Perceived performance of green cleaning products and its influence on perceived consumer effectiveness.

Abstract

There has been a heightened demand over products that are marketed as environmentally friendly. One of the most recognized types of these ‘green products’ are green cleaning products. This study explores post-purchase perceived product performance of green cleaning products compared to their regular counterparts, particularly by trying to control the influence of green labels on consumer expectation. The hypotheses are as follows: (1) green cleaning products are perceived as lower in performance when green labels are present, (2) perceived performance is positively associated with the product’s cleaning effectiveness, and (3) choosing green cleaning products as higher in perceived performance influences the consumer’s Perceived Consumer Effectiveness (PCE). Between-subject design was used for the study. Participants performed dishwashing experiments in which half did so in a blind test setting. Simple questionnaires were devised to determine product preference in perceived performance. Binomial test, correlational test, and independent-samples t-test were conducted to test each hypothesis respectively. The results only confirm the second hypothesis, in which perceived performance is has strong and positive correlation with cleaning product’s effectiveness, while the other hypotheses were not supported. Limitations and further study implementations are discussed.