Green Consumerism: Perspectives, Sustainability, and Behavior

Ruchika Singh Malyan, Punita Duhan, Ruchika Singh Malyan, Punita Duhan

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351138024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Ventas

This new volume, Green Consumerism: The Behavior of New Age Consumer, provides a holistic understanding the importance of promoting green products and discusses consumers' buying intentions and decisions. The chapters consider consumer behavior theory in the context of green or ecologically friendly products from both the academic and business perspectives. The chapters present the latest empirical and analytical research in the field of green marketing and provide an abundance of information about profitable and sustainable ways and strategies to deal with environmental problems.

The volume considers how consumers are taking responsibility and becoming more aware, driving change in the marketplace. In response, companies are integrating appropriate green strategies into their operational activities, product development processes, and marketing activities to achieve a competitive advantage in saturated markets. This helps companies gain market share and minimize their production costs. Topics discussed in the volume include green pricing, green consumer behavior, various dimensions of consumer purchase intention, sustainable marketing, innovation techniques used to go green, eco-awareness, and other ongoing developments in this rapidly expanding area.

Key features:

• Discusses research on the latest trends in the field of green marketing, green practices, green products, eco-literacy, environment awareness, protection, management etc.

• Provides insight about current consumer behavior, consumers' eco-literacy levels, and their desires to go green

• Covers a multitude of topics, including green pricing, green consumer behavior, sustainable marketing, innovation techniques used to go green, eco-awareness, and more

PART I

Green Marketing Practices: Different Perspectives

CHAPTER 1

GREEN MARKETING: THE NEXT MARKETING REVOLUTION

ANITHA ACHARYA^1,* and MANISH GUPTA²

¹Department of Human Resources, IBS, a constituent of IFHE, Deemed to be University, Hyderabad, India, Tel.: [phone], E-mail: [email protected]

²Department of Human Resources, IBS, a Constituent of IFHE, Deemed to be University, Hyderabad, India, Tel.:[phone], E-mail: [email protected]

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Industrialization in England brought mechanization and ease of doing work with it. However, this caused an almost irreparable damage to the environment. The severe consequences of environmental disturbance are visible in the form of increased number of natural disasters and acceleration of global warming. Concern for the environment coupled with government support has led people to look for green or eco-friendly alternatives and limit the exploitation of natural resources. Companies have now noticed the increasing demand for green products and have started directing their marketers to tap this whole new breed of green consumers (Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006).

According to Peattie and Charter (2003), the key challenge for the new millennium is to find more equitable and sustainable ways to produce, consume, and live. One of the visions for the future shared by environmentalists was sustainability. The Brundtland Report in the year 1987 titled “Our Common Future” brought the issue into the mainstream. In the wake of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the governments across the world and major corporations increasingly adopted the quest for sustainability as a goal. But the real challenge lies in implementing these goals into significant growth in the face of powerful vested interests, a deeply ingrained, environmentally antagonistic management paradigm, and a global economy. For marketing, the challenge is twofold. In the short term, social and ecological issues have become important external influences on companies and the markets within which they operate. Companies have to react to varying customer needs, new government rules which reflect rising fear about the socio-environmental impacts on business. According to Shrivastava (1995), the quest for sustainability in the long term will require fundamental changes to the management paradigm which underpins marketing and the other business function. This chapter aims to epitomize how going green is influencing current marketing practices and how its implications will require a more profound shift in the marketing paradigm, if the aim of the marketers is to make a profit and provide customer satisfaction.

1.2 NEED FOR GREEN MARKETING

Companies are expected to commit to green marketing strategies because of four main reasons. First, the cost of the natural resources is rising. Second, the consumers have become more aware of the pitfalls of the conventional products not only on the environment but also on them. As a result, the consumers are switching from nongreen product providers to green product providers. Third, the government agencies are taking restrictive measures for the non-green products and supportive measures for green products. Also, the pressure from the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has supported the change (Kleindorfer et al., 2005). Moreover, research in this area suggests that the usage of green products has long-term financial benefits (King and Lenox, 2002).

As resources are limited and human needs are infinite, achieving organizational objectives is difficult for marketers. Nevertheless, they can utilize the available resources in an efficient manner by going green. There is a rising interest among the consumers all over the world concerning the protection of the environment. It is evident from prior research that people are concerned about the environment and are changing their behavior (Mishra and Sharma, 2010). As a consequence of this, green marketing has originated, which speaks about rising demand for sustainable and socially accountable products and services. Thus, the growing consciousness among the individuals all over the world regarding protection of the environment in which they live, individuals do want to bestow a clean earth to their offspring. Marketers are becoming more concerned about the environment and would like to introduce environment-friendly products. Green marketing was given prominence in the late 1980s and 1990s after the proceedings of the first workshop on “Ecological Marketing” held in Austin, Texas (US), in 1975.

1.3 WHAT IS IT AND HOW IT WORKS?

The term green marketing was first discussed in the year 1975 in a seminar on “Ecological Marketing” organized by American Marketing Association (AMA) (Henion and Kinnear, 1976). Since then, terms such as environment-friendly, recyclable, ozone friendly, refillable are often associated with green marketing. However, green marketing is a much broader concept which is applicable to services, consumer goods, and even industrial goods. It incorporates a broad range of activities including product modification, changes to the production process, changes in packaging, as well as modifications in the advertisement. Not surprisingly but defining green marketing is a challenging task.

