Credibility as a Key to Sustainable Advertising Success

This paper addresses the operational part of sustainable marketing, especially advertising with sustainability. This form of advertising has to consider particularly the aspect of credibility since the social-ecological value of a product is often not evident for the consumer. Therefore, credibility represents an essential competitive advantage for companies who offer sustainable products. The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants which are decisive for the credibility attribution of sustainable advertisement in order to achieve an improved comprehension of the latent construct and a more credible design of this type of advertisement. In addition, the actual influence of credibility on consumer behavior is to be analyzed. In order to obtain adequate results, the conceptualization and empirical validation of a causal model were performed which measures both the evaluation and effect of credibility. Thereby, the trustworthiness of the brand communicator, mediated by the content of the message, appears as an essential factor of influence regarding the credibility attribution. Further, the analysis concludes that the credibility of the advertisement directly influences the attitude of the consumer toward the product.