Social Responsibility Journal

Framing green consumer behaviour research: opportunities and challenges

Sapna A. Narula Anupriya Desore
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Sapna A. Narula Anupriya Desore , (2016),"Framing green consumer behaviour research: opportunities and challenges",
Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 12 Iss 1 pp. -
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 1. Introduction

Marketing has been revolutionized during last few decades through the introduction of modern
information & communication technologies, changing consumer behavior and lifestyles, global
supply chains and increased regulatory attention. Competitive pressures such as quick response
and better customer service have led companies to adopt strategies aimed at providing more
attractive offers which sometimes may not be socially and environmentally sustainable and
create a misbalance in society and environment hindering the sustainability agenda. Marketers
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have also long been blamed for unreasonable expenses through their marketing strategies leading
to increase in product costs, skewed response towards provision of goods only for the richer
section of the society, excessive packaging leading to waste generation and increased logistics
costs as a response to fast and efficient supply chains all of which mean more environmental
damage. However, it has also been seen that there are endless opportunities for the marketers in
green domain with the help of which they can address stakeholders’ concerns thereby creating a
unique position for themselves in continuously changing markets. In a society, where marketing
has become a way of life, marketers do not only have the responsibility to act sustainable but
can also play an important role as an agent to bring change towards a sustainable society
(Prothero and Fitchett, 2000, Charter et al., 2006; Jones et al 2008; Saxena and Khandelwal,
2010).
The environmental concerns have had a great influence on the marketing strategies of leading
firms across multiple industries over the globe which include oil and gas, automobile, FMCG,
cosmetics and personal care, food and health, aviation , utilities etc. and the last decade has also
seen a number of green products and services some of which have gained huge acceptance by
consumers. The green strategies are not only limited to delivering green products but are spread
across all steps of supply chain right from procurement of environmentally safer raw materials
till the safe disposal of used products and packaging (Bowen, 2000; Jones et al., 2008; Narula
and Upadhyay, 2011;Seuring and Muller, 2008; Chan et al., 2012).Green marketing also acts as a
communication tool for the companies to project themselves as green in consumers’ mind and
also helps in building the relationship between the consumer and the company. It is also very
much evident through studies that environmental strategies are now an important component of
 business strategy and hence more and more companies are integrating these issues into their
business concerns (Davis, 1991; Kangis, 1992; Grant, 2008; Polonsky, 1994; Ottman, 1998;
Peattie, 2001; and pujari et al 2003).

The purpose of the paper is to review the literature in green marketing and green consumption
domain, analyze the gaps and provide directions to the future of green consumer behavior
domain. This paper has been organized into eight sections. We start our paper by highlighting
the importance of green marketing in light of sustainability and evolution of green marketing
research in section one and two. The objectives behind writing this paper has been provided in
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section three, followed by defining the scope and potential of green marketing in section four and
this section also looks into various ways in which green products and services have been defined.
The purpose of igniting this debate is to highlight the opportunities presented by firms to achieve
their marketing objectives? How the green objectives are to be integrated into the traditional
marketing? While we explore answers to these questions, more questions ponder our mind one of
which is who do we consider as a green consumer? How is he different from a conventional
customer? The discussion regarding the green consumer behavior including identifying their
needs, segmentation, willingness to pay has been presented in Section six. The managerial
implications in the green marketing field have been presented in section seven. Finally, section
eight concludes the paper by providing future research opportunities in the field.

2. The Evolution of Green Marketing Research

Marketing practitioners started giving a lot of attention to sustainability agenda especially in 90s
and this was also the time when researchers also got interested in exploring green marketing
issues. Today, a wide body of multi- authored, multi-country and inter- disciplinary research
related to green marketing is available with studies ranging from consumer behavior, need
satisfaction, product development, recycling, green packaging (Lewis, 2005; Zhang and Zhao,
2012; Lai et al., 2013.) logistics and promotion (laroche et al., 2001;Boztepe, 2012) and
remanufactured products (Davis, 1991; Kangis, 1992; Fuller, 1999; Menon and Menon, 1997;
Ottman, 1998; Peattie and Crane, 2005; Grant, 2008). And this literature spreads across many
 countries, industries, firms and products and extends into a variety of methodologies and tools
(Leonidou and Leonidou, 2011).

A number of reviews in the area of green marketing are also available (Chamorro et al., 2009;
Connelly, 2011; Cronin et al, 2011; Chowbaski et al., 2011; Hult, 2011) and each one is unique
in its own respect e.g. The work by Chamorro et al., 2009 analyses the already existing body of
literature in the field and suggests that green consumer and green communication accounted for
largest number of studies in the area, whereas the recycling behavior is the least published area.
The authors suggest that almost 75 percent of the articles are empirical in nature with factor
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analysis as one of the frequently used tool. A Study by Connelly (2011) through the application
of nine prominent organizational theories such as social network theory, resource based view,
resource dependence theory, population ecology and institutional theory etc. presented a base for
future sustainability research in marketing that can be applied to understand and predict an
organization’s sustainability efforts.

