Green products are often afflicted with a perceived performance liability, presenting marketing managers with a dilemma of how to motivate consumers to alter their consumption behavior, while acknowledging their negative inferences about green product performance. To address this problem, we develop green emphasis, defined as the prominence given to a firms’ environmental initiative in a green product communication appeal. By employing a green emphasis strategy, a firm makes prominent in a communication message either environmental attributes (Study 1 and 3), or uses assertive terminology (Study 2) to heighten issue importance. When a green emphasis strategy is used, the lack of performance-related extrinsic cues may reduce an individuals’ evaluation of a product’s performance ability. This relationship is mediated by autonomous motivation, which may be enhanced through the provision of information that is of interest and value to an individual (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Next, the moderating variable of performance criticality is examined, whereby the importance of the products’ performance ability is based on its associated category (Study 1) or purchase situation (Study 2). When a product belongs to a performance-critical category, or if situational involvement is heightened, the incongruent product information may heighten the negative impact of green emphasis. Finally, environmental attribute optionality (Study 3) is examined. When optional, the attribute is non-fundamental to the functioning of the base product (Ma, Gill, & Jiang, 2015). By making the environmental attribute an option, it is supposed that the incongruity between the attribute and perceived product performance is mitigated and localized, overcoming the negative effect of green emphasis.

• Bryan Usrey(Leeds University Business School, UK)
• Dayananda Palihawadana(Leeds University, UK)
• Charalampos Saridakis(Leeds University, UK)
• Aristeidis Theotokis(Leeds University, UK)