

becoming more environmentally conscious (Dagnoli, 1991; Freeman and Dagnoli, 1990;

Rolfes, 1990) but, relative to other considerations (especially price), the importance of

specific environmental attributes of products is much less certain. Moreover, it is likely

that cultural and economic considerations will lead to variance on this issue by region.

British consumers, for example, stated they were willing to pay more for environmentally

friendly products (Bhate and Lawler, 1997; Prothero, 1990). In the US, a telephone

survey revealed that 25% of respondents claimed to have stoppedbuying at least one

companys product because they believed the company was not a good environmental

citizen (Freeman and Dagnoli, 1990). With the notable exception of Japan, where

citizens thought that environmental problems were especially serious (McClure, 1991),

in most other Asian countries, consumer interest in protecting the environment,

especially for poorer populations, is a relatively more recent and less developed

phenomena. However, such awareness may be emerging. A 1991 consumer survey in


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Singapore revealed that almost all respondents indicated that they would like to know

where they could buy environmentally friendly products (Shamdasani et al., 1993).

Similarly, a survey of more than five thousand citizens in Hong Kong found that more

than half of the respondents claimed to have shopped for environmentally safe products

(ECCO, 1996).

One troublesome aspect of many studies on green consumerism is that the results

may be method-bound. Social desirability and other biases may lead respondents to

profess to be more environmentally enlightened than they would actually behave at the

cash register. In particular, green purchasing intention is easily set aside when a

product is disadvantaged on other criteria. Two more studies (i.e., Chan and Yam,

1995; Yam-Tang and Chan, 1998) found that Chinese people readily abandoned their

environmental purchase intention in the face of incrementally higher price and/or a

modicum of inconvenience.

In summary, research has generally shown that most consumers in developed

countries claim to care about the environmental performance of products. However, in

most of these studies, consumers have also demonstrated that environmentalconsiderations are secondary and that a preference for environmentally friendly

products is manifest only when products attain parity on more essential product

attributes (e.g., price, performance and convenience). Thus, for products where the

price and performance of green products attain a reasonable level of parity with their

more harmful alternatives, there should be viable market segments. However, for this to

occur, there has to be some mechanism that clearly signals such environmental

attributes. In addition, because some products may be modestly beneficial to the

environment in some aspects, while being highly damaging in others, it is relatively easy

for producers to erroneously exploit green consumers. For example, a producer of

paper diapers can extol the virtue of requiring less hot water than cloth diapers, while at

the same time ignoring the fact that its use can lead to more solid waste and create


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health problems. Consequently, consumers and the overall society would benefit from

some mechanism for ensuring the credibility of such claims.

Thgersen (2000) cited some literature to suggest that eco-labelling is one of the

most effective forms of communicative instruments for providing timely and relevant

information for consumers (Hansen and Kull, 1994; Milj-og Energiministeriet, 1995;

Scammon and Mayer, 1993). Eco-labels seek to promote green purchase behaviour by

credibly signalling that a product is environmentally friendly. An eco-label can be

defined as any symbol appearing on product packaging informing consumers that a

particular product is in some significant way less harmful to the environment than

purchase alternatives. An eco-label can address a single dimension (a Type 1 eco-label

as described in ISO 14020) or multiple ones. An example of the former would be the

energy-use labels commonly found on various white goods (e.g., refrigerators, air

conditioners, etc.). Those addressing multiple attributes may use a report card

approach and often seek to evaluate the product over its complete life cycle (a Type 3

label). Unfortunately, increasing information content runs the risk of exceeding

consumer patience and/or capacity for interpretation. The most common approach to

eco-labelling awards a seal of approval based on a third party evaluation of mu ltiple

attributes (a Type 2 label).

While eco-labels have widely been used, surprisingly, little research has been

conducted on the influence of eco-labels on actual consumer purchasing behaviour.

The few studies that have focused specifically on eco-labels have tended to evaluate

the labelling scheme itself, the labels popularity or the reasons why consumers notice

the label. Manhoudt et al. (2002) studied four environmental certification schemes

involving agricultural crops in the Netherlands. Thgersen (2000) developed a

psychological model to explain variations in consumer attention towards eco-labels and

tested the model using data collected from several EU countries. Their findings suggest

that a majority of the consumers notice eco-labels, albeit sporadically. Imkamp (2000)

replicated a study done in 1989 where one of the questions sought consumers


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preferences for quality vs. ecological labels and found that preferences for eco-label

had risen from 19% in 1989 to 46% in 1998. In a very recent study, Teisl et al. (2002)

investigated the effectiveness of eco-label and its design but the study was limited to

forest products using focus groups only. In the conclusion, the authors mentioned that

the focus group approach sought to develop general insights and directions rather than

quantitatively provide precise or absolute measures and that the research wanted to

trigger a more quantitative study of eco-labeling. Therefore, this study arguably

addresses a need for quantitative research in this area. Moreover, we attempted to

measure the actual behaviour, rather than a reported one, of consumers in making their

purchase decision over a wide range of grocery products usually found in supermarkets.

Overview of the Study

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