1. Introduction
Companies have had minimal impact on decreasing the pace of environmental degradation [
1,
2,
3], as their main targets are business growth and increasing consumption [
4]. More research is still needed to find effective measures for guiding companies and consumers towards sustainability, for example, with objective nonfinancial measures for comparing the environmental and social performance of companies and industrial sectors as well as the outcomes of their marketing efforts [
5,
6]. The linkages between the consumer and market levels that lead to both sustainable consumption and production (SCP) as well as market change on the macro level need to be understood so that sustainable development can be promoted on a large scale. Hence, we maintain that in order to drive sustainable consumption we need to measure micro-level phenomena on the consumer level and link them to the level where companies have an impact on sustainable development.
More measures have been called for to help companies monitor consumers and understand their consumption experiences so that the companies can better support consumers’ sustainable consumption and also achieve their own triple bottom line (TBL) goals for sustainability [
7]. For consumers, it is critical that eco-friendly products can be used properly for what they have been designed [
8]. Some of the goals that consumers have set for products can also be abstract, such as being able to consume products in an eco-friendly manner [
8]. The implementation of SCP requires the involvement of different stakeholders, including consumers, with a systemic approach as well as more cooperation among the stakeholders [
9]. In particular, the role of consumers in the implementation of SCP has been highlighted [
10]. “Pro-environmental behavior change” has been called for both by research and policymakers, as consumers are expected to change their consumption habits into a more sustainable direction [
11,
12]. In the 1990s, governments, companies, and consumer-citizens became increasingly concerned about environmental protection, which accelerated the research efforts in the field of societal and environmental marketing. However, research has been fragmented and needs to develop further [
13].
In brand management research, very few brand constructs include an aspect of eco-friendliness, and most of them have not been operationalized into scales [
14]. However, there are several indications from earlier studies that the brand satisfaction and brand loyalty of consumers can be associated with the eco-friendliness and green values represented by the brand [
15,
16]. Thus, eco-friendly branding could help companies to promote sustainable development and motivate consumers to make more sustainable consumption decisions. Brand eco-friendliness means that the brand does not harm the environment, and in connection with SCP, the assumption is that the manufacturers have eco-friendly production processes and consumers’ consumption habits are eco-friendly [
17].
The aim of this study is to explore how the brand experience scale of Brakus et al. [
18], with an extension for measuring the eco-friendliness of brand experiences [
19], can be applied cross-nationally. More replication and extension research has been called for, to discover empirical generalizations instead of focusing only on the creation of new concepts that result in isolated studies [
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26]. We concentrate on exploring micro-level sustainable behaviors in the consumer markets, and in doing so we shed light on the possibilities to link the micro and the macro levels [
27] in a balanced approach to sustainable development. We focus on individual consumers who are end users of products, not other stakeholders, for example, in the supply chain.
This paper makes a number of contributions: We investigate how different aspects of eco-friendliness in consumers’ brand experiences are perceived cross-nationally in India and Finland and whether these aspects can be measured cross-nationally with an extended brand experience scale based on Brakus et al. [
18] and Saari [
19]. The possible perceptions of eco-friendliness consumers associate with the brand experiences they have with consumer electronics brands have not been previously measured and investigated cross-nationally. In addition, we propose how in the theoretical microfoundations model [
27] a consumer-level measure could drive sustainable consumption and sustainable development initiatives in companies, using the management of e-waste as an example.
Considering brands as decisive elements for consumers in their consumption behavior, and consumers’ brand experiences as important input to companies for managing brands, we examine how brands are associated with sustainability and the role of global brands in supporting sustainable development. Then, we introduce how consumers’ brand experiences regarding the eco-friendliness of brands could help to drive sustainable development. We show empirically that consumers in different national contexts experience brands differently in terms of the eco-friendliness dimension. Finally, we present and discuss the results, which inform corporations on consumers’ attitudes towards eco-friendly and sustainable consumption, thus facilitating the implementation of eco-innovations and sustainable development initiatives that promote SCP.
