Green consumerism : the buying behaviour of late millennials and gen z in the German non-alcoholic beverage industry

The main objective was to examine which external or internal factors motivate members of the generational cohort of Late Millennials and Gen Z to participate in green buying behaviour, in the context of the German non-alcoholic beverage industry. As those motivational factors can differ from psychographics and individual interests to the influence of one’s external environment on certain priorities and norms, there was an identifiable need to adapt green marketing strategies to the preferences of the newest generation, which will be the main part of the examination within this thesis. Consequently, the theoretical background was elaborated according to an extensive literature research with a strategic keyword search according to Denyer & Tranfield on platforms like Google Scholar, JSTOR and ResearchGate, as well as the snowball search method to find even more specified information on this niche topic. The survey was conducted following a quantitative approach and then sent out and distributed via social media channels. Most of the questions were close-ended and were queried using different Likert scales, with which participants had to evaluate or indicate their personal frequency of engaging in different situations and scenarios. 171 citizens fully completed the questionnaire, which was then transferred into the statistical analysis programme SPSS for further evaluation and hypotheses testing. The main findings were that the surveyed Late Millennials and Generation Z are significantly purchasing single-use bottles and cans the least frequent but are not yet ready to commit to engage in regular green purchases, which is currently on an occasional level. They are on the edge of switching from a moderately green consumer to a truly green consumer but will probably not do so until the awareness and communication streams around this topic will be enhanced to a great deal