The effect of green brand image on the behavioral intentions of the customers with special reference to the hotel industry in Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Today, public is increasingly worried about ecological issues. Thus, environmental management, green management and green marketing are becoming popular concepts among the business organizations which enables them to enhance their competitive edge against their rivals. Similarly in hotel industry, green practices are becoming an important tool to strategically position hotels as green hotels which enables the hoteliers to position them in a strategically strong manner compared with hotels with no green practices and their main competitors. Thus this research study examines, how can the hotels’ overall image be developed and how hotels’ branding practices can be differentiated than their rivals’ in the means of green branding deeming the concepts such as cognitive image and affective image. This research study is based on survey conducted on 100 respondents from Western province who have visited green hotels in Sri Lanka. The research findings indicate that, cognitive image positively affect the affective image of green hotels and the overall image of the green hotels. Also it proves that, affective image positively impacts the overall image. More importantly research findings confirmed that the overall image positively impacts behavioral intentions (intention to positively recommend, willingness to pay a premium and intention to revisit) of the green hotel customers.