3. Research Method and Data
In this study we replicate the extended BXS [
19] cross-nationally to measure differences in the ways consumers experience the eco-friendliness of global smartphone brands in a cross-national context. The survey items were selected from the previously developed and extended BXS [
18,
19,
107]. We assess the four items measuring eco-friendliness as well as the other four brand experience dimensions from the BXS by conducting structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) following the same steps that Brakus et al. [
18] undertook.
The applicability of a measurement framework developed for one country in the context of another country can be evaluated with CFA, which is used to analyze the relationships between the observed variables and hypothesized constructs [
108]. The minimum requirement for stating that a construct can be similarly conceptualized cross-nationally is that the factor loadings follow the same pattern [
108].
Testing of the scales is required, especially if the compared countries are in different economic stages, and the scales should also be tested in non-Western contexts [
109] since this will enable more reliable generalization of the findings [
20]. Consumer research has concentrated predominantly on Western countries, and more specifically on the middle class in the United States [
108,
110]. We have studied the eco-friendliness of brand experiences among consumers in an emerging economy (India) and in an advanced economy (Finland) [
111,
112]. In this study, India represents a non-Western country while Finland represents a Western country with reference to their economic situation and demographics [
111,
112]. Measurement scales created for business and market research should be tested in cross-national settings to ensure their validity and reliability and to build more robust frameworks [
108,
113,
114].
The development of the extended BXS has followed the guidelines of Churchill [
115] and Nunnally [
116] based on Saari [
19], and it has been aligned with the guidelines of Mowen and Voss [
117] to further ensure the validity of the construct. To assess the validity of a model, one needs to assess the content and criterion validity, which indicate overall construct validity [
118]. Construct validity indicates that the measurement scale is actually measuring what it has been designed to measure, which is essential when developing and testing theories [
115,
119]. The construct validity of a model can be verified from several aspects: concept validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and nomological validity [
120]. Concept validity needs to be assessed to ensure that the abstract concepts have been similarly understood by all of the respondents; this is critical for assessing how well the factors and collected data correspond to the concepts of the study [
121] and how possible differences in the results reflect real-life differences that are characteristic of what is being measured [
115]. Convergent validity shows how well the measure correlates with other similar measures designed for similar concepts [
115,
120]. When the item loadings are high it is an indication of high convergent validity [
120]. Discriminant validity indicates whether a measure is sufficiently different when compared to similar measures [
115]. The discriminant validity of the eco-friendliness construct is tested by CFA, and the fit is studied by checking the model fit indices. Nomological validity means that a scale can measure what it has been designed for theoretically, and the focus is on larger theoretical frameworks rather than individual concepts [
120]. One of the targets of this study is to increase the nomological validity of the conceptual model in a cross-national context. In order to avoid duplication of existing dimensions, the items measuring eco-friendliness were tested both as additional items in the existing four BXS dimensions as well as a separate fifth dimension. The validity and reliability in this study was assessed from the results of the CFA and item loading sizes and from the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) and Composite Reliability (CR) [
121]. The measurement model was based on earlier research on the BXS and its extension [
18,
19] that had already been validated, which means that this study reinforces the validity of previous research. The model fit indices for both models are reported for both of the countries in
Section 4.
The way respondents respond to surveys can differ depending on their national backgrounds, and the response style should be taken into account when comparing the results in cross-national research [
122,
123]. The response options here followed a 7-point Likert scale, with the addition of an 8th option, “Do not know”, to help the respondents continue with the survey in case they did not have any views on the brand. All the Likert scale response options were anchored, ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree. In the analyses, the “Do not know” options were treated as missing data, and the missing-at-random (MAR) approach [
124] was used to analyze the data. With the MAR method the responses were reweighted and calculated with unbiased estimates when the response rates differed per item [
125]. We used IBM SPSS and Amos software for the analysis.
