Tailoring sustainability communication to consumer preferences: Insights into preference structures and consumer heterogeneity in the German coffee sector

: To achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, targeted measures are required to promote sustainable consumption, especially in industries with substantial demand for sustainability investments, such as the coffee sector. In this context, particular attention must be paid to the design of sustainability communication to build consumer trust and support informed purchasing decisions. While recent research has primarily examined individual sustainability communication strategies in isolation, such as message framing, more holistic perspectives are needed that incorporate multiple sustainability signals alongside consumers' sociodemographic and psychographic profiles, which may jointly influence consumer choice and vary across different consumer segments. Using a representative German sample of 656 coffee consumers, this study therefore investigates the relative utility of differently framed environmental and social claims and sustainability certifications. In addition, latent class analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, chi-square tests, and residual analyses are employed to identify distinct consumer segments that differ in their preferences and underlying sociodemographic and psychographic characteristics. Findings from a Hierarchical Bayes estimation indicate that sustainability certifications exert a stronger influence on consumer choice than supplementary claims, and social initiatives are preferred over biodiversity measures. Moreover, social claims are more effective when framed at a low-construal level, whereas environmental claims benefit from positive framing. Three consumer segments, “pragmatic opportunists”, “sustainability seekers”, and “price-driven skeptics”, are identified that differ in their coffee attribute preferences, sociodemographic characteristics, and underlying values, attitudes, and beliefs. Hence, the findings advance sustainability communication research and provide practical guidance for promoting sustainable consumption through effective, segment-specific communication strategies.