Does the Label Fit the Channel? How “Bricks” and “Clicks” Influence Demand for Environmental and Social Sustainability Labels

Service firms are increasingly trying to make their offers more sustainable. In this paper, we contribute to the literature on sustainability in service by investigating the impact of the shopping channel on consumer purchases of alternatives labeled as environmentally and socially sustainable. We theorize that the salience of self-oriented (vs. other-oriented) motives in the online (vs. in-store) channel has a higher fit with self-oriented (vs. other-oriented) benefits signaled by environmental (vs. social) labels, especially for utilitarian (vs. hedonic) products. To test this expectation, we conduct three studies using real-world grocery and beauty retailer datasets that include almost 900,000 purchases either in-store (“bricks”) or online (“clicks”). Using both between-consumer and within-consumer analysis, we find empirical support for our hypotheses. Our conceptual framework and findings suggest that service firms that want to promote environmentally and socially sustainable alternatives will benefit from adapting their strategies to different domains of sustainability labels and shopping channels.