In this study we concentrated on three smartphone brands, Samsung (using the Android Operating System (OS)), Apple (using the iOS), and Nokia (using the Windows Phone OS), which were the three largest smartphone brands in 2013 according to global market share [
126]. Nokia was acquired in 2013 by Microsoft, but, at the time of the research, it was still producing Nokia branded smartphones. We did not focus on the possible differences between specific smartphone models, as brand experiences are the result of different kinds of brand stimuli that include, in addition to the actual product model, marketing messages, information retrieved from the Internet, or other people’s experiences heard by word of mouth [
18,
127].
The survey questionnaire used in Finland was translated into Finnish, while in India the study used the original English versions of the BXS and the eco-friendliness items. The equivalency of the Finnish translations was verified first by an English language expert, and they were also tested in a pilot survey that was conducted for both the English and Finnish versions. The pilot was conducted with respondents from both Finland and India. Based on the pilot results, we confirmed that the translation of the survey questionnaire was similarly understood by the respondents.
The survey was conducted in India and Finland in September 2013 with the help of trained field researchers. These countries were selected because in India, the penetration of smartphones was still fairly low, while in Finland, on the contrary, the penetration of smartphones was one of the highest in Europe. To ascertain that the sample was also representative of the smartphone users in the two countries, participants for the survey were selected from different parts of the two countries and from different age groups that had been identified to include potential smartphone users. In India, 10% of the population had a smartphone in 2012, and the owners of smartphones mostly resided in large cities that had a population of at least four million inhabitants [
128]. The respondents in this study are from the top five metropolitan areas in India—Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, and Bangalore—based on statistics from the census held in 2011 [
129]. The Indian urban population was 31% of the total population in 2011. In India, 18–24 year olds and individuals a few years above 24 years of age own the most smartphones [
128], which is reflected in the respondents of the survey, a higher proportion of which were younger adults. The participants in India were randomly selected from phone directory listings. In 2013, nearly 100% of Finnish households had a mobile phone and 56% had a smartphone [
130]. In Finland, the respondents were randomly selected from four different regions from a national online contact directory. The coverage of the participants corresponds to the distribution of the population in Finland. The distribution of the respondents in the age groups that use smartphones is divided fairly closely to the age distribution among the whole population of Finland [
131]. Both genders were nearly evenly represented in both of the countries (
Table 1).
The sample sizes were over 500 in both of the countries, which is sufficient to test and develop a scale and find a suitable fit and solution for a model [
132]. The data were collected via a web survey in Finland (
N = 506) and phone interviews in India (
N = 502). The multiple-mode survey approach allowed us to study populations that fit the scope of the survey [
133]. In Finland, the response rate was 11%, and, in India, it was 7%. As the number of online surveys has grown in recent years, non-response rates have also grown, but the non-response rate does not necessarily indicate non-response bias [
125], and we did not find non-response bias in the results. As the samples in this study are representative of the populations that use smartphones in the countries, systematic differences between the respondents and non-respondents should be minimal (
Table 1).
5. Discussion
Our research responds to the call for more consumer-focused nonfinancial measures for better understanding the sustainable consumption behavior and brand experiences of consumers [
7]. In addition, we introduce a systemic approach for tracking the implementation of sustainable development on the microfoundations level, as the role of consumers in the implementation of SCP has been highlighted [
10]. In this exploratory research, we focus on testing cross-nationally the eco-friendliness of consumers’ brand experiences with a brand experience scale [
18] that has been extended with a dimension for eco-friendliness [
19]. The measurement scale can be deployed by companies for comparing the experiences consumers have of their brand in comparison with their competitors’ brands. The validity and reliability of the scale is demonstrated in India, representing a non-Western country, and Finland, representing a Western country. This indicates that the scale is generalizable cross-nationally.
