ABSTRACT
Companies today marketing environmentally-friendly innovations continue to address the ‘green gap’ between consumer attitudes towards environmentally-friendly products and actual behavior. This study on innovation, sustainability, and consumers investigates the influence of cultural and personal values on consumer adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles. The automobile industry plays a crucial role in consumers’ lives, nations’ economies and public policies, and plays a key role in generating greenhouse gas emissions and global warming of the ecological environment. We present the first known cross-cultural, netnographic study of consumer values in reviews of green vehicle adoption in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. The findings provide new consumer insights to help reduce the green gap and generate more successful marketing strategies for eco-innovations to achieve the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits.
Keywords
Green Gap, Consumer Attitudes, Cultural and Personal Values, Perceived Risk, Consumer Adoption, Green Vehicles, Cross-Cultural, Marketing, Netnographic, Sustainable Consumption, Ecological Environment.