The need to replace automatic processes with controlled ones

When consumers purchase household products, an automatic, fast, effortless, and unconscious mental process is triggered because of the low-involvement characteristic of the products (Schlosser, 2019). This low-involvement feature of conventional household products is due to the frequency of consumers’ purchase and the relatively low price. All participants said that they do not have the process of thinking when they purchase home care products.

Nevertheless, the reasons of having an automatic mental process from the primary findings are different than the factors in the theoretical findings. Participant 1 said she always buy the products from the same brands because she knows the price. As price is her priority, she would

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buy the products with the discount without comparing the price, because she buys home care products often, and she knows the benchmark price. Participant 2 always looks for the household products that are effective, therefore, he trusts the products that he has tried before and is familiar with. Repetitively buying the same products enables him to save time.

Moreover, he describes his purchase decision as a habit without information process involved.

Participant 3 also referred to the purchase behaviour of household products as a habit.

Discounts and promotions are the trigger for her to process the information aiming to choose the cheapest option with fairly high cleaning power. Purchasing household products is described as a “non-brainier” behaviour by Participant 4, and he buys the products that he usually buys. As Participant 5 described, “I go to the store and grab the ones that I trust and always buy. Not much thinking involved, it is a very natural behaviour for me”, his purchase behaviour is based on his experience and the feeling of familiarity. Participant 6 is a loyal customer to some home hygiene brands and she solely buys products from those brands.

Based on the data from the in-depth interviews, it is found and can be argued that consumer behaviour of purchasing conventional home care products is related to a system 1 mental process. Even though, some participants have the intention to buy the products with lowest price and/or highest effectiveness, their decision-making and information-processing are still more automatic and less controlled. The reasons of consumers having automatic and unconscious processes are as follows: consumers buy household products on a regular basis and purchasing household products is a habitual behaviour and decision. This habitual behaviour is based on the consumers’ feeling of trust and familiarity towards the same products and brands.

As purchasing unsustainable household products is automatic rather than controlled, engaging in pro-environmental consumption needs to replace automatic mental processes with more conscious behavioural responses (White, et al., 2019). The controlled behaviours are goal-directed and stressed by conscious self-regulatory processes (Ajzen, 2011). Green consumers need to set the reduction of negative environmental impacts as a goal and reflect the goal to their purchase decision. Participant 1 aims to consume the pro-environmental home care

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products of which the packaging could be used continuously. Before she started to purchase green home care products, she did research to find out how reusable and recyclable packaging work. Now, choosing such products became her new norm. From her answers in the interview, it can be concluded that she is conscious when she purchases environment-friendly products, and her decision-making process is more effortful and goal-oriented. An interesting finding is that her green consumer behaviour became habitual based on her experience. Participant 2 also claimed that he is a conscious consumer towards pro-environmental household products.

He reads the information on packaging more thoroughly when it comes to green products, and he did research about how green products enable him to impact the environment positively.

Participant 3 checks authorized environment-friendly label on home care products, and she realized the colour differences between pro-environmental and traditional home care products.

This indicates that Participant 3 has a deliberate information-processing. Participant 4 is buying green home care products by comparing the firms’ general CSR performance.

However, he still buys conventional green home care products regularly, because he thinks it is too much effort to choose environment-friendly products. Participant 5 said during the interview, “I think one main reason I don’t want to buy the green products is I really have to spend time to learn how does it work, what is the company behind, and if they are effective”.

From his answer, it is clear that being pro-environmental requires the consumers to be more conscious and deliberate. Participant 6 does not want to engage with green consumption because she is restrained by her limited knowledge of the outcomes of using pro-environmental household products, and she is not willing to sacrifice her time on this matter.

One of our key findings from this section is that pro-environmental consumer behaviours are indeed more effortful, due to the fact that it is more conscious and deliberate. Consumers need more time to find and process the wanted information in order to fulfil the goal of having a contribution to the environment. Nonetheless, it is observed that consumers of household cleaning products are heavily relying on their habits. Most of the participants are not willing or ready to make changes in their current routines. Therefore, companies need to persuade consumers to overlook the costs of being pro-environmental.

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