There were differences in the way consumers perceived the brands in the two countries. The response styles in India and Finland are different, so the Indian respondents systematically gave higher scores to all of the brands. In Finland, the response style is more modest and the ratings for the brands are more negative than in India. The respondents in Finland generally rated the brands with scores closer to option 3 (somewhat disagree). This suggests that the Finnish respondents are not fully confident with regard to how well the claims in the statements apply to the brands included in the survey. The Indian respondents demonstrated slightly more trust in the eco-friendliness of the companies, but they fully did not fully agree with the statements on eco-friendliness of the smartphone brands, as the mean of their responses is closest to response option 5 (somewhat agree). The response style of Indians is dependent on the national context, which is very different from that in Finland [
123,
136,
139,
140]. In the case of Indian respondents, one needs to take into account that India has been found to be a high-power-distance country, where people have authoritarian values that are reflected in the way people support conformity and accept authorities [
141]. However, the environmental values of individual consumers can be similar in different countries [
91], even though they manifest themselves in the results differently due to varying response styles and national level differences in the people’s respect for authority.
When analyzing the differences in the eco-friendliness of the respondents’ brand experiences on the country level, it can be clearly seen that in Finland the home country bias [
134] is strong and the ratings for all of the eco-friendliness dimensions are higher for the Nokia brand. The respondents in Finland gave significantly lower ratings for the Apple brand compared to the Samsung brand for the eco-sensory and eco-behavioral dimensions, which could be interpreted to mean that the Apple brand is not supporting the respondents’ eco-friendly behavior and its design does not appear to be eco-friendly. In India, the brands are rated differently: Apple received the highest ratings of the three brands for the eco-intellectual and eco-affective dimensions, which shows that the Apple brand has created positive interest in India. However, it should be noted that only a very small percentage of respondents personally owned an Apple branded smartphone (5.4%) at the time of the survey. In addition, in India both the Samsung and Apple brands received significantly higher ratings for the eco-behavioral dimension than Nokia. This seems to indicate that the Nokia brand has not managed to sustain and deliver a perception of enabling eco-friendly behavior among consumers in India.
The differences in the responses for men and women respondents vary slightly in India and Finland on some of the dimensions measuring the eco-friendliness of brand experiences. In India, the fact that men rate the eco-friendliness of the Nokia brand significantly higher on the sensory level than women could indicate that the design, look, and feel of the brand are more convincing to the men. On the other hand, in Finland the men rated the eco-intellectual aspects of the Samsung brand significantly lower than did the women respondents, which indicates that when the Finnish men respondents think of the Samsung brand they do not find it cognitively as eco-friendly as do the women. In Finland, the men also gave significantly lower ratings for the Apple brand on all of the measured eco-friendliness dimensions, which could indicate that the men are more critical than women with regard to what can be considered eco-friendly in brand experiences, and Apple has not been convincing them in Finland. The eco-intellectual dimension is supported by the findings in both countries, even though the intellectual dimension in the original brand experience scale is not confirmed in India.
The factor loadings for the negatively worded items in the original BXS model revealed major issues in the model, especially in the case of India. However, also for Finland, the negatively worded items had smaller loadings than the other items. The negative items were not applicable for the BXS in this case, and thus they were excluded from the revised version of the model. According to the psychometric literature, negatively worded items can be excluded from scales when the content is already covered by affirmative statements [
142]. It has also been argued that alternating positively and negatively worded items could distort the respondents’ response styles [
136,
143,
144]. Most brand measurement scales do not have negative items [
14]. Concise measurement models, such as the revised BXS model, have been called for because they can be applied and extended more easily than longer and more complicated models [
142,
145].