Cronin et al., (2011) examined literature from marketing, management and operations area and
have presented opportunities for research in form of investigative questions in the area of green
performance, innovation, green alliances, green processes and consumers. Another study in the
same field by Chowbaski et al., (2011)examine the sustainability research in marketing and
identify citizenship behavior, stakeholder theory, corporate performance and the triple bottom
line as integral areas.

Other theoretical papers have made an effort to present new theories and frameworks in the area
of green marketing. e.g. Sheth et al, (2011) proposed a framework to enable marketers to address
customer centric challenges to sustainability. The authors introduced the concept of mindful
consumption based on the consumer mindset of caring for self, community and for nature and
also illustrated the business opportunities associated with the concept. Leonidou et al., (2013)
developed a theoretical model to explain how green marketing programs can deliver product-
market and financial performance benefits in influencing firm performance and also studied the
role of slack resources and top management risk aversion in deployment of green marketing
programs which were previously neglected. Crittenden et al., 2011 present a framework based on
 three constructs namely DNA, stakeholder involvement and performance management. The
authors make use of resource advantage theory to explain how sustainability can be aligned into
marketing strategy to gain competitive advantage.

The existing reviews in green marketing domain have addressed one or more of five key issues
revolving around drivers of sustainability, management of sustainability practices and strategies,
performance aspects of sustainability and marketing and consumer aspects. These reviews have
provided a very useful insight into green marketing research by examining the literature from
strategy, operations, management and marketing areas and have tried to establish its links with
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strategies, operations and management.

In spite of the availability of a wide body of literature, knowledge about green marketing
practices remains limited for both managers and policy makers. (Chabowski et al, 2011; Cronin
et al, 2011). Perhaps the reason for the same is that green marketing or related literature is spread
in operations, business, management, marketing and supply chain and not much has been done
to see it as a standalone discipline except the reviews provided by Leonidou, (2011) and Cronin
et al (2011) and Sheth et al (2010). Much of the green marketing literature revolves around
consumer as it is the most important stakeholder, though efforts have been done to involve other
stakeholders in the green marketing supply chain (Crittenden, 2011; Cronin et al 2011). We have
also observed that there is no review in the field which is dedicated to consumer behavior aspects
of green marketing apart from plenty of empirical research being available in this particular
domain. Though we do not refute the importance of other stakeholders in green marketing, the
purpose of the paper has been restricted to consumer behavior only. Understanding the consumer
is important as this is the area which helps firms create better value proposition and hence a
competitive advantage at market place.

3. Objectives and Methodology

This paper is an attempt to consolidate the previous work on green marketing while reviewing
the existing literature; the paper aims to address the following questions pertaining to the subject:
 • What is the scope and potential of green marketing as a discipline and how it is important
from a marketer’s perspective? What are the major opportunities associated with green
marketing? In other words, how can marketing activities contribute towards reducing
environmental footprint and yet make profits?

• What are the major issues to be addressed in green consumer behavior research related to
green needs and segmentation, green purchase behavior and willingness to pay for these
products? How can green products be designed to enhance consumers’ utility?
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• What are the major research challenges in green marketing and consumer behavior
research? What are the other unexplored areas in green marketing research?

With the help of existing body of literature available in the domain of green marketing, we try to
find answers to these questions and present our framework on opportunities and challenges in
this domain. We further extend our inquiry into framing research questions which are yet
unexplored in the domain of green marketing.

A thorough literature search in leading academic journals related to the above scope of this paper
was conducted through leading databases such as Science Direct, Emerald and Google Scholar.
We selected a group of scientific journals in the above mentioned databases which were likely to
include work in the field of green marketing under product and consumer domain. The main
keywords used for our bibliographic search were green marketing, green consumer, green
product, green strategy, green buying behavior, sustainable marketing, environmental marketing,
environmental strategy, green marketing strategy, green segmentation, customer satisfaction,
ecolabels, green pricing, etc. A total of 172 papers were collected through this search and this
was then passed through a rigorous analysis by the relevant experts in the area. After a careful
analysis by the authors and experts, it was concluded that around 140 articles were of relevant
use for our study. These 140 articles belonged to a total of 69 journals belonging to marketing
(24); management (30) and other disciplines (15). Out of the total 24 marketing journals, four
journals belonged specifically to consumer behavior and three to product management. The
 category others included journals namely environment and behavior, Proceedia Engineering and
Cross-cultural Research and Ecological Economics to mention a few.

4. Defining the scope and potential of Green Marketing:

We examined an array of definitions available in the literature and found that these definitions
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ranged from the time period of 1976-2013. Most of these definitions were in the context of
developed countries such as Australia, Canada Europe and US except one from India.
In our pursuit towards analyzing these definitions, we came across various keywords/ phrases
used to define green marketing by different authors which have been found to be belonging to
six dimensions of sustainability .i.e. environment, society, market /Product/Business, Customer,
stakeholder. The paper by Dahlstrud, A. (2006) on analysis of CSR definitions formed the basis
of our analysis. Table 1 talks about the criteria of classification of phrases, whereas Table 2
describes the characteristics and important aspects of definitions

Insert Table 1 Here

Insert Table 2 Here

While all these definitions address the issues related to consumer needs, satisfaction and
environmental issues they fail to include the words stakeholders’ needs and expectations. it can
be seen that authors in the nineties were initially inclined towards inculcation of overall
marketing concept with emphasis on ecological aspects such as energy conservation, waste
minimization, natural environment, resources reuse, recycle etc, and moved towards focusing on
customer needs including 4Ps of marketing namely product, price promotion and distribution
(Kangis, 1992; Pride and Ferrell, 1993; Harrison, 1993; Polonsky, 1994; Peattie, 1995;
Reinhardt, 1998; Fuller, 1999) After the year 2000, various strategic changes in firms and
 industries gained momentum in the domain of green marketing covering the area on new product
development, product modifications, and changes in production process.

