Green advertising is becoming increasingly popular in today's society across product categories and sectors. Many researchers have examined consumer receptivity to green ad claims and the effects of claim presence and claim type on ad credibility. But a question still prevails that if consumers have positive attitudes towards environmental protection and they are willing to accept green marketing, why that doesn't translate into positive ad response and consumption behaviors. This study aims at identifying how individual characteristics may influence consumers to be more or less receptive to ecologically themed ad claims.
Washing detergent was chosen as the product with three different ad themes based on strong claim, weak claim and cause related-marketing claim, one control ad was also designed. Ad claims were related to environment protection. On the basis of constructs of theoretical model a questionnaire was framed and same questionnaire was used with all ad claims. The respondents for the study were those customers who are visiting washing powder section of 4 supermarkets of Western Uttar Pradesh (U.P). 400 respondents were targeted but only 218 completely filled questionnaires came back. Factor analysis and reliability analysis were used at initial stage of data analysis then Structural Equation Modeling was used to plot the factors. The results suggest that consumers with positive attitudes toward environmental protection are equally receptive to all conditions tested. Findings also reveal that higher the degree of perceived consumer effectiveness in an individual, higher will be his concern for environment.