For smartphone brands, the intellectual dimension in the brand experiences differs the most in the two countries. The intellectual dimension was excluded from the revised scale because the factor loadings for the India data for one of the measurement items (“I engage in a lot of thinking when I encounter this brand”) and the model fit indices were under the recommended thresholds. There could be national differences related to the intellectual dimension, and thus it is not generalizable cross-nationally. In addition, it should be taken into account that not only intellectual but also affective aspects are associated with decision-making in purchasing and consumption experiences [
146]. In consumer-psychology, the intellectual dimension of brand experiences has been also associated with the affective dimension, so the experiencing of brands happens on three levels: sensory, affective-cognitive, and behavioral [
147].
5.1. Theoretical Implications
The findings of our study indicate that the eco-friendliness dimension can be generalized in two countries with very different demographics and economic situations. Therefore, there is external validity in the revised extended version of the brand experience construct of Brakus et al. [
18]. The theoretical implication of this finding is that the eco-friendly dimension in the BXS should be taken into account when measuring brand experiences. We propose that the eco-friendliness dimension that manifested itself in consumers’ brand experiences associated with smartphone brands is a relevant dimension that companies could use to monitor the brand experiences of their consumers. When Brakus et al. [
18] created their brand experience measurement model, they initially included a dimension for a relational level, which had been created based on an earlier conceptualization of the experiential marketing elements created by Schmitt [
93]. The relational level has further been linked to socially responsible consumption by Shobeiri et al. [
92]. There could be a temporal effect in the way the relational dimension is supported by the data, so that, in the beginning of 2000, when Brakus et al. [
18] were constructing the measure, it was not supported in their surveys. However, in our study, it is supported, which might indicate that consumers have become more environmentally conscientious of their product choices during these years and now consider the social and environmental impacts of those choices.
5.2. Managerial Implications
The main managerial implication of our findings is that global corporations could concentrate on creating a branding approach that has aspects of eco-friendliness in addition to sensory, affective, and behavioral aspects. It is critical that the different brand experience dimensions are tested locally in the target markets before they are implemented. However, based on our study the dimensions for eco-friendly, sensory, affective, and behavioral brand experiences are generalizable cross-nationally in India and Finland. Even so, our findings suggest that the intellectual aspects of the brand experience should be localized with special expertise of the consumer groups in the target country. When corporations focus on creating positive brand experiences, they should also make the experiences appealing on a sensory, affective, and behavioral level [
148] and ensure that the brand experiences are eco-friendly.
Based on the measurement results companies could develop more eco-friendly products and manage the eco-friendliness of their brands. Providing more eco-friendly products that consumers experience as being eco-friendly on the brand level would help to reinforce the sustainable consumption behavior of consumers on the micro level and promote sustainable development on the macro level. Consumers trust that companies who have CSR activities are doing their best to develop the sustainability of their product design, manufacturing, and production processes to create more eco-friendly products, which the consumers also experience as truly eco-friendly, and it is crucial for companies to realize this is one of the consumer requirements [
79,
149]. Electronics companies could use the measures to monitor, for example, how their e-waste management activities are reflected in consumers’ brand experiences. Consumers cannot drive change on their own to prevent environmental change and the accumulation of e-waste [
59,
60].
The linking of the microfoundations on the consumer level to the decision-making processes of senior managers on the meso level could benefit and improve the performance of companies, as it enables a consumer-oriented business environment [
149]. Organizations could create conditions for more open dialogue between the decision-makers and lower level employees, who are closer to consumers on a daily basis [
98] and who can also track and report on consumers’ brand experiences. The way consumers perceive the eco-friendliness and sustainability of a corporation offers an invaluable source of information to managers regarding what they should focus on in their sustainability and environmental development activities [
150]. The extended BXS with a dimension for eco-friendliness could be used to measure the experiential consumption benefits that consumers perceive on the brand level.
The findings of this study may also encourage managers to invest in brand management and green marketing strategies that are merely “greenwashing” initiatives to promote their products and services, as the design of new products is more costly in the short term. For this reason, it is critical that governments and policymakers also track the CSR and eco-friendly initiatives of corporations.