It was also found that only Charter (1992) laid importance towards anticipation and satisfaction
of stakeholders’ needs which has been found neglected in other definitions. In our view, Green
marketing is not to be implemented only by businesses, but it is a collective activity where all the
intermediaries have opportunities to contribute towards sustainability. It is mainly about the
activities which start after the manufacturing i.e. related to consumption but here, it is
noteworthy that one cannot ignore the unsustainable activities happening during production or
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even at the design and development stage or at the procurement of raw materials and as all these
activities are linked, green marketing also would in fact count for all those activities, however,
all the activities involving both the production and consumption end would be widely studied
under green supply chain domain e.g. A product which has absorbed a lot of energy during
production can never be regarded as a green one irrespective of environment friendly distribution
and promotion. Similarly, green product development starts much before the marketing stage and
both the raw materials as well as processes have implications on its marketing and consumers’
choice of green products also influence the way these products are manufactured. Methodologies
such as LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) aid in finding the total environmental footprint of the product
across its life cycle (Calderon et al ., 2010) So, it is clear that the two ends can never be isolated,
however, for purpose of this paper; we limit our discussion to green consumer and the consumer
behavior aspects such as consumer needs, segmentation and willingness to pay. Though the
issues related to green packaging, green logistics, green communication and other services are
significantly important in context of green marketing, we set our scope to the core of green
marketing including consumer behavior dimensions.

Figure1. The Pyramid of Green marketing

 Green producrt development
• New products are developed
• New features are introduced
• Green design and Research and development are promoted and expenditure is done
• Only regulatoryu compliance is ensured

Green manufacturing
• Energy, Waste and water efficiency are ensured
• Environment friendly raw marterials and packaging are used
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• New environmental friendly processes are practiseed

• Workers and employees are sensitised, trained and rewarded for environment friendly
performance

Green logistics and Distribution

• Energy efficient transportation ( environment-friendly fuels, drivers training)
• Apprtopriate mode of transportations
• Reduced packging and load sharing
• Optimised truck loads
• E-marketing ( appropriate steps are chosen )
• Number of internediaries are reduced

Green Advertisement and Promotion

• More emphasis on online promotion
• Rewarding customers' environment-friendly behaviour
• Reduced overall advertisement expenditure

Reverse Logistics
• Manufacturee takes the responsibilitybof used products
• Comsumer Education and Awareness
• Promoting safe and judicious use of products
• Technological advancement for disposal

A firm has many choices for going green as it can adopt one or more activities mentioned in the
pyramid. Some companies as mentioned will only be doing a small modification in existing
product whereas the others may adopt very rigorous environment friendly processes related to
 energy, waste and air pollution management and hence are able to save costs. Others may go
beyond launching products and for adopting various voluntary as well as non-voluntary
standards and ecolabels. The company may adopt one or many stages in the pyramid and more
the number of stages it occupies, the greater are the green character of its products and services.
A few companies may have an entirely green business model which means that they sell only
environment-friendly products in an environment friendly manner. Actually, for a firm, the
opportunities range from design and development stage till the consumption and recycling stage.
Green marketing is not merely about going for environment friendly production and processes
rather it also extends to a stage where companies promote the responsible consumption and
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disposal of its products.

One of the primitive areas of green marketing research looks into what motivates a firm to go
green (Berry and Rondinelli, 1998; Hoffman and Ventresca, 2002; Pujari et al., 2003;
Varadarajan and Menon, 1988; Camino, 200).Both external and internal drivers have been
explored in research to showcase the firms’ motivations to go green. External drivers in form of
regulatory pressure (Darnall and Edward, 2006), market demand (Christman and Taylor, 2001;
Zhu and Sarkis 2006; Young et al 2010) or exports and competitive pressure (Darnall et al 2008
; Sarkis et al 2010) have been well documented in literature. Internal drivers such as management
support and commitment, training to employees, financial and human resources also motivate
firms to go green (Min and Galle, 2001; Sharma et al 1999; walker et al 2008; Lee, 2008; Sarkis,
2010). Other internal factors such as slack resources and top management risk aversion have also
been studied well lately (Menguc et al, 2010). From the marketing perspective, however, the
most important stakeholder is consumer and it really makes sense that most of green marketing
literature has been found to be revolving around him only. (Greenley and Foxall, 1997; Fitchett,
2004,Young et al 2010; Michaud and Llerena, 2011).

