Going Lean and Green on Your Mobile Machine : A Quantitative Marketing Placebo Effect Study on Eco-Labelled Technology

Abstract: The environmental concern has become a well discussed topic within today’s society and as a result awareness of the impact human behaviour has on the environment is continuously increasing. This concern is something companies take advantage of when marketing, as for instance by promoting their products or services as eco-labelled. Eco-labelled products have further shown to involve a lot of consumer opinions, and are thus common to study in relation to consumer attitudes. Theories also show that eco-labelled goods have been idealised in favour of conventional ones, referred to as a marketing placebo effect. In connection to this, companies have started to point interest at eco-labelled technology, which has become a recent phenomenon attracting attention. Nonetheless, the existing theory regarding this phenomenon has been mainly applied on specific areas, such as the food industry. The purpose of this study was therefore to explain the marketing placebo effect on eco-labelled technology. 162 experiments were conducted using one experiment group and one control group, in order to be able to detect an eventual marketing placebo effect when implementing an eco-label, using attitudes as an influencer. Based on the results, it was revealed that attitudes are crucial to take into consideration when applying an eco-label in a technology context. This as it was concluded that attitudes act as a trigger evoking a marketing placebo effect. The findings from this study contradicts current theories on how different factors cooperate in the process of a marketing placebo effect, and advances has thus been made in how the marketing placebo effect works when applied in a technology context.