Date: 2020-06-09 Level: Master thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr  Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University  Authors: Lisa Eriksson (91/08/31) Lana Rasool (97/02/23)  Title: Keen to be green? Consumer perceptions of green advertising in the skincare industry Tutor: Konstantin Lampou Keywords: Green advertisements, green perceived risk, green trust, green skincare, green marketing, green content.  Research- questions: How do consumers perceive green content in advertisements?  What aspects create perceptions of trust? What aspects create perceptions of risks? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how consumers perceive green advertising practices in the skincare industry and what aspects affect perceptions of trust and risks. Method: The study was conducted through a qualitative approach by performing focus groups. Data was analyzed through a thematic analysis. Conclusion: The research indicate that there are several aspects that lead to consumer perception of trust and perceived risk when consumers view green advertisements. Six main themes that included different aspects were identified.

Background: Sustainability within the skincare industry is an important theme in marketing research. Sustainability sells, but it is necessary to understand how brands can drive consumer engagement on Instagram by using certain appeals. As social media has revolutionized the way consumers interact with brands, engaging online today represents a fundamental factor for a company’s success. Consequently, this study explored in particular CBE of green skincare brands with regards to female European millennials. As we were the first to research the context of three highly relevant fields in today’s time, which are sustainability, Instagram and skincare in the European setting, we contribute with new significant findings. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand which appeals drive millennial’s CBE of green skincare brands on Instagram. Thus, particularly green company-created content was examined. Method: The method chosen to answer our study purpose was semi-structured interviews. Therefore, 18 female European millennials have been interviewed to understand their thoughts and opinions concerning our purpose. Hence our study was based on an interpretivist philosophy while an inductive approach was followed. In addition, deductive elements loosely framed this qualitative study, given existing literature in respective fields of this research. Finally, we concluded this study with a conceptual framework, created upon our empirical findings. Conclusion: The results show that in specific three different types of appeals could be identified to drive CBE of green skincare brands on Instagram. These are Affective, Identification, Spokesperson & Trust as well as Factual. With regards to our CBE conceptualization, these three themes all drive CBE to a different extent in terms of cognitive processing, affectionand activation. All in all, this study could identify Affective to be the most relevant appeal in terms of driving CBE as well as affection being the only CBE dimension, which can be driven by all three themes. Green skincare brands can use these findings to understand which appeals drive engagement while also raising awareness around sustainability-related topics.

This bachelor’s thesis is a quantitative study examining the factors influencing the Green Purchase Intention of (green) skincare among European consumers. The underpinning theory for this paper was the Theory of Planned Behavior and its influencing constructs such as Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control, as well as various selected determinants such as Environmental Concern, Environmental Knowledge, Health Concern, Injunctive Norm, Descriptive Norm, Electronic Word-of-Mouth, Price Sensitivity, Availability, and Perceived Consumer Effectiveness. The determinants were selected after conducting a literature review that primarily consisted of secondary data in the form of research articles dealing with the same research area of Green Purchase Intention. In order to collect primary data relevant to this study, an online survey in the form of a questionnaire was employed. Overall, 385 respondents from various European countries took part in this study. The survey sample was statistically tested using the SPSS AMOS and SPSS software. This was done in order to utilize the data collected fully. Therefore, two hypothesis models were constructed for this study. The results of Model 1, which were tested using SPSS AMOS denoted that Attitude had a significant relationship with Green Purchase Intention of green skincare products. The results of Model 2, which were tested using SPSS showed that Environmental Concern, Environmental Knowledge, Health Concern, and Perceived Consumer Effectiveness had a significant positive relationship with Green Purchase Intention. Thus, as a result, this study offers findings that manufacturers and retailers of green skincare could use to advance their marketing strategies. Primarily, it can be argued that green skincare brands should focus on targeting consumers who are already environmentally conscious rather than trying to gain over consumers with no environmental knowledge and concern. However, we do not deem our results sufficient enough to allow us to provide further managerial contributions.