4.1 The Green Consumer and Needs

Consumer is the focal point of green marketing as the acceptance of green products depend more
on their choice. He is the one who desires to reduce his/her environmental footprint by means of
 sustainable consumption (Laroche et al., 2001)and the marketers’ efforts are concentrated
towards fulfilling his needs (Polonsky, 1994; Prakash, 2002). Studies reveal that consumers are
now more aware of environment and are concerned about whether the products they use cause
any environmental harm or not (Johri and Sahasakmontri, 1998; Straughan and Roberts, 1999).
This awareness is high in the developed countries, but is also witnessing an uptrend even
amongst the emerging economies like China, India, Brazil etc.. The fact that the consumers’
needs are changing towards more sustainable products and services adds on to the importance of
green marketing and a response towards these needs leads to green product and process
innovation (Ottoman, 2006).
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Marketing practitioners are attempting to identify and understand green consumer needs and
their efforts are directed towards developing market offers that match these needs (Polonsky,
1994; Baumann, 2007). While we tend to explore consumer related issues, several questions start
emerging i.e. what are the needs of green consumers? How do the green needs interfere with the
basic need sets? Four universal green consumer needs such as; the need for information, the need
for control, the need to make a difference, and the need to maintain current lifestyles have been
identified by researchers ( Peattie ,2001; Ottman 1993), so as to develop market offerings that
meet these needs. We attempt to integrate these needs into the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
theory which suggests that people use green products out of their safety related needs i.e. they
want a healthy and safe environment and are concerned about the well- being of their families
and relatives and at a larger level about the well-being of people and other life forms on the
planet. At the next level, people can also buy green products to fulfill their needs related to love
and belongingness. This love and belongingness could be for people or for environment and also
for mother earth.

Consumers also buy green product to fulfill their self-esteem as they would like themselves to be
belonging to particular reference groups e.g. environmentalists and this is how they would like to
distinguish themselves to from their peers. Green products and services are also bought to fulfill
their self-actualization needs i.e. Sustainable consumption is practiced as a part of consumers’
moral obligation to protect their society. Identification of green segments is a challenging area
for both researchers and practitioners. Once identified, how the needs of these green segments
 would be addressed? There are particular green sub segments existing in a segment which would
respond well to the marketers’ needs.

Figure. 2.The ladder of Green Needs ( As adapted from Maslow Hierarchy of Needs )

Self actualization
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(Moral obligation)

Esteem needs

(Peer pressure, status symbol)

Love/ belongingness

(Love for environment for friends and relatives)

Safety needs

(Need for safe & healthy food)

Basic needs

(Use of green products

due to unavailability of modern products)

6.2 Identification of Green Segments

Consumer behavior studies in green marketing are mainly concentrated on consumer profiling,
identification of green consumer segments, factors impacting green purchase, decision making
process and willingness to pay decisions (Peattie, 2001). To take advantage of an emerging green
segments based on varied needs, it is important to understand who green consumers are and the
factors influencing their purchase decisions and behavior. Many surveys aimed at identifying
demographic and psychographic characteristics of a green consumer (Hirschman, 1980; Roberts,
1996; Straughan and Roberts, 1999; Laroche et al., 2001; Akehurst et al., 2012). A study claims
that green consumers are most likely to be well- educated, young adult men or women who have
 more money to spend and expect green products to function as effectively as non-green products
(Laroche et al., 2001). For a product to be qualified as a purchase for these customers, it should
be able to fulfill the basic need and at the same time should deliver on an environmental front.
Researchers have found that though green consumers are keen to purchase environment friendly
products, they will hardly compromise on quality, cost and convenience (Ginsberg and Bloom,
2004; Erica et al., 2010). They are more likely to respond to core product attributes providing
benefits to them (Straughan and Roberts, 1999; Essoussi and Linton, 2010; Gupta and Ogden,
2009; Luzio and Lemke, 2013).Experiences of environment-related problems, have also been
proven to be decisive to their buying behavior (Chen and Chang, 2012).whereas researchers such
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as Michaud and Llerena (2011) argue that in the absence of environmental information,
consumers are not willing to pay more for green products.

6.3 Green Buying Behavior

Consumer’s psychology and buying behavior plays a crucial role in determining the success of
green products. Many factors play an important role in decision-making process by customers
but one of the major factors is customers’ awareness about green products. Studies on the
behavioral pattern of consumers reveal that green consumer is a confused consumer (Carlson et
al, 1993; Davis 1993; Crane, 2000). This confusion arises out of low awareness and knowledge
about green products and also the lack of efforts on manufacturer’s part to provide right kind of
information. In developing countries, the low purchase of these products is also attributed to the
lack of certification standards and ecolabels (D’Souza et al., 2006). Hence, labeling and
advertisements play an important role in removing the knowledge barrier (Hartmann et al., 2005;
Rahbar and Wahid, 2011).

