Intention and Equity: Leveraging the Green brands

Abstract

The research starts with the theoretical assumption that environmental conscious products are the better performers in terms of brand equity and has an improved value proposition as compared to non-green products. It aims at the contribution from the consumer side to participate in environmental conscious buying. Different studies in this field have revealed that customers are interested in paying extra for better valued products, but the value is not the green attribute but some other attributes associated with the brand. People in India have shown reluctance in buying an environmental conscious product even though, there is a level of concern and consciousness about the environmental situations prevailing, and these products are always perceived to be expensive for price sensitive consumers. Hence the motive behind this study is to identify the right set of antecedents for improving consumer green buying behaviour. This article further seeks for the impact of green purchase intention on green brand equity and discusses the interactions like mediating and moderating role of green purchase behaviour and pro-environmental conditions respectively. The study concentrates on the Indian consumers and focuses on the purchase of environmental conscious refrigeration products in India. This research is based on the reverse study of green attitude on green brand equity. The research employs structural equation modelling (SEM) for proving the hypotheses and ranking the attributes using TOPSIS. The outcome verifies the positive relationship between the green purchase intention and green brand equity. Hence, the research results indicate and suggest that the practitioners must enhance the attitude for green purchase by incorporating pro-environmental conditions associated with the brands. The brands also require in converting these intentions into actual purchase, which is a behavioural aspect and hence this leads to the enhancement of green brand equity. This result not only confers the positive relationship between green brand intention and green brand equity, but also strengthens a belief that the presence of mediating role of actual purchase and the moderator pro-environmental conditions lead to better performance of the brands in terms of equity. This study suggests the brand managers to sensitize the pro-environmental conditions and target the consumers with more appropriate tools for pursuing them to convert their green purchase intention into green purchase behaviour.