Green Marketing for a Sustainable Future

Eco-Innovation and Green Marketing can lead to top line sales, differentiation and improved brand equity. The obvious assumption of green marketing is that potential consumers will view a product or service’s “greenness” as a benefit and base their buying decision accordingly. While green marketing is growing greatly as increasing numbers of consumers are willing to back their environmental consciousnesses with their dollars, it can be dangerous. The public tends to be skeptical of green claims to begin with and companies can seriously damage their brands and their sales if a green claim is discovered to be false or contradicted by a company’s other products or practices. Presenting a product or service as green when it’s not is called greenwashing.

 

Along with the now meteoric rise of green consumers, we see the rise of ecolabeling, green advertising and the importance of environmental reporting. This trend creates the opportunity for just about anything to be marketed as green, from simple packaging changes to products and services that radically reduce materials, energy, and waste. Green marketing has produced advances such as packages using recycled paper, phosphate-free detergents, refill containers for cleaning products, and bottles using less plastic. Today’s green marketing campaigns highlight the superior environmental protection characteristics of a company’s products and services, whether those benefits take the form of reduced waste in packaging, increased energy efficiency in product use, or decreased release of toxic emissions and other pollutants in production. Most observers agree that while some businesses engage in green marketing solely because such an emphasis will enable them to make a profit, other businesses conduct their operations in an environmentally-sensitive fashion because their owners and managers feel a responsibility to preserve the integrity of the natural environment even as they satisfy consumer needs and desires.

 

Indeed, true green marketing emphasizes environmental stewardship. Businesses practice being green when they voluntarily recycle and attempt to reduce waste in their daily operations. Practicing green is inherently proactive; it means finding ways to reduce waste and otherwise be more environmentally responsible, before being forced to do so through government regulations. Many businesses took heed of this growth in “green consumerism,” and new marketing campaigns have been devised to reflect this new strain of thought among consumers. Companies with product lines that were created in an environmentally friendly fashion i e , with recycled products, comparatively low pollutant emissions, and so on have quickly learned to shape their marketing message to highlight such efforts and to reach those customers most likely to appreciate those efforts an advertisement highlighting a company’s recycling efforts, for instance, is more likely to appear in an outdoor/nature magazine than a general interest periodical. The Journal of Advertising, states that “green consumers are the very segment most likely to distrust advertisers and are quite likely to pursue behaviors and activities that confound business people.” Corporate reputation, then, has emerged as a tremendously important factor in reaching and keeping these consumers.