Consumers who have more knowledge about environmental issues when making a purchase are
likely to spend more on green products (Hirschman, 1980; Laroche et al., 2001; Michaud and
Llerea, 2011). A study on Indian consumers revealed that the consumers were aware of the
environment related problems and felt that proper communication of green ideas will help people
become more concerned about environment and hence make purchase decisions backed by this
knowledge (Jain and Kaur, 2004). Consumption value also plays a role to influence consumer
 choice behavior regarding green products as consumers having high environmental concerns
show greater support for green products. Main factors influencing a customer choice regarding
green products includes psychological benefits , desire for knowledge and novelty seeking
whereas price and quality of green products aren’t the key players (Hirschman, 1998, Lin,2012;
Luzio and Lemke, 2013).The characteristics of green products for example recycling potential,
low pollution, and economy of resources may also influence consumers to buy environment-
friendly products (Sheth et al., 1991; Bei and Simpson, 1995; Essoussi and Linton, 2010).
Promotion of subsidies by government, green groups encourages people to go green as these help
to overcome cost barriers.
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Previous Studies by (Robert, 1995; Robert 1996; Straughan and Roberts, 1999) show that
environment friendly behavior may also be affected by peer opinion or personal factors e.g.
consumers who belong to special interest groups tend to purchase green products out of
compulsion. In this case, a consumer’s green ideology if it is in conformance with the group
ideology, it exerts more influence on the green purchase. Another study by Triandis, (1993) and
McCarty &Shrum, (1994) focused on consumer traits such as individualism (represents how
much a person focuses on his/her independent self.) and collectivism (implies cooperation,
helpfulness, and consideration of the goals of the group relative to the individual.) with green
consumer behavior and suggests that collectivist people tend to be friendlier to the environment,
while individualists tend to be more unfriendly. A study in Singapore suggests green consumers
when compared to non- green consumers have more favorable attitude towards the environment,
green consumers are more socially integrated, open minded and cosmopolitan (Shamdasani et
al., 1993).The purchase of green products also vary on the basis of personal factors (Kalafatis et
al., 1999). Although consumers purchasing recycled products also consider price and quality, an
increasing number of people are willing to pay extra for green products provided they give the
same satisfaction as compared to conventional products (Bei and Simpson, 1995). The
consumers hardly compromise on traditional product attributes such as convenience, availability,
price, quality and performance (Berger and Corbin 1992; Ginsberg and Bloom, 2004). Here, it is
noteworthy that consumers would be very happy to get the used products recycled and disposed
off, but only if it is convenient or the process is assisted by the company or Government. We can
sum this up by saying that green consumer looks for green attributes in products which they
 think can reduce environmental benefits but there should not be any deficiency on part of the
actual quality and performance of the product. Besides this, a consumer always prefers his
convenience in purchase, use and disposal of products as compared to green characteristics.

6.4 Willingness to pay for Green

Besides availability and convenience to use, price is the biggest barrier in purchase of green
products. Green products are perceived to be costlier and consumers are unwilling to pay higher
price only for green performance. Many studies have focused their work on how much
consumers are willing to pay for these products (Suchard and Polonsky, 1991; Elinkgton, 1994;
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Porter and Linde, 1995; Oyewole, 2001; Gupta and Ogden, 2009). In many cases, cost acts as a
purchase barrier as a consumer is not willing to spend more money in purchasing green products
(Berger and Corbin, 1992; Sririam and Forman, 1993; Prakash, 2002; Ginsberg and Bloom,
2004).These studies, however, can never be generalized in green marketing context as it varies
from industry to industry and also from product to product. What are the circumstances under
which a consumer is ready to pay more and whether the factors such as brand, trust, group
influence, innovative product, convenience to use has any role to play in attracting better price is
not known. Government subsidies also play an important role in helping consumer’s make
decision regarding purchase as they remove price related barriers (Lin and Huang, 2012).
Various factors influencing consumers’ willingness to pay has been summarized in (Table 3).

Insert Table 3 Here

7. Conclusions and Managerial Implications

Different opportunities for firms with respect to green marketing have been presented in the
paper. However, green marketing still has a long road to travel in both research and practice. The
paper highlighted the scope and definitions of green marketing besides discussing consumer
behavior, product innovation and the challenges associated therein. It has been inferred that there
are many motivations for firms to adopt green marketing including customer expectations
(Oyewole, 2001; Polonsky, 1994; and Peattie and crane, 2005), Governmental pressures(
 Polonsky, 1994; Prakash, 2002), competitive pressure (Saxena and Khandelwal, 2012) and social
responsibility(Davis,1992).

Though opportunities in the area are plenty, still there are many challenges before researchers
and managers. The first and foremost challenge is how do we define green? What is a green
product? As the term green has a different meaning under different contexts. It varies across
different customer segments, industries and even within different organizations in the same
industry. Regulators as well as other stakeholders may view it differently and the definitions may
vary from time to time. The other challenge lies in developing standards for these products.
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Standards, both regulatory and voluntary may aid the consumers in making their decision related
to purchase and use of green products. During last few years, there have been continuous efforts
in launching \ new environmental standards, still what we need is a more industry specific and
consumer oriented approach, As manufactures need to build trust of consumers in these products,
efforts need to be concentrated in standardizing processes in different industries, building
voluntary and public standards and collaborative efforts among competitors in terms of joint
research development and advocacy. One of the other challenges in green marketing is that
though a few segments are determined to buy green products and are willing to pay more prices
for this, whereas there is a large segment which is conscious about environment, still hesitates to
take decisions regarding the green products. There are many barriers which hinder the purchase
such as cost, trust, and certification. One of the major constraints in making these products
popular is the right positioning and communication strategy as the green attributes in a product
needs to be communicated to the consumer in an appropriate manner. Firms must make a
calculated decision as to what feature is to be highlighted vis-a vis- competitors. Sometimes
green attribute can only be used to target the customers whereas in other cases, both core as well
as green benefits need to be communicated to the customer.

