ABSTRACT
Many green marketing problems have a common core: the marketer is trying to “sell brotherhood.” Selling brotherhood involves using a mass communication strategy to induce individuals to take actions when the actions are not in their own narrow self-interest. The authors draw on the social dilemma literature to develop a framework for selling brotherhood. In a social dilemma, a person who contributes to the community’s good receives fewer personal benefits than one who does not, and all group members receive more personal benefits if all contribute than if all do not. The paper presents this framework and illustrates how the framework can be applied to a wide variety of green marketing issues.
