My course load this semester throws some very interesting subject matter my way. In one of my classes, Marketing Research for Decision-Makers, the professor was asking the class to brainstorm a specific hospitality-related topic to research. The professor said that last year the class had looked into sustainable hospitality, and in passing, he mentioned that he and a colleague had put together a report on the class’s findings.

The report, titled Reversing the Green Backlash: Why Large Hospitality Companies Should Welcome “Credibly Green” Competitors, was written by Michael Giebelhausen and Helen Chun. It addressed a very interesting issue: how consumers would view a company if it introduced green initiatives. One of the steps consisted of in-depth interviews in order get people’s opinions on such initiatives. Results showed that interviewees distrusted company motivations for implementing sustainability programs. That is, the interviewees doubted that companies actually cared about the environment; they assumed they were instead implementing green practices for the marketing appeal and cost savings.

Greenwashing, the use of deceptive marketing to promote a company's sustainability, has exploded among hospitality firms.

Respondents indicated that their suspicion mainly centered on big company green programs. No surprise here: greenwashing is rampant among corporations, and the study infers that a “green marketing backlash” exists among consumers. Participants showed that they had well-formed negative opinions of large corporations and were unsure how to tell if one was genuinely sustainable. Should they trust certifications? What can they rely on to evaluate sustainability initiatives? A lack of available data exists to help consumers answer these questions.

A second portion of the report outlined the effects of introducing sustainability initiatives in the presence of a competitor. Research findings showed that a large company could actually gain “sustainability credibility” by making green claims in the presence of credible competitors. If the company announced green practices in the absence of credible competition, consumers’ liking of the firm would decrease. Managerial implications of this Cornell study are cloudy, at best. It did, however, highlight the issue of greenwashing and green backlash. In many ways, genuinely virtuous companies should view a green backlash as a favorable thing. Consumers are getting smarter, looking more closely at hospitality firms, and patronizing only the ones that are truly walking the walk.