8. Directions for Future Research

The literature studied also points towards the fact that more research needs to be done in bridging
the gap between consumers’ perceptions and firms’ efforts as on one hand, we have a consumer
who lacks clarity in terms of his green needs and on the other, the firms are trying to experiment
with green innovations. Green consumer behavior is one area which is well researched but
 studies are generic in nature. Industry specific and product specific research will lead into
consumer decision making process. More insights into how much consumers are willing to pay
need to be worked out. More so in case of developing countries where the pro environment
movement is gaining momentum, the demand of green products is not in consonance with this
increasing awareness.

Based on our review of existing literature, we identify following areas in which future green
marketing research are to be targeted or strengthened. Much research has been done onto what
motivates a firm to go green, whereas more enquiries are needed to find out why consumers buy
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green products? What motivates them to prefer green products over conventional products? What
are the factors responsible for purchase of green products and their willingness to pay more for
these products? What are the various barriers to purchase? Here, there is a need to delve into
psychological barriers for green consumption. Segmentation and consumer-profiling studies
targeted at identifying and understanding the right customer will also fill in the existing gap in
the literature. What do customers perceive of green products and how these perceptions are
related to consumers’ decision-making process is also important. The role of information and
awareness has been well documented but how this is used by manufacturers to fill the gap needs
attention by researcher. At the same time, various product stewardship activities such as the right
use and disposal of used products is extremely important. The role of incentives to facilitate the
consumers in their environment friendly practices needs to be explored.

The paper discusses various opportunities for green marketers but the next step is to see which
opportunities can help the firm to stand apart in green domain? Which are the core and peripheral
benefits delivered by green products? How best we can deliver a product with green
characteristics without compromising the core benefits? What are the consumers‟ perceptions
related to green characteristics? How can these preferred green characteristics be used to enhance
the customer value and hence increase profits? Can these green characteristics be defined or
standardized in case of specific products? This may sound a difficult task but is certainly going
to facilitate the purchase of green products. Similarly, a plenty of literature is available in green
product development area, whereas a few issues need more attention such as how green product
development can be aligned with both organizational and environmental goals? What is the
 impact of stakeholders including customer in influencing the green product development
strategy? Product portfolio analysis research at the business or product line level may help in
identifying products which are both environmentally as well as market wise attractive? The role
of green alliances in development, design, use and disposal of green products also needs to be
explored. The fact as to whether already green alliances have been able to fetch profits for firms
also needs to be investigated?

On the marketing communication side it will be worthwhile to explore these questions:What are
various means firms can use to communicate green benefits? How do consumers perceive these?
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How these can be linked with green branding efforts? How do we use communication efforts to
justify costs? How do advertising and communication efforts contribute to green efforts of firm?
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 Table 1 Phrase for Different Dimensions
S. No Dimension Examples Phrases In Definitions Coded by Relevant
Dimension

1. Environment ‘Less toxic’

‘Made of recyclable materials’

‘Preservation and conservation of natural environment’

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2 Economy ‘Products that impose smaller environmental cost’

‘Increase in business operations’

3. Society ‘Reduces negative environmental and social impact’

‘Satisfying customer needs and society in a profitable and

sustainable way’

4. Business/Market/Product ‘Incorporates product changes’

‘Modification in production process’

‘products that provide greater environmental benefit’

‘Marketing of product based on environmental performance’

‘Integration of environmental considerations into all aspects of

marketing’

‘Selling products on an ethical platform’

5. Stakeholder ‘Strategic management process that identifies, anticipates,

satisfies and fulfils stakeholder needs’
 6. Consumer ‘Influence purchase decisions of consumers’

‘Environmentally sound goods and services to satisfy

consumers’

Table 2: A Summary of Keywords appearing in Various Marketing Definitions (1976- 2013)

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S.NO Author Definition Aspect/ Keywords Dimension

1. American According to American marketing Product modification, Business Dimension

marketing association green marketing is the packaging changes,
association marketing of products that are modified advertising Market Dimension
presumed to be environmentally Product Dimension
(AMA) safe.

It incorporates a broad range of

activities, including product
modification, changes to the
production process, packaging
changes, as well as modified
advertising. It is the development
and marketing of products
designed to minimize negative
effects on the physical
environment or to improve its
quality.

2. Henion and Defines green marketing as the Energy depletion, Environmental Dimension
Kinnear study of the positive and negative resource depletion
(1972) aspects of marketing activities on
pollution, energy depletion and
non energy resource depletion.

