Consumers’ Inferential Evaluations of Sustainability Attributes Based on Incomplete Product Information

Abstract

In a typical purchase situation, consumers often have to evaluate different product alternatives which are incompletely described on the attributes they entail. When being confronted with only limited information on certain attributes, consumers are likely to infer beyond given properties to assess the value of these unobservable attributes (Kardes, Posavac, & Cronley, 2004). In an era of increasing public attention towards issues such as sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR), it is likely that these concepts are also mirrored in consumers’ inference formation. We want whether consumers draw inferences about a product’s sustainability based on other observable attributes.