• by Jeff Dubin , October 6, 2010

Familiarity may breed contempt in many situations but, with green products, unfamiliarity is what often breeds contempt. A recent study by consulting firm Green Meridian compared how women with limited access to green products (either through low awareness of green brands or poor green product availability where they shop) view green products with women that don't feel cut off from green products. The study found that "isolated" women viewed green products more negatively than their connected counterparts.

In particular, 29% of the so-called "connected" women saw non-green household cleaners and personal care products as superior to green ones on price while over 50% of the "isolated" women said that non-green products were priced better than green ones. Even with something as concrete as price, perceptions truly are everything. A similar dynamic was observed with women's perceptions of green products' effectiveness and smell relative to non-green products. By the way, effectiveness, price, and smell were the product features most frequently mentioned by women as the ones they use to select household cleaners and personal care products. So differences in perceptions of these features really matter.

Based on what?

So how are "green-detached" women arriving at their impressions of green products? Their opinions may be shaped to some extent by old experiences that may not square with today's natural product realities. Green marketing guru Jacquie Ottman in her book Green Marketing says:

Gone are the dimly lit general-type stores with cluttered aisles, bulk bins, and limp organic vegetables. In their place are scores of cheery health-food and specialty stores that carry a dizzying array of branded natural foods and green general merchandise.

Although many of these hippie-era stores may be gone, memories of them can have strong staying power, particularly for consumers that are middle-aged and older. Also, many product categories have experienced an influx of green products very recently and people's green product impressions may be based on their experiences with one or two older products.

The outsized influence on perceptions of forerunner products, such as green product pioneers, has been documented by researchers. In a 1988 paper that appeared in Advances in Consumer Research, Professors Gregory Carpenter (now at Northwestern) and Kent Nakamoto (now at Virginia Tech) suggested "that, in many cases, early entrants frame the consumer's perceptions of [a] product category, thereby defining the rules of competition."

Paging Dr. Freud

For green marketers to effectively address the negative green product perceptions bequeathed by the green products of yesteryear, they have to understand the psychological forces giving these products so much power over people's minds. So what forces may be operating in the unconscious of green-detached women?

• Primacy effect refers to the tendency for the first information received to carry more weight than later information on one's overall impressions.

• Although stereotypes are often discussed in terms of unconscious biases we have about certain groups of people, we can also extend this concept to how some people feel about green products. Where do stereotypes come from? Cognitive psychology theory holds that connections between people, products, etc. and perceptions made often enough in the conscious mind eventually become unconscious. According to Yale social psychologist John Bargh, stereotype formation is particularly prevalent in situations where "conscious choice and decision making are not needed." Perceptions of green products and organic food co-ops have formed and entered the unconscious of many people because they have not been needed in most people's daily decision making. The challenge for green marketers is how to challenge stereotypes that have been locked away in the vault of the unconscious for so many years.

• Familiarity bias is a preference for the familiar. According to an August 2008 article by a group of Jacksonville University researchers, "When making a purchasing decision, consumer confidence is usually higher if familiarity with a particular brand is higher."

• Loss aversion describes the situation in which the desire to avoid losses outweighs the desire to experience comparable gains. Many women view whatever health and environmental benefits may accrue from using green products as not being the worth the potential for being lighter in the wallet and saddled with an inferior product.

A few possible ways to combat green product stereotypes

• Directly attack perceived deficiencies: According to Carpenter and Nakamoto, perceptions are malleable when experience with products is limited. That means that effective marketing has a chance to substantially change long-held conceptions of green products among those people who have little experience with them. And addressing negative perceptions head-on may be the way to go. Drugmaker Allergan Inc. did just that in 2007 to address the common stereotype that injections of Botox freeze the face, preventing users from making expressions. In response, the company launched an advertising campaign dubbed "Freedom of Expression."

• Expose yourself: Psychotherapists use "exposure therapy" to treat anxiety disorders with the thinking that repeated exposure to the source of anxiety will ultimately lessen the source's ability to generate anxiety. In the same way, repeated exposure to green products may make them seem less foreign, challenging stereotypes and weakening the familiarity bias that has led many women to view green products less favorably. The increasing ubiquity of green products may eventually pay off in improved perceptions of them.

• Gain credibility through reviews in mainstream publications: Professors Mogilner (Wharton), Vohs (Minnesota), and Aaker (Stanford) have studied how nonprofit firms are stereotyped, an analogous situation to that of green products. Like their green product counterparts, nonprofits are typically viewed as "warmer" than for-profit companies but they are also viewed as less competent. One way to compensate for this competence gap, they found, was to be favorably reviewed in an established mainstream publication like The Wall Street Journal. Likewise, less green women would likely be more swayed by a favorable cosmetics review in Vogue, say, than one in Greener Living.

In short, stereotypes are strong but they can be overcome.