3. Charter Green marketing is a holistic and Holistic marketing Market Dimension

(1992) responsible strategic management
process that identifies, anticipates, Strategic process, Stakeholder Dimension
satisfies and fulfils stakeholder stakeholders needs,
needs, for a reasonable reward, natural environment,
that does not adversely affect human environment
human or natural environmental
 well-being.

4. Kangis Green marketing must be more Green marketing/ Market Dimension

(1992) than either a green way of
marketing, or the marketing of so Product Product Dimension
called green products. Green has
to refer both to the method and to
the product.
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5. Pride and Green marketing, also Green marketing, Business Dimension

Ferrell (1993) alternatively known as sustainable marketing, 4
environmental marketing and P’s of marketing Market Dimension
sustainable marketing, refers to an Product Dimension
organization's efforts at designing,
promoting, pricing and
distributing products that will not
harm the environment

6. Harrison Green marketing is a marketing Product positioning, Customer Dimension

(1993) strategy to influence the purchase product benefits,
decisions of consumers by purchase decisions,
positioning green product benefits consumers.
in minds of consumers.

7. Herbig et al. Green marketing refers to products Products and marketing / Product Dimension
(1993) and packages that have one or
more of the following Less toxic, Reusable and Environment Dimension
characteristics; they are less toxic, recyclable materials.
are more durable, contain reusable
materials and/or are made of
recyclable materials

8. Coddington, Green marketing is the business Conservation of natural Consumer Dimension

(1993) practice that considers consumers environment/
concerns with regards to Environmental Dimension
preservation and conservation of Consumer concerns
 the natural environment.

9. Elkington Defines Green Consumer as one Green consumer / Environmental Dimension

(1994) who avoids products that are
likely to endanger the health of the Environment, energy, Consumer Dimension
consumer or others; cause waste, cruelty to animals
significant damage to the
environment during manufacture,
use or disposal; consume a
disproportionate amount of
energy; cause unnecessary waste;
use materials derived from
threatened species or
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environments; involve
unnecessary use of, or cruelty to
animals; adversely affect other
countries

10. Polonsky All activities designed to generate Needs, Wants, Environmental Dimension
(1994) and facilitate any exchanges satisfaction of needs,
intended to satisfy human needs or Consumer Dimension
wants, such that the satisfaction of Minimum detrimental
these needs and wants occurs, with impact on environment
minimal detrimental impact on the natural environment
natural environment.

11. Peattie (1995) Green marketing is the holistic Profitability and Market Dimension
management process responsible sustainability
for identifying, anticipating and Consumer Dimension
satisfying the requirements of
Societal dimension
customers and society, in a
profitable and sustainable way

12. Peattie (1995) Defines a product as ‘green’ Product use and Environmental Dimension
“when its environmental and disposal/
societal performance, in Product Dimension
production, use and disposal, is Environmental/ societal
significantly improved and performance,
improving in comparison to competitive products
conventional or competitive
products offering.

13. Reinhardt Author stated that environmental Product differentiation, Business Dimension
(1998) product differentiation takes place
when: “a business creates products Environmental benefit, Product Dimension
 that provide greater environmental environmental cost
benefits, or that impose smaller
environmental costs, than similar
products.

14. Fuller (1999) Green marketing is the process of Holistic marketing Consumer Dimension
planning , implementing and concept /
controlling the development, Market Dimension
pricing, promotion and 4Ps, customer needs,
organizational goals, Environment dimension
,distribution of products in a
manner that satisfies the following process compatible with
three categories: (1) customer ecosystem
needs are met, (2) organizational
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goals are attained, and (3) process

is compatible with ecosystems

15. Charter Green marketing is the marketing Promotion of products Environmental Dimension
&Polonsky or promotion of a product based based on
(1999) on its environmental performance Product Dimension
or an Improvement thereof. Environmental
performance

16. Peattie , K. Green marketing is used to depict Environmental and Environmental Dimension
(2001) marketing activities with the aim social impact , product Society Dimension
to reduce the negative logistics and promotion
environmental and social impact Product Dimension
that products might cause and how
to promote those products to reach
its consumers in an effective way.

17. Polonsky& Green marketing has been Consumer needs, impact Consumer Dimension
Rosenberger, described as; a complex, holistic, on natural environment
(2001) integrated approach to meet Environmental Dimension
consumer needs while minimizing
the negative impact on the natural
environment.
 18. Prakash , A. Green marketing should be viewed Consumer / Market Dimension
(2002) as a strategy concerning
information disclosure to Strategy, information Product Dimension
consumers taking place at three disclosure, industry,
firm, product Stakeholder Dimension
levels the industry level, the firm
level and the product level

19. Peattie and Green marketing is the holistic Green management / Consumer Dimension
Charter management process responsible
(2003) for identifying, anticipating and Consumer needs, Societal Dimension
satisfying customer needs and sustainable society
society in a profitable and
sustainable perspective
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20. Jain and Kaur Green marketing comprises all Environmental Dimension
(2004) those marketing activities which
the firms undertake to create a Positive impact on Societal Dimension
positive impact or lessen the environment
negative impact of their products
on the environment.

