It’s a problem that plagues many energy-saving products, from electric cars to high-efficiency washing machines. “Consumers think in terms of what they have to lay out at the front end,” says Stephen A. Greyser, marketing professor at Harvard Business School. Marketers struggle to help shoppers understand the “life cycle” savings as lower energy costs offset the steep purchase price. Now, as consumers become fed up with high electric bills, the new bulbs may have their best chance to break out. Though they account for just 5 percent of the $2 billion residential-lighting industry, sales were up 40 percent in the past year, according to the research firm Triad Vista. Environmentalists want to see those numbers go higher. Lighting consumes about 22 percent of U.S. electricity, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. “Everybody should have CFLs in place,” says Berkeley professor Daniel Kammen, who figures that they’d save the average household $86 per year. In California, utilities are handing out new bulbs door-to-door. But can companies persuade the rest of us to switch? “I’m not saying it’s Mount Everest, but it’s not a walk in the hills,” says Greyser.
Unfocused marketing hasn’t helped. Until the late ’90s primitive versions of CFLs had too many quality problems–flickers, bluish light, strange sizes, long warm-up times–for most consumers to take them seriously. When bulbs improved, marketers couldn’t decide which of their strengths to tout. They tried emphasizing the bulbs’ energy efficiency, but customers didn’t seem to care. “We’ve been talking the wrong story,” says Barbara Rentschler, head of CFL marketing at Philips Lighting Co., the leading manufacturer. So Philips changed its bulb’s name from Earth Light to Marathon to emphasize how its long life (often seven years or more) reduces the hassle of changing burned-out bulbs. That helped, but rising energy costs–and promotion by utility companies and retailers like Home Depot–are what’s really driving sales.
Still, the price has many customers withholding judgment. Elizabeth McDonald, owner of a vintage-clothing store in Berkeley, Calif., recently let Philips install (free of charge) 40 new CFLs to demo in her store. “The quality of lighting definitely went up–it seems brighter and not as hot,” she says. But though prices in some stores have dropped toward $5, she’ll still wait to see how much her electric bill falls before deciding whether to buy new CFLs when her freebies burn out. Since it may be years before they fade to black, she’ll have plenty of time to decide.
