Beware Consumers’ Assumptions About Your Green Products

In an experiment, people expressed greater intentions to purchase a dish soap when they were told its environmental benefits were an “unintended side effect” of the product-development process, as opposed to a planned feature (5.65 versus 4.77 on a 9-point scale, on average), says a team led by George E. Newman of Yale. Results for other products were similar. The apparent reason: Consumers tend to assume that product enhancements in one dimension — such as environmental impact — come at the expense of performance on other dimensions.