Eco-Friendly Brands to Drive Sustainable Development: Replication and Extension of the Brand Experience Scale in a Cross-National Context

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore how consumers perceive eco-friendliness in their brand experiences and how this can be measured cross-nationally. This is a replication-extension study based on an existing brand experience scale. Data were collected in India and Finland from smartphone users (N = 1008). The fitness of the brand experience model is validated cross-nationally with structural equation modeling. The empirical data consisting of consumers’ responses on the Apple, Samsung, and Nokia brands confirm that there is a unique dimension of eco-friendliness in the general brand experiences of consumers, and it is generalizable cross-nationally in India and Finland. The study presents a consumer-focused measure of sustainable development that could be used to track how consumers perceive the eco-friendliness of brands. The paper links consumer experiences that guide sustainable consumption behavior to the macro-level management of sustainable development. This paper extends previous research on brand experience measurement by testing cross-nationally a scale including a dimension for measuring eco-friendliness. The brand experience measurement scale could aid companies in tracking the success of their sustainable development initiatives on the brand level.