Brand reputation as the signaling mechanism linking green marketing to household purchase intention: Evidence from solar energy markets in Kenya

Abstract A green marketing message is not persuasive in itself; its force depends on whether buyers believe the firm behind it. Building on Brand Signaling Theory, we show that brand reputation is the mechanism through which green marketing becomes household purchase intention in a high-involvement market, where key product qualities cannot be verified before purchase. Drawing on a survey of 328 household heads in the six sub-counties of Uasin Gishu County, Kenya (valid response rate 82.2%), we test the mediating role of brand reputation with Hayes’ PROCESS Model 4 and 5,000 bootstrap samples, controlling for gender, age, income, household size, and education. Green marketing increased brand reputation (B = 0.321), and reputation strongly increased purchase intention (B = 0.777). The indirect effect was significant (B = 0.250, 95% CI [0.183, 0.321]) and accounted for about 63% of the total effect, while the direct effect remained significant (B = 0.147), indicating complementary partial mediation. Green marketing thus works largely as a signal whose value is carried by the credibility that sellers have accumulated, and partly as direct information. The study extends Brand Signaling Theory to a green technology in a semi-rural African market and shifts managerial attention from the volume of green messages to the reliability that makes them believable.