24. Green Perceived Value in the Brand-Consumer Relationship: An Empirical Study of Its Determinants in Managing Global Brands

Consumers’ concern with the industry’s impact on the environment has been increasing, so they increasingly seek to adjust their buying and consumption behaviour to the need to preserve and conserve natural resources. Although the existing literature on green marketing is increasingly common, the relationships between its critical concepts still need to be more conclusive. This research focused on one of the main consumption trends: green consumption. Given consumers’ growing preference for sustainable business practices, an exploratory structural path analysis was developed to understand the primary benefits consumers value the most and how they are relevant for brands to create consumer-brand relationships. For this, this research tried to clarify the relationship between a product's functional and emotional benefits (utilities and warm glow), the green transparency perceived through the information provided by companies and brands, the connection between brands and consumers, brand loyalty, and green brand equity. Results suggest that the perceived green value (GPV) increases when utilitarian environmental benefits and warm glow benefits of products and corporate green increase. The greater the green perceived value, the greater the connection created between consumers and brands and, consequently, the greater the brand loyalty. Loyalty is one of the paths leading to the generation of green brand equity. Therefore, companies must understand the importance of green perceived value to achieve high consumer involvement levels.