Exploring the profile of green consumers: Role of demographics and factors influencing green purchase behavior

Abstract

In the past decades, the world has witnessed significant growth in environmental issues such as the generation of waste, climatic changes, and depletion of natural resources. Due to this, there has been a substantial upsurge in consumers who prefer green products. Hence, exploring the stable set of characteristics of green consumers becomes extremely important for organizations to develop customer-oriented targeting and segmenting strategies. The present study attempts to explore key factors influencing green purchase behavior and the behavioral profile of green consumers in the Indian context. The study surveyed 400 respondents from Punjab. Multivariate analysis was performed to analyze the data. The results of the analysis revealed three distinctive consumer clusters based on green purchase behavior. “Pro-environmentals” represent the segment of green consumers. Consumers of this cluster were found to be highly environmentally conscious. Besides this, the study confirmed noticeable differences in the three clusters in terms of gender, age, number of children, and marital status. Finally, the results indicated the behavioral profile of green and non-green consumers and explained prominent differences between the three clusters. This knowledge shall enable marketers to design tailor-made marketing strategies focusing on the specific needs of each consumer cluster.