Abstract

Self-prophecy (SP) is a viable marketing strategy shown to increase the prevalence of socially normative behaviours in a variety of contexts, by simply asking people to make a prediction regarding their performance of the target behaviour. The goal of the current research was to extend SP effects in a consumer behaviour context for increasing “green” product consumption and to investigate whether the efficacy of a SP-based advertisement can be influenced by the use of an audience cue and the recipient’s self-construal (i.e., independence vs. interdependence). In study 1, results showed that compared to a traditional text-only SP advertisement, an SP advertisement with an audience cue led to greater preference for sustainable products. Results from study 2 showed that self-construal did not influence susceptibility to a text-only SP message, however greater interdependence led to greater preference for sustainable products after exposure to an SP advertisement with an audience cue. Findings suggest that SP-based advertising may be useful for increasing the prevalence of sustainable product consumption, and that the delivery of an SP-based message can be improved by including a subtle audience cue.