5.3. Policy Implications
Our results could be used to advance a balanced approach to environmental governance leading to the integration of the microfoundations to the institutional framework. On the citizen-consumer side of the balanced approach, one way to monitor the reputation of a company from the environmental perspective is to monitor the brand experiences of consumers and how those consumers rate the eco-friendliness of the brands. In the case of consumer electronics, the reputation of the companies may be rated by the way they handle their e-waste. We need multiple stakeholders and disciplines to advance and support consumer-citizens in their sustainable consumption practices: public authorities, NGOs, companies, and research organizations as well as MDs, engineers, and social scientists [
53,
60,
95]. In a balanced approach, policymakers have a critical role in setting the agenda, coordinating the change plans, finding better ways to incentivize consumer electronics corporations, and implementing follow-up measures [
60,
95] to protect populations from the negative health impacts of e-waste globally.
In order to promote sustainable development on the macro level, policymakers and companies could track consumers’ experiences of the conditions and actions related to purchasing on the micro-level [
27]. In 2014, less than half of the EU member states had incorporated the WEEE Directive in their national legislation, and Extended Producer Responsibility had been implemented in varying ways in the countries [
151]. In the United States, there is no comprehensive legislation on e-waste management on the federal level [
152]. Even though the United States has signed the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the country has not ratified the convention [
152]. Policymakers could use the brand measurement results to develop policies and plan interventions that promote more eco-friendly and sustainable electronics products. Policies are required to reduce the volumes of e-waste produced so that the electronics industry would achieve the sustainable development goal on responsible consumption.
5.4. Limitations and Future Research
One limitation of this study is that in the sample from Finland the majority of the respondents owned a Nokia branded phone, which affected the means and standard deviations in the responses due to home country bias [
134]. This was apparent in the way the Finnish respondents experienced the Nokia brand to be the least unfavorable on the eco-friendliness subscale among the three brands. However, in the second part of the research, the factor loadings are not necessarily affected by the country bias, as the loadings for the India data are very similar to those for the Finland data. Another limitation of this study is that only a small portion of the respondents in India had an Apple branded phone, which may also have had an impact on some of the ratings given to the three brands in India.
Even though, with the data in this specific study, we cannot directly infer whether eco-friendliness in consumers’ brand experiences of smartphone brands impacts their future product selections, the results indicate that people recognize an eco-friendly dimension in their brand experiences. Thus, consumers seem to understand that consumer electronics brands can offer eco-friendly brand experiences, and the degree to which they are considered to be eco-friendly by consumers can be measured with the eco-friendliness subscale in the BXS.
This study is the first step in the development of an eco-friendliness brand experience scale but it remains for future research to verify the scale items further. Future research should study whether there are some unique characteristics in the items measuring eco-friendliness. It should also be investigated if there are other variations and levels for describing eco-friendliness than the ones created based on the BXS model created by Brakus et al. [
18,
19]. Moreover, it would be worthwhile to verify whether the eco-friendliness dimension that manifested itself in consumers’ brand experiences associated with smartphone brands is also a relevant dimension for other consumer products. Future studies should also control for the participants’ level of experience and ownership of a particular brand to see how much this affects their brand experiences.
There is a need to conduct more cross-national research to further ensure the validity and reliability of the eco-friendliness subscale globally. There are fruitful potential research avenues, especially in regard to investigating how the revised BXS including the eco-friendliness dimension could be used for monitoring and devising a balanced approach to environmental governance, incorporating both corporations and policymakers, who track the experiences for consumers.
Green et al. [
150] understood the term “consumer” to also encompass the organizations that, for example, are included in the supply chain. However, in the context of this paper, we have referred to consumers as individuals who select, use, and dispose of products or services produced by companies, and we have excluded other organizations and processes from this analysis [
40]. In future research, it would be worthwhile to use the wider meaning of the term “consumer” and focus on other stakeholders that consume the products and services of branded companies, such as organizations and suppliers in the companies’ supply chains and business ecosystem.