From practitioners’ perspective, green marketing refers to the marketing of products and services that are presumed to be environmentally preferable to others whereas, from a researchers perspective, green marketing refers to the “analysis of how marketing activities impact the environment and how the environmental variable can be incorporated into the various decisions of corporate marketing” (Chamorro et al., 2009, p 223). According to Peattie (2001a), green marketing attempts to reduce the negative social and environmental impacts of existing products and production systems. It promotes less damaging products and services. The latest trend in green marketing research assimilates green marketing into the broader framework of corporate social responsibility (Chamorro et al., 2009). This change is the result of a shift in thinking from green marketing as a type of consumerism (the 1970s–1990s) to green marketing as a societal conscientiousness (Porter and Kramer, 2006).

Furthermore, acting in an environment-unfriendly way is unprofitable (Cronin et al., 2011). For example, British Petroleum (BP) lost 55% shareholder value after the deepwater horizon incident which happened on April 20, 2010. Deepwater Horizon was a deepwater, offshore oil drilling rig owned by Transocean (RIG) and operated by BP. While drilling at the Macondo Prospect, there was an explosion on the rig caused by a blowout that killed 11 crew members. On April 22, 2010, Deepwater Horizon sank while the well was still active and caused the largest offshore oil spill in the U.S. history. Market incentives, as this logic goes, support pro-environment corporate decisions (Kassinis and Vafeas, 2006). Also, recent research has found that promoting oneself as a “green company” increases consumers’ inclination toward the company and allows companies to charge a premium price (Acharya and Gupta, 2016).

1.4 EVOLUTION OF GREEN MARKETING

The concept of green marketing has evolved over a period of time. According to Peattie (2001a), the green marketing evolution was a three-phase process including ecological, environmental, and sustainable green marketing. Each of these phases has been elaborated in the subsequent paragraphs:

• The first phase termed “ecological green marketing” lasted from the 1960s to 1970s (Delafrooz et al., 2014). In this era, all marketing activities were concerned to find solutions to the environmental problems or the external problems (Grundey and Zaharia, 2008). It was a result of a workshop held by the American Marketing Association (AMA) on “Ecological Marketing” in the year 1975. The main contribution of this phase in establishing the concept by publishing several books on the topics relating to ecological marketing (Nadaf and Nadaf, 2014). It provided a concrete base for analyses and empirical work.

• The second phase was “environmental green marketing” and in this era, the focus shifted to “clean technology” that involved designing of products which are innovative and manage pollution and waste (Peattie, 2011). In this era, for raising customers’ green loyalty, the companies were to pay special attention to enhance customers’ green satisfaction, green perceived value, and green trust instead of typical satisfaction, perceived value, and trust (Chen, 2013). Eventually, it attracted a lot of investments in the potential resources contributing to the aforesaid factors.

• The third phase was “sustainable green marketing.” It came into prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000. This was the result of “sustainable development,” which is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the capability of future generations to meet their own needs (Kilbourne, 1998). Research in this phase mainly relates to consumer behavior and is still going on.

In spite of some attention in the 1970s, it was only in the late 1980s that the idea of green marketing emerged. According to Prothero (1990), green marketing consists of the rapid increase in green consumerism at this time as heralding a dramatic and expected shift in consumption toward greener products (Vandermerwe and Oliff, 1990). Prior research bodies were cited as identifying heightened environmental awareness, a growing consumer interest in green products, and a pronounced willingness to pay for green features (Worcester, 1993). Realistic evidence for this came in the form of extremely successful global consumer boycott of aerosols which were chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) driven, and the international success of publications by Elkington and Hailes (1988) titled “The Green Consumer Guide.” This resulted in a rupture of corporate activity in the area of green marketing and an upsurge in green business research and writing among academics. Corporate interest in green marketing was indicated by early market research findings suggesting major changes and innovations in products produced by them. The results of the survey conducted by Vandermerwe and Oliff (1990) revealed that 85% of European multinationals claimed to have altered their production systems and 92% claimed to have altered their products in response to green concerns. Regardless of this optimistic picture, by the mid-1990s new market research evidence began to emerge which was less explicit about the growth of green consumerism. A follow-up report by Mintel (1995) on the environment recorded only a very slight increase in green consumers since 1990 and identified a noteworthy gap between concern and actual purchasing. According to Allan (2005), the frequency and prominence of green claims were also found to be in decline and green products seemed to have achieved only limited success (Werther and Chandler, 2005). Even though green product growth continued strongly in certain markets such as financial services, food, and, tourism; there was no longer talk about the impressive growth in launching the green product.

1.5 OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES INVOLVED

1.5.1 OPPORTUNITIES

The main reason for the emergence of green marketing is the availability of a plethora of opportunities including sustainable competitive advantage, wider consumer base, government subsidies, and corporate social responsibility. These have been des...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Reviewers
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgment
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I: Green Marketing Practices: Different Perspectives
• PART II: Sustainability Aspects of Green Marketing
• PART III: Ecological Dimensions of Green Consumer Behavior
• Index