Similar to myself or to the green? The effect of introducing different types of green new products on luxury brand evaluation and purchase intention

Luxury brands’ increasing commitment toward sustainability, alongside luxury consumers’ growing attention toward environmental issues, suggest that luxury and sustainability are compatible concepts. However, academic research suggests that sustainable luxury is still seen by consumers as a contradiction. We investigate the type of environmental sustainability practices that luxury brands should adopt in order to galvanize consumers’ interest in sustainable versions of their products by studying the differential effectiveness of two strategies that luxury brands might adopt when introducing green new products: First, the green product might be similar in design to a luxury brand’s established, non-green products. Second, the green product might be similar in design to models made by non-luxury brands specializing in green products. Across three experiments, we show that these two strategies can be differentially effective depending on both consumer-related and product-related factors.