‘Progress-focused’ language outshines ‘sustainable’ terms

Marketers promoting circular luxury products should discard words like “recycled,” “sustainable” and even “eco-friendly,” say QUT researchers, who found consumers prefer a combination of “sustainable” and “progress-focused” action words when considering sustainable luxury buys.

In two field studies considering almost a million product listings on second-hand luxury clothing site Vestiaire Collective, and Facebook posts by luxury car brands—the researchers compared consumer engagement, such as likes and shares, of product descriptions that mention sustainability or circular economy with descriptions that have no mention of sustainable features.

They then compared these with circular luxury product descriptions using progress-focused language, mainly words such as ‘”reduce” “change” or “make,” from each category.

First author Ph.D. researcher Emma Joenpolvi, from QUT’s School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, said the results showed that using the right language to inform consumers of the sustainability credentials of the product was vital to ensure their appeal. The study, “Driving Consumer Engagement for Circular Luxury Products: Two Large Field Studies on the Role of Regulatory Mode Language,” was published in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.

“We found that posts with descriptions that used sustainable product language to promote the circularity of their luxury products resulted in a decrease in consumer engagement compared with other products,” Joenpolvi said.

“For example, a random selection of three product listings on Vestiaire Collective with no mention of sustainability factors had between 492 and 853 ‘likes,’ however, when the posts explicitly mentioned ‘recycled,’ the ‘likes’ plummeted to zero.

“When we then looked at listings for sustainability-backed products that achieved likes above the average ‘likes,’ we found that they used progress-focused language that frames the product in a process of moving forward.

“For example, words and language like, ‘make,’ ‘dynamic,’ ‘get,’ ‘fast,’ ‘flow,’ ‘launch’ generated greater consumer engagement with circular and sustainable luxury brand claims, than using words like, ‘recycled,’ ‘sustainable,’ ‘eco-friendly,’ ‘green,’ source-to-sea,’ ‘closing material cycles’ alone.”

Joenpolvi said similar results were found in posts on the luxury cars—those that included progress-focused language about sustainability achieved well above the average shares on Facebook for each brand.

“The posts that mentioned their luxury cars had ‘sustainable materials,’ ‘eco-friendly materials’ or were fighting ‘plastic pollution’ achieve dismal shares, such as just 6% of the average shares for that brand.

“In summary, getting the language right for marketing circular luxury products cannot be underestimated. Luxury brands are well-positioned to spearhead a change to circular business models due to their prominent positioning in their respective industries.”