Which Should I Shoes? – A Study on Sustainability and its Consumers Though Priming

Human consumption has become a major issue due to its relationship to the current environmental changes, decline of natural resources, rising ocean levels, rising temperatures, and deforestation all around the world (Guckian, De Young, & Harbo, 2017). However, if we could collectively reduce the amount of consumption, we as a society undertake it could provide some breathing room for the planet. For example, focusing on sustainable household consumption patterns can greatly reduce CO2 emissions given off by the industries fueling our constant consumption (Munksgaard, Pedersen, & Weir, 2001). Marketers have recently relied on subtle tactics, in attempt to promote environmentally friendly consumption by presenting their products with particular attributes that participants associate with their product, this tactic is known as priming. This leads to main aim of this investigation. This thesis focuses on the question: How are products perceived differently when they are presented to be sustainable and what are the characteristics of those influenced by the prime? To answer these questions, a quantitative experimental method was used by collecting 150 surveys were consumers were primed with one of 3 different conditions (luxury, comfort, or sustainability). The aim of the experiment was to determine if the sustainable prime influenced the perception of the shoe collection in comparison to the other two primes. The participants were shown a description of a fictional shoe manufacturer along with a fictional collection the was carefully selected. After the results was collected statistical analysis of the results were done in order to uncover relations between variables. This research project covers the subject of sustainability and provides relevant information on studies those that delve upon those the attributes of sustainable consumers, marketing and its relationship with sustainability, and priming will be provided, along with the hypothesizes formulated using the studies as a reference. The data from study show that perhaps priming for sustainable behavior is more complicated than initially perceived. Since the data did not show that the sustainable prime had a significant effect on the perception of the shoe, this could mean that using priming as a means to promote sustainable behavior may not the most effective method. Although the results from the survey show a significant relationship between environmental interest and the sustainable prime on sustainable behavior.