‘Fly Responsibly’: a case study on consumer perceptions of a green demarketing campaign

ABSTRACT

Although demarketing has a history of close to 50 years, it has not lost its unconventionality and otherness. Commercially-intended green demarketing promoting pro-environmental preservation is gaining scholarly attention amid a surge in green marketing activities and the incidences of greenwashing. Companies are constantly under suspicion of not being honest, of masquerading as environmentalists. With a qualitative interpretive approach, we examine in-depth one single non-hypothetical green demarketing case and employ interviews in the field. We systematize a broad spectrum of consumer responses that includes but does not focus on the motives that consumers attribute to companies. A thematic analysis reveals spontaneous responses advocating the topic of the campaign on the category level, as well as how consumers deal with the inherent contradiction of green demarketing that arises from the sender-message combination on the brand level. In addition, we discover that consumers’ environmental concerns in response to green demarketing differ depending on contextual effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Demarketing
• green marketing
• green demarketing
• case study

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers. Their comments and advice were extremely helpful. We would also like to thank Prof. Holger J. Schmidt for his support.

Data availability statement

The data set associated with our study, can be made available on request. Please contact [email protected].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andreas Hesse

Andreas Hesse Since 2019, Andreas Hesse has been Professor of Marketing at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences. His main research interests include green marketing and digital commerce. Andreas holds a PhD from European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel/Germany and graduated as a Diplom-Kaufmann at University of Trier/Germany. He has published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Corporate Reputation Review and Harvard Business Manager and has presented his research at various international research conferences. Before his academic career, he worked in executive positions in marketing, sales and customer service in a leading European telecommunication provider for more than 15 years.

Sofie Rünz

Sofie Rünz graduated as a Master of Science in Business Management with a major in Marketing & International Business at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences in 2020. Prior to that, she received her bachelor’s degree in the field of Advertising and Marketing Communication at Hochschule der Medien (University of Applied Sciences), Stuttgart/Germany. Her main research interests include green marketing and the importance of intercultural competence in the context of business.