Fashion companies and brands’ marketing activities focus on resolving environmental problems; however, these companies’ efforts, there are some examples of so-called “greenwashing”. This paper aims to analyze different perceptions of brand authenticity, green marketing, and purchase intention toward the brand before and after exposure to case information about greenwashing. A total of 211 data were gathered and analyzed using SPSS 25.0. Respondents were asked to respond to same questionnaires related to green marketing and the brand authenticity before and after their exposure to greenwashing information. The study participants’ perceptions of green marketing from the brand were statistically significantly negatively changed after exposure compared to before exposure. Similar patterns in results were found in the context of consumers’ perception of brand authenticity (genuineness, originality, and consistency), and purchase intention. The originality of this study is in evaluating consumers’ perception of greenwashing focused on brand authenticity. The findings of the study suggest that if a fashion brand’s green marketing activity is perceived as greenwashing by consumers, the perceptions of green marketing, brand authenticity, and purchase intention can all decline. It is suggested that fashion brands need to develop a sincere and truthful green marketing campaigns to keep and enhance their brand authenticity.

In the last few years, the attention on false and misleading communications regarding company’s commitment towards the environment – a practice known as greenwashing – has drastically increased. Greenwashing has several consequences for companies: it deteriorates brand reputation and trust (Duan and Jie, 2013), increases consumer skepticism (Delmas and Burbano, 2011), reduces purchase intentions (Murray and Vogel 1997; Swaen and Vanhamme 2004, 2005), and erodes investor’s confidence in environmentally friendly firms (Delmas and Burbano, 2011). Indeed, private investors are interested in CSR and look for information about it (Cellier et al., 2016; Nath, et al., 2013) but little is known about the consequences of greenwashing on private investments. Moreover, greenwashing often happens because of the bad management of the supply chain and various company’s faults are related to the difficulty to manage it (Crane et al., 2014). The aim of this research is to investigate how greenwashing affects intention to invest depending on the involvement of the supply chain. In two experiments we compared three types of greenwashing, which vary according to the supply chain role in the misconduct and the declared CSR commitment of the company. We call indirect greenwashing when a company that declares to be CSR committed is accused of greenwashing because it purchases raw materials or services from a supplier that does not meet sustainability standards (e.g. child labor, environmental damages). Conversely, a company that does not follow its CSR talk because of its own production procedures is an example of direct greenwashing. We also propose a third category of greenwashing, which we called vicarious greenwashing: when the misconduct and the relative accusation regard a company’s supplier, but the company does not claim to be sustainable (so it’s vicariously affected). A scenario-based experimental design (n =107) asked participants to indicate the intention to invest on a company accused of direct greenwashing (vs. indirect vs. vicarious). Results showed that direct greenwashing is particularly detrimental on investment intentions, especially compared to vicarious greenwashing, but not compared to indirect greenwashing (even if the means were lower). This result suggests that greenwashing is detrimental for investments even when the company does not perform the misconduct. A second experiment (n = 202) investigated whether the declared control on the supply chain affects intention to invest when the company is involved in greenwashing. Direct greenwashing was the more detrimental for investments, but, when companies declared high control on the supply chain, greenwashing significantly decreased intention to invest, so that in high control condition direct greenwashing did not differ from vicarious and indirect greenwashing. These results show how the involvement in greenwashing affects investment intentions of private investors and expand our knowledge on the consequences of greenwashing, so far mostly investigated from the consumer side. We show that greenwashing has potential disruptive consequences from a broader perspective, because it reduces stakeholders’ willingness to invest, even when the misconduct is attributable to a supplier.

A side effect of green advertising has emerged in the form of ‘greenwashing’, which designates “the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service” (Terrachoice, 2010). Till now, research has focused on ‘claim greenwashing’, the use of textual arguments in the ad that create a misleading environmental claim and ignored the potential ‘executional greenwashing’ effect, whereby nature-evoking elements (e.g., pictures symbolizing endangered animals or renewable sources of energy, backgrounds representing natural landscapes) in the ad execution may induce false perceptions of a brand’s greenness, whether intentionally or not on the part of the advertiser. This research addresses this gap by documenting the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect and identifying moderating factors (i.e., consumers’ knowledge about environmental issues in the product category, the display of environmental performance information) that may reduce or even remove its impact on consumers. Research on green advertising has largely drawn from the ELM framework (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981) to assess the impact of green cues on consumers’ brand attitudes (Hartmann & Apaolaza-Ibáñez, 2009). However a sole focus on the content of the advertising message may not be sufficient to understand consumers’ responses to it. There may be important variables that moderate the effects on the brand’s ecological image. One important individual moderator, in the tradition of the ELM, is consumer topic knowledge, i.e. knowledge related to the topic of the message, which influences the ability to process the message and the outcome of persuasive attempts (e.g. Alba & Hutchinson, 1991). In the context of ‘executional greenwashing’, the persuasive power of advertising executional elements representing nature may therefore differ depending on consumers’ topic knowledge of environmental issues in the product category. Consumers with such topic knowledge, referred to as “expert” consumers, are less likely to rely on and be influenced by the use of advertising executional elements representing nature, whereas “non-expert” consumers may be influenced through the peripheral route to persuasion, resulting in greater perception of the brand’s ecological image. Stated formally: H1. Advertising executional elements evoking nature have a positive influence on the brand’s ecological image for non-expert consumers, but not for expert consumers. One important contextual moderator is the type of relevant information provided in the advertisement. In this paper, we examine whether the display of environmental performance information, which was in fact selected by the European Community, can correct a potential ‘executional greenwashing’ effect. The Directive 1999/94/EC requires that car manufacturers selling within European countries provide information regarding new cars’ carbon emission to direct consumers’ choices towards greener cars. A potential additional benefit of environmental performance information is that this kind of objective information may also prevent greenwashing by helping consumers form an accurate perception of a brand’s image, regardless of the executional advertising setting. A central premise of the ELM is that consumers’ response to information differs depending on their level of knowledge about the issue at hand. Expert consumers should be more able to treat the environmental information provided, therefore following a central route of persuasion (Alba & Hutchinson, 1991). Their brand evaluation should be formed based on the objective environmental performance provided, which are strong arguments, and not from the visual and sound executional elements manipulated in the ad (conversely for non-expert consumers). H2a. For non-expert consumers, advertising executional elements evoking nature enhance the brand’s ecological image, whereas the level of the environmental performance indicator (EPI) does not influence it. H2b. For expert consumers, the level of the EPI damages the brand’s ecological image, whereas advertising executional elements evoking nature do not influence it. Considering the relative efficiency of specific formats to display environmental performance information, we tested the traffic-light type of label, inspired by the energy appliance label program compulsory in Europe. The label format is crucial, especially if it can reduce the perceived costs of searching and processing this information and offer a comparison baseline. In the context of the EPI display, a traffic-light representation of the raw information about emission rates showing value ranges associated to color codes should may help expert and non-expert consumers calibrate environmental performance information, therefore counterbalancing the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect. H3. For experts and non-experts, the presence of a traffic-light label removes the effect of advertising executional elements evoking nature on the brand’s ecological image.