Targeting Eco-Friendly Consumers: a Segementation Study

In the last 40 years, many effort have been made to define the environmentally friendly consumer. As more corporations enter the eco-friendly product market, the urgency for applicable segmentation and positioning strategies increases. This paper aims to identify these consumer segments through using a revealed preference method. Factors that determine the willingness to pay for green products are found to be variables in the categories demographics, knowledge, values, attitudes and behaviour. A Principal Component Analysis further grouped these explanatory variables into the categories Caring, Motivation, Responsibility, Effort and Social. Caring for the environment and being social were found to significantly influence the willingness to pay for green goods. The motivation consumers had, their feeling of responsibility for the environment and the effort they were willing to invest in behaving environmentally friendly on the other hand did not influence the WTP.