The green brand: Explicit and implicit framing effects of ecolabelling on brand knowledge

Figures & data

Figure 1. Conceptual framework.

Table 1. Manifest variables of the sustainability and brand strength measures

Construct	Item(s)
Explicit sustainability	Antipollution, nature-minded, green-minded, ecological, environmentally aware, ecosensitive
Implicit sustainability	Antipollution, nature-minded, green-minded, ecological, environmentally aware, ecosensitive
Cognitive brand strength: popularity	The brand is very famous
Cognitive brand strength: quality	In my opinion the quality of the brand is very high
Cognitive brand strength: uniqueness	The brand is very distinctive
Affective brand strength: identification	The brand suits me completely
Affective brand strength: trust	The brand keeps to its promise
Affective brand strength: liking	I find the brand very pleasant
Intentional brand strength: loyalty	I am very faithful to the brand
Intentional brand strength: recommendation	I would recommend the brand to my friends
Intentional brand strength: willingness-to-pay	The products of the brand are worth a higher price compared to similar products of other brands
Intentional brand strength: buying intention	I intend to buy the brand in the future

Table 2. Attention heat maps

Investigation brand	Cookie brand Leibniz	Cookie brand Oreo
Investigation condition
Experimental condition I (strong label): Fairtrade Sustainability Label
Experimental condition II (weak label): UTZ Certified sustainability label
Control condition: No sustainability label

Note: The ecolabels were place on the upper right corner of the original brand advertisements in the experimental conditions.

Table 3. Evaluation of the implicit and explicit sustainability measures

	Factor loadings	Average variance extracted	Cronbach’s alpha	Split-half reliability^1	External validity^2	Discriminant validity^3
Ecolabel Fairtrade: explicit sustainability	>0.876	84%	0.962	n/a	0.386**	0.513**
Ecolabel Fairtrade: implicit sustainability	n/a	n/a	n/a	0.878	0.363**
Ecolabel UTZ Certified: explicit sustainability	>0.972	97%	0.993	n/a	0.671**	0.519**
Ecolabel UTZ Certified: implicit sustainability	n/a	n/a	n/a	0.904	0.564**
Brand Leibniz before: explicit sustainability	>0.948	94%	0.985	n/a	0.686**	0.498**
Brand Leibniz before: implicit sustainability	n/a	n/a	n/a	0.897	0.456**
Brand Leibniz after: explicit sustainability	>0.934	92%	0.977	n/a	0.713**	0.584**
Brand Leibniz after: implicit sustainability	n/a	n/a	n/a	0.680	0.512**
Brand Oreo before: explicit sustainability	>0.950	93%	0.985	n/a	0.512**	0.231*
Brand Oreo before: implicit sustainability	n/a	n/a	n/a	0.894	0.310**
Brand Oreo after: explicit sustainability	>0.905	89%	0.985	n/a	0.793**	0.663**
Brand Oreo after: implicit sustainability	n/a	n/a	n/a	0.930	0.532**

Note: n/a = not applicable.

^* p < 0.05

^** p < 0.01

¹ Similar to the standard procedure for calculating internal consistencies of IAT measures (e.g. Schnabel et al., 2008), first, the implicit scores were randomly divided into two sets, second, the total value for each half was calculated, third, the Spearman–Brown correlation coefficient between these two total values was estimated.

² Spearman’s rank correlation analysis between the sustainability measure and a global external factor that summarizes the essence of sustainability for the respective brand and ecolabel.

³ Spearman’s rank correlation analysis between the corresponding explicit and implicit sustainability measure.

Table 4. Results of the Universal Structure Modeling path analysis

Dependent variable	Independent variable	f-square^1	LPC^2	t	p^3	R-square
Cognitive brand strength (n = 54): popularity	Implicit brand sustainability	0.39	0.24	2.17	0.018	0.55
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.33	0.05	0.82	0.209
Cognitive brand strength (n = 54): quality	Implicit brand sustainability	0.28	0.38	3.44	0.001	0.39
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.22	0.10	0.97	0.169
Cognitive brand strength (n = 54): uniqueness	Implicit brand sustainability	0.21	0.28	2.47	0.009	0.35
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.21	0.00	1.01	0.159
Affective brand strength (n = 54): identification	Implicit brand sustainability	0.39	0.41	4.55	0.000	0.47
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.29	0.14	0.86	0.197
Affective brand strength (n = 54): trust	Implicit brand sustainability	0.36	0.27	2.29	0.014	0.51
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.36	0.35	2.16	0.018
Affective brand strength (n = 54): liking	Implicit brand sustainability	0.29	0.38	4.20	0.000	0.43
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.17	0.20	2.45	0.009
Intentional brand strength (n = 54): loyalty	Implicit brand sustainability	0.29	0.22	2.38	0.011	0.50
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.27	0.19	2.34	0.012
Intentional brand strength (n = 54): recommendation	Implicit brand sustainability	0.37	0.42	4.30	0.000	0.46
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.39	0.09	0.86	0.198
Intentional brand strength (n = 54): willingness-to-pay	Implicit brand sustainability	0.27	0.23	1.46	0.076	0.41
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.28	0.19	1.33	0.096
Intentional brand strength (n = 54): buying intention	Implicit brand sustainability	0.31	0.27	3.58	0.001	0.43
	Explicit brand sustainability	0.26	0.00	0.84	0.317

¹ Regarding the estimated USM model, the overall explained deviation described as “a more general criterion for the strength of construct interrelations” (Buckler & Hennig-Thurau, 2008, p. 52) and which is calculated by default in the used software package Neusrel (2017) was applied as proxy for f².

² LPC = standardized linear path coefficients (β).

³ One-tailed test.

Table 5. Summary statistics for the before–after measurement

	Before		After		Difference		t	p^1	d	d 95% CI
	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD				Lower	Upper
Experimental condition I (strong label): Fairtrade ecolabel explicit sustainability (n = 37)	35.47	21.61	46.29	23.45	10.82	21.04	3.128	0.003	0.479	0.017	0.941
Experimental condition I (strong label): Fairtrade ecolabel implicit sustainability (n = 37)	27.64	21.69	41.15	29.55	13.51	26.01	3.160	0.003	0.509	0.046	0.972
Experimental condition II (weak label): UTZ certified ecolabel explicit sustainability (n = 50)	35.92	24.21	46.00	25.01	10.08	24.08	2.959	0.005	0.409	0.013	0.805
Experimental condition II (weak label): UTZ certified ecolabel implicit sustainability (n = 50)	27.82	22.12	39.09	31.31	11.27	29.51	2.701	0.009	0.407	0.011	0.803
Control condition (no label): explicit sustainability (n = 54)	33.87	23.26	33.63	22.71	−0.24	16.61	−0.104	0.917	0.010	−0.367	0.387
Experimental condition (no label): implicit sustainability (n = 54)	23.71	20.55	22.73	23.71	−0.98	16.90	−0.427	0.671	0.044	−0.333	0.421

Notes: M = mean, SD = standard deviation; scale range (rescaled): 0–100, higher (lower) numbers indicate an increasing level of approval (non-approval) related to perceived sustainability.

¹ Two-tailed test.

Figure 2. Ecolabel-brand fit and brand knowledge transfer.

Figure 3. Ecolabel recognition time and implicit–explicit knowledge acquisition.

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