Squeaky clean: What brands need to know about the world’s eco-friendly buying habits

Streetbees spoke to over 2,600 people all over the world to explore attitudes to eco-friendly and clean products across countries and age groups.

Defending the environment is big business, and many major brands are making conscious (and public) efforts to make their products more eco-friendly.

This isn’t just a PR move, it impacts the bottom line too; for example, Unilever’s sustainable brands are currently growing 50% faster than the rest of its business.

However, this doesn’t automatically mean consumers will pick up any brand simply touting environmental credentials. In fact, new Streetbees research finds that only 1 in 5 people worldwide would consider eco-friendliness a key factor when purchasing a household product — far behind the winning trio of price (87%), effectiveness (66%) and brand (53%).

In fact, the only buying factor that our bees were less concerned by were the shops where products were available — at just 8%.

So, do we care about the planet? Or not?

Is the price right?

Our research shows that it’s not that people don’t care at all about the environment — they just have to prioritise other factors: especially cost.

“I struggle paycheck to paycheck as it is,” said one of our bees, 62. “I can’t afford to pay any more than what I do now.” Another, 18, writes, “I need to save money wherever I can.”

In fact, almost four out of five (78%) of our respondents said they would happily pay for a product that worked just as well as their usual brand but was more eco-friendly, and 57% of people would qualify minimising their overall carbon footprint as a priority for them — but price and effectiveness would always win out.

Interestingly, branding plays a bigger part in young people’s lives than their older peers: 60% of those under age-25 ranked brand higher than effectiveness when it came to choosing household products.

Interestingly, branding plays a slightly bigger part in young people’s lives than their older peers: close to 60% of those under-25 ranked brand as a Top 3 concern when it came to choosing their household products — compared to just 50% of over-25s.

Younger people are also a little more willing to fork out for the environment’s sake. More than half said they would consider paying for a slightly inferior product (54%) that was eco-friendly, for the same price. Above age 46, this number drops down to just 46%.

Knowledge is power

Age wasn’t the only split in our bees’ reactions. Geography also impacts how consumers react to eco-friendly products while, in an era of marketing buzzwords, there is also some confusion over what exactly ‘eco-friendly’ actually means.

For example, in Kenya, India, Nigeria, South Africa and the Philippines, over 60% of our bees correctly answered that being eco-friendly meant products that were not harmful to the environment.

However, in the US and UK, the proportion of those correct dropped to just 45%, with a higher proportion of people incorrectly thinking eco-friendly meant biodegradable, recyclable, or just generally positive for the environment.

Additionally, when asked what product category is the most important to be eco-friendly, almost half (45%) of our bees from the UK and US named household cleaning products as the top category — twice as much as food and beverage (just 20%).

Conversely, a large majority of Indian, Nigerian and Kenyan respondents were sure it was most important for food and beverages to be eco-friendly — with recyclable, non-plastic packaging the priority.

What does this mean for brands?

For businesses facing pressure to grow their eco-friendly brands and be more environmentally-conscious, there’s a clear opportunity here.

A huge majority of consumers all over the world would be more than willing to swap to an eco-friendly version of their household products — but only if they think it can match the pressing concerns of price-point and effectiveness.

A focus on these aspects for new products going forward is key to success. However, for this approach to be really effective, brands also have to take the time to educate their consumers about the strengths of their products — especially in developed markets like the UK and US.

For brands targeting those under the age of 25, who value product brand on a par with product effectiveness, a strong brand identity is key — especially for food and beverage companies — leaning on the use of young people’s additional willingness to buy eco-friendly to begin with.

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The username is clean-product@streetbees.com and the password is external-product, all lower case.

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A quick word on our methodology: The figures in the article are taken from Streetbees community members in the UK, US, China, Russia, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, India and the Philippines, carried out in May/June 2018. All of the data was collected by mobile and web surveys, and is accurate to within 3 percentage points 19 times out of 20.