21. Soonthonsmai Green marketing is defined as Product Dimension

activities performed by
(2007) environmentally conscious firms Environmentally Environment Dimension
to deliver the environmentally conscious firms,
consumer satisfaction, Business Dimension
sound goods/services to provide
satisfaction to consumers. environmentally sound
goods and services

22. Dahlstrom, Green marketing is the study of all 4Ps of marketing / Market Dimension
(2011) efforts to consume, produce,
distribute, promote, package and Ecological concerns Business Dimension
reclaim products in a manner that
Environment dimension
is sensitive or responsive to
ecological concerns.

23. Ottman, Green marketing from an New product Product Dimension

(2011) organizational standpoint as an development, logistics,
integration of environmental marketing Market Dimension
considerations into all aspects of communication ,
Environmental dimension
marketing –whether it is integration of
newproduct development, logistics environmental
or marketing communications. dimension
 24. Leonidou et Defines Green Marketing Strategic goals, financial Business Dimension
al., (2013) programs as those that are goals, minimize impact
designed to accomplish the firm’s on natural environment. Environmental Dimension
strategic and financial goals in
ways that minimize their negative
(or enhance their positive) impact
on the natural environment

25. The United The United Nations Environment Covers Environmental Society Dimension
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Nations Program defines Green marketing and social aspect /

Environment as “A marketing which Environmental Dimension
Program encompasses all communication Environmental
properties, social Market Dimension
(UNEP) operations undertaken to promote
a product on the basis of its qualities.
Consumer Dimension
(2012) environmental properties or of its
social qualities. It is about selling
products on an ethical platform.”
The distinctive features of green
marketing are its commercial
dimension coupled with the
reference to the values of
consumers who want to act in an
environmentally conscious and
socially responsible manner with
the purchases they make.

Table 3: Factors Influencing Consumers’ Willingness to Pay

INDEPENDENT DEPENDENT AUTHORS DESCRIPTION

VARIABLE (IV) VARIALE (DV)

Henion, 1972; Murphy et al., Awareness about

1978; Hirschman, 1980; environmental
Level of Education Tendency to buy Roberts 1995; Roberts ,1996; issues / green
green products Straughan and Roberts, 1999; products impacts
Laroche et al., 2001; Rowlands the purchase of
 et al., 2003; do Paco and green products
Raposo, 2010; Akehurst, 2012.

Income Consumer buying Roberts 1995; Roberts 1996; Income of

behavior Straughan and Roberts 1999; consumer has direct
Laroche et al., 2001; Rowlands impact on purchase.
et al.,2003; do Paco and
Raposo, 2010; Akehurst, 2012.

Knowledge about Consumer buying Schlegelmilch, et al., 1996; Knowledge about

green products and behavior Bang et a., l 2000; Peattie, green products
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uses 2001; Diamontopoulos et al., within specific

2003; Young et al 2010;Lin et industry or product
al., 2012. wise

Quality Tendency to Berger and Corbin, 1992; Tendency to

purchase/ Peattie, 2001; Ginsberg and purchase green
customer Bloom, 2004; Jain and Kaur, products is affected
satisfaction 2004; Luo & Bhattacharya, by performance of
2006;Gupta and Ogden, 2009; green products.
Lin et al., 2013; Lu et al., 2013

Cost Tendency to buy Berger and Corbin, 1992; Bei Economic status
and Simpson, 1995; Ginsberg and cost of products
and Bloom, 2004. determines
tendency to buy.

Reference groups Purchase of green Roberts 1995; Roberts, 1996b; Consumption

products Straughan and Roberts, 1999; pattern of reference
Lee, 2008; Akehurst, 2012. groups has an
impact on purchase
of green products.

Availability / Willingness to Van liere and Dunlap, 1981; Availability of

convenience of pay Samdhal and Robertson, 1980; products within the
purchase Berger and Corbin, 1992 reach of consumer
affects willingness
to pay.

Customer Willingness to Reichheld and Sasser , 1990; Willingness to pay

satisfaction pay Fornell, 1992; Finkelman, varies with
1993; Bei and Simpson, 1995; customer
Anderson , 1996; Homburg et satisfaction.
al., 2005; Michaud and Llerena
 2011.

Marketers claims Consumer King ,1985; Kangun et al., Result of claims (i.e
In terms of trust, behavior 1991; Mendleson and Polonsky, claims made are
loyalty 1995; Mohr et al., 1998; Jain true or green
and Kaur, 2004; Peattie and washing)/ trust ,
Crane, 2005; Gupta and Ogden, loyalty
2009; Grimmer and Bingham,
2013.

Price (as barrier) Purchase Weiner and Sukhdial, 1990; High price acts as a
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prakash, 2000; chen, 2001; barrier towards

peattie, 2001; Ginsberg and purchase of green
Bloom, 2004; Leiondou et al products.
2010; Essoussi and Linton,
2010; Doorn and Verhoef,
2011; lin et al., 2013; Lu et al
2013.

Advertisements/Ec Purchase of green Hartmann et al., 2005;Rex and Type of

olables products. Baumann, 2007; Rahbar and advertisement and
Wahid, 2011; Hartmann and claims made.
Apaolaza-Ibáñez, 2012; Testa
et al 2013