| Consumers are typically skeptical and cynical of advertising claims for products and generally disbelieve most advertised information. Believability of advertisers' claims is crucial for consumer adoption of products, but consumers' environmental imagination should be assessed to enhance believability of green marketing claims. Consumer belief in an advertised product is nearly essential to prompt the consumer to purchase. This dissertation examines the perceptions of consumers and their believability of specifically green versus non-green televised advertisements, puffery in advertising, and the impact of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on green advertising. The FTC considers not only a product in its rulings, but also the packaging, formulations and disposal of the product. Consumer belief of advertising relating demographic, psychographic, and behavioral variables plus product familiarity are analyzed. Comparisons and evaluations assess believability of the respective advertisements identifying potentially receptive audiences for televised green advertising. Groups of consumers who found televised green advertising believable were identified with significant differences in believability scores between the green and non-green groups. This finding contradicts earlier research on advertising believability of many other product categories. Predictors that provided a significant contribution individually were political preference, television hours viewed, and marital status. Consumer familiarity with a product was found to be statistically significant for marketers of green products. |
