Marketing sustainability: Use of information sources and degrees of voluntary simplicity

Abstract

The concept of voluntary simplicity (VS) is taken as a starting point to investigate consumers' use of information sources when making purchases of sustainable technological products and services. Differences in information seeking and sources consulted and trusted are investigated with a view to increasing the uptake of sustainable domestic technologies such as energy efficient fridges and washing machines over more grey alternatives. Clear patterns both in sources used and the information seeking process were found between different groups of consumers and priorities for purchase were also identified. The results suggest different strategies for marketing sustainable technologies to these different consumer groups.

Keywords:

• information sources
• sustainable technologies
• voluntary simplifiers

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the ESRC Sustainable Technologies Programme for funding the project: ‘Trade‐offs in decision‐making for sustainable technologies’ (award RES‐388‐25‐0001).