Sustainability and automobiles : an online investigation into meanings associated to electric vehicles in automobile forums

• Autor(a) principal: Genovese, Kieran
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/29814
• topic: Sustainability; Green marketing; New product adoption; Netnography; Digital insights; Electric cars; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The new decade brings increasing concerns over climate change. Road transport is one of the largest contributors to emissions of greenhouse gases and apprehension is growing as to how the industry can reduces its carbon footprint. One solution is vehicles powered by electric motors. Electric cars, although becoming more popular are still regarded by many motorists as inadequate to meet their needs, while research has been conducted on the perceptions of electric cars there is less research on how they could be marketed to consumers. In the 2030 Ireland will ban new sales of petrol/diesel cars. This thesis aims to study an Irish online community of motorists to understand their views and motivations about electric cars and how these can help improve communication and facilitate adoption. Netnography was considered the most appropriate method of research. Results show that performance is the main consideration of the community, while four sub-themes linked to performance are also observed being sustainability, sentiment, price and self-image. Findings show that although sustainability is a concern for buyers performance attributes are more important in the buying consideration and that many consumers would not be willing to pay a premium for going green. Research suggests that the main focus should be on amplifying the performance qualities of the electric car rather than just emphasising the sustainable attributes. While a substantial section of consumers are unwilling to pay a premium for an electric car which is perceived as performing poorly.