Search Results (6)

In the age where environmental sustainability issues are progressively prioritized, green demarketing has risen as a strategic choice for organizations aiming to decrease customer demand for unsustainable services/products and stimulate more eco-friendly substitutes. This paper investigates the impact of green demarketing on brand credibility, green authenticity, and perceptions of greenwashing. This paper examines how restaurants that are engaged in green demarketing practices are perceived with regard to their commitment toward the environment and whether such practices improve or reduce a brand’s credibility. Moreover, this study explores green authenticity and explores how an organization’s brand looks in its sustainability practices when employing demarketing activities. The proper consequences of greenwashing, where customers might perceive these tactics as insincere or misleading, are also significantly explored. By employing a survey research method, 414 restaurant customers were targeted, and the gathered data were analyzed employing partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). This study’s results might contribute to the increasing interest in sustainable marketing activities and deliver practical implications for restaurants aiming to navigate the complex multi-dynamics of ecofriendly responsibility and consumer credibility. Full article

The use of plastic bags has long been a global concern due to its hazardous contributions to the environment. Firms, governments, and special interest groups (like Greenpeace) have always earnestly ventured, through their individual or collaborative initiatives, strategies and/or (demarketing) campaigns, to discourage the use of plastic bags to ensure a healthy and sustainable planet. However, such initiatives are least likely to produce desired results if the most important stakeholder i.e., consumers do not perceive greater value from such a reduction in usage of plastic bags. Considering the same an important precondition for building positive intentions and consequent behaviors to reduce plastic bag usage and a complementor of demarketing efforts of the stakeholders, the primary purpose of this study has been to investigate the role of consumers’ green orientation, environmental knowledge, and perceived instrumentality of demarketing efforts in enhancing the perceived value of plastic usage curtailment. Based on PLS-based structural equation modelling performed on a data set comprising 977 consumers, it has been found that the three antecedents namely green consumption orientation, recycling attitudes and demarketing efforts have direct positive effects on the outcome construct. Besides, the study also found that the effect of green consumption orientation on perceived value of plastic usage reduction is significantly and positively moderated by consumers’ recycling attitudes and their perceived effectiveness of demarketing efforts. The findings offer some useful insights and implications to the theory, practice and the policy making for boosting pro-environmental behaviors. Full article

Over the past few decades, demarketing has come up as an unorthodox but potentially strong approach that can be used to counter the negative effects of oversaturation in tourism destinations. This study investigates the difference that demarketing strategies can make on mitigation efforts towards overtourism in destinations across the globe by conducting a meta-analysis of the previous literature examining various case studies on the topic. This study approaches demarketing efforts against overtourism through the lens of the 4Ps of marketing: price, place, product, and promotion. The results of the logit model designate price as the only significant predictor in the mitigation of overtourism through demarketing, with the other three falling short. The findings are enhanced through various other predictors from the literature as well as government effectiveness in the destinations. Moreover, the driving forces such as environmental concerns and community satisfaction have proven to be significant factors as well. Full article

Demarketing is generally recognized as that aspect of marketing that aims at discouraging customers in general or a certain class of customers in particular on either a temporary or permanent basis and has been increasingly posited as a potential tool to degrow tourism and improve its overall sustainability, particularly as a result of so-called overtourism. The paper provides an overview of the various ways in which demarketing has been applied in a tourism context and assesses the relative value of demarketing as a means of contributing to sustainability and degrowing tourism. It is argued that demarketing can make a substantial contribution to degrowing tourism at a local or even regional scale, but that the capacity to shift visitation in space and time also highlights a core weakness with respect to its contribution at other scales. The paper concludes by noting that the concept of degrowth also needs to be best understood as a continuum of which demarketing is only one aspect. Full article

Collecting of natural souvenirs causes destruction of the natural environment as well as social and economic problems. The article shows that the next generation will have a tendency to aggravate such problems by collecting natural souvenirs. To discover the preferences of young people related to collecting natural souvenirs, the authors performed a survey in Poland on a sample of 426 persons aged 21–30. The survey has shown that 80.7% of young people participating in tourist trips bring souvenirs to their places of residence. As much as 61.4% collect natural souvenirs. Most people bring shells (53.9%), rocks (22.7%), and sand from seaside beaches (18.0%). Natural souvenirs are important to young Poles. This is confirmed by the following major motivations for collection: natural souvenirs are unique (26.2%), genuine (23.8%), bring back the best memories (22.6%), and cannot be bought in stores (14.5%). Only 9.8% of those surveyed oppose bringing of natural souvenirs, 5.2% deem such practices unlawful, and 11.2% recognize their detrimental effect on local tourist attractions. The article presents demarketing actions, which can largely stem the negative phenomenon of collection of natural souvenirs. Full article

The current work focuses on non-price policies to achieve residential water conservation, specifically on water conservation campaigns. The authors report the results of a large-scale longitudinal field experiment encouraging residential water conservation among 1500 households. The effectiveness of two commonly-used message phrasings is compared: an assertive and a suggestive message. Assertive messages employ a commanding tone, such as “You must conserve water”, whereas suggestive messages employ a more gentle approach, as in “Please consider conserving water”. Despite the ubiquitous use of assertive phrasing in pro-social messages, and previous research that suggests that, in some cases, assertive language can increase message compliance, the authors show here that the suggestive, gentler, message language can make a more accentuated change in residential water conservation behavior. This may stem from the status of water as a basic needs resource, which may reduce the appropriateness of freedom restricting language, such as an assertive tone. Full article