What's Behind the Green Consumer Research?
I've seen enough research data on Americans' green buying habits over nearly twenty years that I've become immune to much of it. It's not that I think such research is shoddy; it's just that I've found consumers' credibility on the issue wanting, as I've noted in several . . . previous . . . posts. Read More
I’ve seen enough research data
on Americans’ green buying habits over nearly twenty years that I’ve
become immune to much of it. It’s not that I think such research is
shoddy; it’s just that I’ve found consumers’ credibility on the issue
wanting, as I’ve noted in several . . . previous . . . posts.
Consider: A 1989 survey by the
Michael Peters Group, a now-defunct consulting firm based in New York
and London, found 89% of Americans saying they were concerned about the
environmental impact of the products they purchased; fully 78% said
they were willing to pay as much as 5% more for a product packaged with
recyclable or biodegradable materials.
Of course, we know well that
only a fraction of Americans buy green products — or, at least, buy
more than a few such products on a regular basis.
(I’m leaving organic and other
food items out of this equation for the moment. While much of these
purchases certainly qualify as “green,” the motivations behind them
have more to do with personal health and well-being than with planetary
considerations.)
In the eighteen years since
Michael Peters, a succession of surveys have yielded similar stats,
numbers that show up frequently in conference presentations and
business plans. After all, if you were selling a product or service
aimed at a green-minded audience and wanted to convince investors,
business partners, and others that your greener mousetrap had a robust
market, wouldn’t you want to invoke such optimistic-sounding data from
venerable research firms? I would.
Given this context, I couldn’t help but note a press release last month
stating that the “vast majority” — 87% — of American consumers say
they are “seriously concerned about the environment.” Moreover, said
the release:
A vast majority of
consumers say a company’s environmental practices are important in
making key decisions including: the products they purchase (79%), the
products/services they recommend to others (77%), where they shop
(74%), where they choose to work (73%), and where they invest their
money (72%).
These findings came from the 2007 GfK Roper Green Gauge, the latest edition of an (almost) annual survey of Americans’ green-shopping attitudes that began in 1990. As I’ve noted previously,
each year Green Gauge tracks the environmental attitudes and belief
systems of five market segmentations of American consumers. I’ve been
watching Green Gauge results since they began and find them an
interesting, and sobering, look at Americans’ green Zeitgeist.
Given Roper’s findings — nearly nine in ten Americans say they are fretting over the fate of the earth!
— I wanted to learn more. A recent conversation with Katherine
Sheehan, senior vice president at GfK Roper Consulting, helped me get
to the bottom of it all.
For starters, that 87% figure
turns out to be misleading — the overly enthusiastic hyperbole of a
press release writer, I’m guessing. Turns out that only 41% of
Americans say that their concern for the environment is “very serious
and should be a priority for everyone.” Another 41% said that their
concern about the environment is “somewhat serious, but there are other
more important issues that we need to address.”
Add those up and you get the
87% who are “seriously concerned about the environment,” as the press
release put it. “I think that’s a little bit misleading,” concedes
Sheehan.
Enough about that. Other parts
of Green Gauge were more enlightening. For example: Company websites,
brochures, and annual reports are the last place consumers look to for
information on company environmental practices, Roper found. The
biggest sources of information are traditional media and word of mouth:
TV programs (59%), newspaper articles (49%), online articles (39%), and
friends, family, and “other people you know” (34%). Environmental
organizations ranked sixth (25%), blogs eighth (18%), followed by
government agencies, business magazines, community groups, and —
finally — corporate communications.
The one exception are product
labels, which seem to have a fairly high level of credibility. “We see
that people tend to really believe product labels and product
labeling,” says Sheehan. “So, if something says it’s biodegradable, the
consumer has a level of trust with that communication.”
Still, it’s evident that
companies have a lot of work to do to gain cred among consumers when it
comes to the environment. Some of that likely has to do with the
impenetrable nature of most company websites and annual reports, and
the feel-good nature of much of their other environmental
communications. Even the most committed consumers would have problems
wading through some companies’ output, let alone assessing what it all
really means.
As a rule, green products
still seem an afterthought for most consumers. Roper found that 28%
percent of consumers have purchased a product in the past two months
“because the advertising or label said the product was environmentally
safe or biodegradable.” (That seems to counter Roper’s finding that
nearly eight in ten consumers think that companies’ environmental
practices are important in the products they purchase.)
So, what’s keeping consumers
from doing more? Greener products are “too expensive,” say 74% of
consumers, while 61% say they don’t work as well. Fifty-five percent
believe that “many ‘environmentally safe’ products are not better for
the environment.” (So much for believing product labels.)
Such findings worry me. They
sound much like consumer responses did a decade or more ago. True, some
things have changed in that time: the aforementioned growth of organic,
natural, and locally sourced foods; the availability of renewable power
and green energy from local utilities; the advent of hybrid-electric
vehicles; and the growth of energy-efficient technologies in many
consumer products, including computer equipment. And then there’s the
rise of retailers — Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and others — that are
making some greener products more affordable and available to the
masses.
But the pace of change seems
unbearably slow, and incremental, and not widespread. And despite the
optimistic findings of Roper and other firms sussing out Americans’
green buying habits, I’m discouraged and impatient. What will it take
for a critical mass of competitively priced, widely distributed, and
high-quality green products to be available — enough so that buying
them feels the rule, not the exception? What will it take for green to
finally be mainstream?
