Posts Tagged ‘ethicality’

For some time now, we have written about the potential business risk associated with developing sustainability programs for some companies.  Just recently, an article was published in the Journal of Marketing that provides empirical evidence of negative consumer perceptions (and therefore reduced sales) of certain products labeled as “sustainable” or “environmentally friendly”. The article is titled The Sustainability Liability: Potential Negative Effects of Ethicality on Product Preference, written by Michael G. Luchs, Rebecca Walker Naylor, Julie R. Irwin, and Rajagopal Raghunathan.  The authors are all professors of marketing at William & Mary, Ohio State and The University of Texas at Austin. The article reviews various hypotheses and empirical studies conducted by the authors around the concept about how buyers perceive the attribute of sustainability or environmentally friendly (they use the term “ethicality” to encompass those attributes) in certain product categories. INTERESTING NOTE HERE – there is a fair amount of overlap between the product categories within the scope of the study and those that are included in the Walmart Supplier GHG Innovation Program Guidance Document.  If you are a supplier who is involved in WalMart’s GHG Innovation Program, you may want to read The Sustainability Liability. The first several pages

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