Search Results (8)

Over the years, the overconsumption of natural resources has been an issue of concern. Companies have been inducing sustainable practices and approaches to help the environment. By specifically applying the sustainability theory of planned behavior, this study sought to extensively investigate behavioral preference and intention to buy green and sustainable products across name-brand businesses in a developing country. Utilizing Structural Equation Modeling, this study examined responses from 300 valid participants. The results revealed that consumers’ purchasing preferences and intentions are affected by customer expectation for the products, by the government, and by customer concern for the environment. It was seen that customers are prepared to pay extra for name-brand stores that sell eco-friendly or sustainable goods. In accordance, consumers’ purchase intentions are greatly affected by the customer preference or expectation for a product, as the findings indicate that customer-perceived value has the highest influential and consequential relationship to behavioral purposes. Customers are inclined to purchase eco-friendly goods if the sustainable product meets the requirements and expectations of the consumer. Furthermore, consumers’ purchasing intentions in buying green products from name-brand shops are also affected by the government, individuals’ environmental concerns and awareness, individuals’ personal needs and beliefs, society, and individual attitudes. For name-brand stores, consumers’ behavioral intentions to purchase environmentally friendly and sustainable goods are the most strongly associated with their perception of their own value, followed by perceived authority support and perceived environmental concern. The findings and results of this study can be relevant in understanding and exploring consumers’ behavioral intentions to purchase green products from name-brand shops. Full article

With the rising awareness of environmental protection and concern for sustainable development, green products have been highly favored by consumers, enterprises, and the government. As a matter of fact, not only do manufacturers produce green products, but retailers would also like to introduce their green store brands. However, the costly green investment hinders the improvement of the products’ green degree. Therefore, the government may provide financial support to motivate enterprises to increase their products’ green degree. This study investigates how the presence of green store brands and government subsidies affect green supply chain performance. Four models are discussed using the Stackelberg game theoretic approach, and then, the optimal solutions in different cases are compared. The results show that (1) regardless of the government subsidy, the green store brand introduction always reduces the manufacturer’s profit and improves the retailer’s profit and environmental benefit; (2) In most cases, the implementation of a government subsidy can effectively improve the products’ green degree and benefit the supply chain members. However, it is surprising to find that the government subsidy may be detrimental to the manufacturer once the green store brand is introduced; (3) Interestingly, the introduction of green store brand may have an expansion effect, a shrinkage effect or even an inverse effect on the effects of government subsidies on supply chain performance, and these effects become more significant with the increasing green preference of consumers, product substitute, and subsidy rate. The new findings also provide some implications for supply chain members and the government in green supply chain management (GSCM) and green innovation. Full article

Environment sustainability is becoming an important social obligation for organizations. As consumers are becoming conscious of the environment conservation, organizations are using technology to increase efficiency while saving labor costs and providing a unique in-store experience, engaging consumers interaction with the brand. Artificial intelligence (AI), that involves machines or applications mimicking human intelligence, is transforming the manner in which the consumers interact with the brands. Applying the theory of anthropomorphism and the psychological ownership theory, this study significantly contributes to the existing literature by investigating the interplay between crucial constructs such as AI anthropomorphism, psychological ownership, and product usage barrier in the context of green brands. Data was collected through a questionnaire from Indian consumers (N = 295). Data analysis was conducted using the SPSS PROCESS macro. The study provides empirical evidence on the significant role of psychological ownership with green brand AI anthropomorphism for building consumer relationships. The findings revealed that green brand AI anthropomorphism creates product usage barriers, but along with psychological ownership, the influence on consumer relationships remains positive. Full article

Over the past decades, the store brand has undergone a key change and achieved a remarkable improvement. Based on the industry observations, there is a wide belief that the retailers are more and more inclining to add values that cater to the consumers into their store brands. The green store brand, one kind of the burgeoning store brands, has been introduced by many retailers recently. In this paper, we investigate the conditions for retailer to introduce a green store brand and the impacts of supply chain power structure on the retailer’s product strategy. We built and solved six game models with respect to three supply chain power structures with and without the green store brand. The results show that: (i) the threshold to introduce the green store brand is lowest in RS power structure while highest in VN power structure, and the thresholds to only sell the green store brand under different power structures are the same; (ii) the green store brand may be introduced as a profitable product that has the real sale or just a threatening tool to compel the manufacturer to make a concession in wholesale price; (iii) once the green store brand is introduced, it is always detrimental to the manufacturer regardless of power structure; (iv) the green store brand can alleviate the double marginalization effect with respect to the national brand in most cases but aggravate it if the power structure is RS, and the ratio of potential margin is relatively low. Full article

