Is green over?
Will consumers pay more to be green?
Sales of eco-friendly products are fading as economic troubles pull consumer confidence down. But are we telling the green story in the right way?
A few years ago, I went for an espresso in a London branch of one of the many coffee shop chains that compete in the UK capital and was offered the following up-selling choice: “do you want Fair Trade for an extra 30p”? The coffee in this particular chain was already very highly-priced; paying an extra 30p would take the bill to close to GBP 3.00, roughly the same price as a 50g bag of ground coffee. That’s a high price by any measure. And yet, if you are told that one choice is “fair,” the implication is that the other choice is actively “unfair”. It’s a classic double-bind proposition: choose one and you feel like a bad person; choose the other – to defend your self-esteem from this sneak attack – and you feel like you got fleeced. (more…)