The Groucho-Effect. Are consumers really confused or do they just not care enough?

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Sociology - Consumption and Advertising, grade: 1,9, University of Innsbruck, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this paper is to test some of the hypotheses and assumptions of the Groucho-paper to shed some light on what consumers really think and if labels increase the perceived quality of a product and, thus, increase the willingness to pay of consumers.
This effect plays a major role for credence good, i.e. those goods where the consumer has to believe they are of a certain quality.
Whenever you open a newspaper there might be an article about global warming, about critically endangered animal species, or air pollution and the health consequences. Those articles should be like a wake-up call to finally change peoples- behaviour and save the environment, and lastly ourselves. Then you go to the supermarket and you see normal products and some products claiming to be -green-, -eco-friendly-, -fair- or -produced responsible- others with labels on it to prove it. What those labels really prove is often not clear to the consumers. This is when we speak about label credence goods.