Eco-labels: A tool for green marketing or just a blind mirror for consumers

Studies show that greening the business is not only helpful in getting the green products to the consumers, which may be better for their health and environment, but it also helps the business as a kind of strategy for enjoying a competitive advantage and strengthening brand image. Green marketing practices are now days gaining wide acceptance among various marketing practices. Green marketing is the set of marketing activities which start from the procurement of the product to the delivery of the product to the end user in a greener way. On the other hand, eco-labeling is one of the important tools for the green marketing as it helps to differentiate the green products from non-green products. But it has been seen that many times these eco-labels fail to attain their objectives. The objective of this paper is to establish a relationship of eco-labels with consumer knowledge, information communication, consumer trust and its impact on green purchase intention. Further, all these relationships have been verified with the help of structural equation modeling (SEM), performed by using SmartPLS 3.0. The study reveals that eco-labeling is a significant criterion for consumer trust and green purchase intention via consumer information and knowledge.