The Impact of Brand Equity and Issue-Involvement on Consumer Responses to Green Products

This study attempts to explain why many green products do not meet expectations of performance despite a large segment of consumers who profess to be "green". Previous research has typically examined consumers’ general level of "greenness", rather than their orientation toward a particular issue, in experimental settings with fictitious green brands. We examined two variables for their impact on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions toward green products. Brand equity was manipulated, producing high-equity and low-equity conditions. We also measured Issue-involvement, which takes into account the importance of a specific environmental issue to the consumer, and subjects were split into high issue-involvement and low issue-involvement categories. Subjects were eighty undergraduate business students who saw ads for a green (recycled) paper towel product that were identical except for the brand name (a well-known brand versus a fictitious brand).