Under Review

with Anocha Aribarg

Center for Brand Leadership Best Brand Paper Award, Haring Symposium, 2026

AbstractSSRN

Firms increasingly use sustainability claims and marketing campaigns to promote sustainable consumption. Designing effective messages requires understanding why consumers value sustainability, because different motives require different persuasive appeals. This paper develops an empirical framework to recover and quantify the primary latent benefits driving sustainable choices: Do Good (environmental impact), Feel Good (warm glow), and Look Good (social image). We design an incentive-compatible conjoint study that elicits consumers' choices and perceived benefits. We then estimate a hierarchical Bayesian choice model linking sustainability features, latent benefits, and choice, while allowing benefit importance to correlate and vary across consumers. Applied to coffee capsules, the model shows that Feel Good dominates for recyclable and compostable packaging, whose sustainability value depends on individuals' disposal effort, whereas Do Good dominates for a low-carbon footprint, whose sustainability value is achieved through supply-chain activities with little consumer involvement. Look Good matters little on average but becomes more important among consumers highly sensitive to social norms. A follow-up randomized experiment confirms that advertisements emphasizing consumers' relevant latent benefits raise willingness to pay more than advertisements mentioning sustainability features alone. Our framework extends to other contexts, helping firms and policymakers identify motives behind sustainable choices and design marketing strategies accordingly.

Under Review

with Sherry He

Media attention: Harvard Business Review (2025)

AbstractSSRN

Companies increasingly use sustainability labels to communicate product sustainability, yet firms face a growing variety of certifications and limited guidance on whether, why, and when these labels increase sales. We study these questions in the Amazon Marketplace through its Climate Pledge Friendly (CPF) program. Combining product-level panel data with a matched stacked difference-in-differences design, we find that adding the CPF label increases sales by approximately 7% over the following eight weeks. Mechanism tests provide little support for a salience channel operating through improved search positions, filter availability, or label density. Instead, the sales effect varies with the underlying certification and sustainability feature, supporting an information channel in which consumers respond to the information conveyed by the label. Using post-double-selection LASSO, we further identify product and certification characteristics that are associated with larger sales gains and document substantial heterogeneity across product-category-by-sustainability-feature combinations. These findings inform firms' certification decisions and platforms' presentation of sustainability information.

with Anna Tuchman and Youngeun Lee

Abstract

This paper investigates product reformulation – the adjustment of ingredients or composition of ingredients in existing products – in the food and beverage industries. Using comprehensive data on product ingredients, nutrition facts, and store sales, we document the prevalence of reformulation, characterize the tactics firms employ, assess the impact of reformulation on product quality and differentiation, and evaluate consumer demand for reformulated products. We find that reformulation is a widespread and persistent practice, with reformulated products accounting for 26% of volume sales across categories and over time. Firms use a diverse range of tactics, including dilution and adjusting compositional flexibility, leading to moderate shifts in nutrient density, but minimal change in the average nutritional quality within a category. We find that less healthy products tend to experience improvements in their nutritional profiles while healthier products are reformulated to be less healthy, suggesting a convergence toward average nutrient values within a category following reformulation. Finally, we find limited evidence of meaningful demand response, indicating that reformulated versions may serve as close substitutes for their originals, even when nutrient density deteriorates without corresponding price changes. Such minimal responses suggest that reformulation may modify product quality in a way that is difficult for consumers to detect.

with Anocha Aribarg

with Sherry He