The sustainable consumption and integration of digital solutions with respect to sustainable consumption have been encouraged by the new European circular economy action plan. Digital adoption has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic; companies have been challenged to rapidly adapt to the constant evolution of consumer needs and expectations, leading to valuable insights into the advancement of green business practices and a consequent rethinking of their business model. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major shifts in sustainable consumer behavior on the Romanian retail market within the context of the Green European Deal, and retailers’ priorities in agilely adapting to these significant evolutions. Based on a comprehensive literature review on these major shifts and significant evolutions at the national and international levels, a quantitative study was carried out to evaluate the Romanian retail market and identify the major challenges faced by retailers in dealing with the new set of priorities. The data collection was conducted via a survey used in the retail environment, applied within a Romanian supermarket chain. The Romanian retail sector has a particular configuration, which may have an impact upon the study’s generalizability. Located in Central and Eastern Europe at the crossroads of the EU, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Middle East, Romania is a leading destination for foreign direct investment, and it is recognized for the similarities of its distribution and sales channels, the range of its retail outlets, and the local retail market dominance on the Big Box segment by reputed major retailers. A spectacular evolution is recorded in Romania’s e-commerce market, including from the point of view of the long-standing and memorable traditional relationship between Romania and China which was confirmed more recently by Romanian consumers who prefer to buy online from stores in China. Our consumer research provides retailers with deep consumer insights with regard to their priorities in their agile adaptation. According to our research, Romanian consumers are environmentally concerned consumers, displaying an increased awareness about the important role they play with respect to impacting sustainable production and consumption by adopting green purchase behavior. Our study also points to the fact that retailers, although faced with challenges in targeting consumers with customized messages to reinforce their brand perception on sustainability issues, do pay considerable attention to sustainability as a personal value embraced by consumers and are willing to focus on digitizing their business processes to enable new, sustainable business models. Full article

This study demonstrates a scenario of industrial reformulation by developing muffins that resemble store-branded ones and testing the possibility of reformulating them using inulin and green banana flour (GBF). Ten different formulations were created through reducing 10% or 30% of sugar and/or fat. Physical characteristics, consumer acceptance and purchase preferences, baking losses, nutritional properties, shelf-life, as well as cost and industrial processability were considered and discussed. Results on physical properties showed that firmness had increased in reformulated muffins while springiness only decreased when both sugar and fat were reduced by 30% (p < 0.05). Texture and sensory properties of reformulated muffins were acceptable, and the purchase intent rate was high. Regarding the nutritional properties, muffins incorporating more than 10% of fibres allowed the addition of nutritional claims. The incremental area under the curve iAUC_120min of blood glucose in healthy adults (n = 13) was significantly lower than control after ingesting 30% reduced sugar or fat muffins using inulin (p < 0.01). The microbial profile was not affected by reformulation during storage at 25 °C for 10 days. This study concluded that there is a significant potential to industrially produce reduced sugar or fat muffins using inulin or GBF up to 30% without significantly deteriorating quality attributes. Full article

The environmental input of a store brand product’s green supply chain plays an important role in improving the product brand image and expanding the product demand. According to the difference of the initial one-off environmental investment of the store brand product, it can be divided into three modes: direct OEM, retailer’s full participation and retailer’s partial participation. The research methods employed in this study include model establishment, numerical analysis and comparison under three entrustment modes based on retailers’ negotiation strength. In addition, sensitivity analysis was used to test the influence of parameter variations on the results. The research results show that: (i) the direct OEM mode is the best choice for retailers when the retailer is in a weak position, but it is not the best choice for the manufacturer. With the increase of the retailers’ negotiation strength, the profits of both sides will decline, causing the problem of double marginal profit decreasing; (ii) the retailer’s full participation mode is the best choice for the manufacturer when the retailer is in a strong position, but not the best choice for the retailer. It is not the best choice for both sides when the retailer is in a weak position; (iii) the greenness and total profit of the supply chain are no relative with the negotiation strength of the retailer under the partial participation mode, and the greenness and total profit of the supply chain are the same as the condition under the integrated control to achieve the best coordination effect. Full article

To contribute to global sustainability, many manufacturers are starting to implement green product development and trying to provide environmentally friendly products. Although green products are environmentally beneficial to our society, the performance of green product development remains poor because of cannibalization from traditional alternatives at lower prices. This is particularly the case in the current unforgiving marketing reality in which many brand retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Tesco, and Carrefour, offer their own store brands as traditional alternatives. Although a large stream of research has studied the effects of competition on manufacturers’ green design, to the best of our knowledge, there is a dearth of research on the effects of competition from retailers’ store brands on manufacturers’ green design. To fill this gap, we present two models in which the manufacturer has an incentive to design for the environment, and the retailer has the flexibility to sell store brands (Model S), or it does not (Model N). Surprisingly, our analysis indicates that the presence of store brands may stimulate the manufacturer to release a new greener version of the national brand. Moreover, we find that although the presence of store brands is beneficial to the retailer and industry, it always hurts the manufacturer’s profitability. To incentivize the manufacturer to support Model S, we propose a two-part tariff contract. Full article