The Social Control Exerted by Advertising: A Study on the Perception of Greenwashing in Green Products at Retail

Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the perception of greenwashing in the beliefs, attitudes and the perceived benefits by consumers to green products at retail facing the social control exerted by advertising.

Study Design: For the verification of the proposed objective, an exploratory research was conducted within a quantitative nature through a survey.

Place and Duration of Study: State of Sao Paulo, Brazil, between November 2015 and February 2016.

Methodology: The study had a sample of 359 valid respondents of the State of São Paulo / SP. The sample is composed of 73% women and 27% men, whose family allowance was $ 1,250 (26.6%) and US$ 625-940 (24.7%), and 75% of these consumers go to the supermarket at least once a week. For the data analysis, the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied through the software SMARTPLS 2.0-M3.

Results: It was observed that the greenwashing tends to cause confusion in the perception of green consumption, and when the consumer perceives the existence of greenwashing, it reacts negatively in relation to the beliefs, attitudes and perceived benefits for green products, and no longer believes in the product and in the credibility of the company.

Conclusion: One of the problems arising from the greenwashing is the impact on the companies that operate ethically in the market. For the consumers, it is difficult to identify the difference between products that answer the needs of environmental sustainability. And despite the strong pressure from the media and advertising, when the consumer realizes that in the product there are characteristics of greenwashing, it rejects the product or the brand that calls itself green and is not.