Why Green Products Remain Unfavorable Despite Being Labelled Environmentally-Friendly?

Abstract

Although green products have been widely recognized as being environmentally-friendly, actual consumer adoption, purchases and consumption of green products have been disappointing. Instead, consumption of products which is causing harmful impacts on the environment is gaining further momentum. Such a phenomenon is detrimental to environmental sustainability and therefore requires immediate attention and corrective action. This paper seeks to understand the failure of green products in the marketplace and subsequently provide informed recommendations to stakeholders to remedy the situation. The study is exploratory in nature and uses qualitative in-depth interviews to understand consumer perception on green products. Findings suggest that there is a lack of understanding about green products and environmental sustainability, ignorance, and low customer delivered value of green products. Implications and recommendations from the findings are also presented. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]