chap-5

Sustainable Marketing and

the Green Consumer
 Learning Outcomes
• How marketing activities have been blamed for
current inequalities between the rich and the
poor, using up natural resources, creating
pollution and contributing to human and
environmental decline.
• We examine the ways in which organizations
can fulfill the wants and needs of the present
whilst considering the requirement to conserve
natural resource for future generations.
• Marketing is defined by Kotler et al. as, ‘a
social and managerial process by which
individuals and groups obtain what they need
and want through creating and exchanging
products and value with others ’
• Sustainability means, ‘Meeting the needs of
the present without depleting resources or
harming natural cycles for future generations ’
 THE BIRTH AND EVOLUTION OF SUSTAINABLE
MARKETING

A range of effects linked to human economic activity:

1. Depletion of renewable resources (forest, fish, land and sea mammals).
2. Depletion of known reserves of non-renewable energy and minerals.
3. Depletion of non-renewable stock of genetic diversity (some plants and
animals may become extinct) and soil (through erosion).
4. Severe problems of local and transient pollution in industrialized
countries.
5. Problems of cumulative pollution (smog, acid rain, ozone depletion,
greenhouse gases, global warming).
6. Wide growing inequalities between the rich and the poor.
7. Increased rates of change.
 SUSTAINABLE MARKETING AND CORPORATE
RESPONSIBILITY: SOME AMBIGUITIES

Argument against sustainability:

• Threats to the environment are considered to be
exaggerated.
• Lack of scientific consensus on environmental issues
like global warming means the need for change to
sustainable development is seen as unproven.
• Technological advances in how we make and dispose of
products will make the need for change unnecessary.
• Sustainable development will disadvantage poorer
countries.
 GREEN MARKETING
• Many organizations who start out in an environmentally
responsible manner are finding that it has a positive affect on
profits.
• There are two real advantages for a small business becoming
green. One is branding and marketing advantage. The other is the
impact on the bottom line ’
• More and more companies are incorporating profit-centred
activities with environmentally friendly practices.
• Many companies have joined forces in a project of product
stewardship, redesigning materials used in can ends and bodies in
order to reduce the impact of the product on the environment not
just in its lifetime but also in order to reduce its effect as waste
There are four levels of environmental sustainability:
1. Pollution control/prevention – cleaning up waste after it has been
created or minimizing waste through green marketing programmes
or by developing safer biodegradable or recyclable products and/or
packaging.
2. Product stewardship – minimizing all environmental impacts
throughout the full product life cycle (designing products which are
easier to recover, reuse or recycle).
3. New environmental technologies – investing in research and
development to pre-empt fully sustainable strategies, for example
developing environmentally biodegradable washing products which
also wash on a low temperature hence making energy savings.
4. Sustainability vision – develops a framework to show how the
company’s products, service, processes and policies comply
with pollution control/prevention, product stewardship and new
environmental technologies.
 THE GREEN CONSUMER
• Consumer concern for the environment an concomitant desire for green
products
• Sustainability is a tendentious catch-all term with a certain political flavour and
its own contradictions.
• Eco-friendly solutions were having an impact upon current marketing practices.
• Too often green marketing is seen by organizations as a marketing tool by
which companies merely adapt their product to suit demand for
environmentally friendly products
• What is desired by consumers but that they may not be necessarily
questioning what is good for them.
• Marketers are finding it harder to ignore the “ethics gap ” between what
society expects and what marketing professionals are delivering ’
• There are many examples of customers rejecting technically excellent products
because of the environmental harm caused in their production or disposal
• Five failed manifestations of green marketing 9false green marketing or
greenwashing):
1. Green spinning – Reputation management through PR, not dialogue, by
organizations who are targets of criticism (usually those in ‘dirty ’ industries such as
oil, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, automotive).
2. Green selling – A post-hoc promotion of environmental features of an existing
product (there is usually no product development).
3. Green harvesting – Companies gain economies by reducing packaging or through
energy saving efficiencies. Savings are not passed on to the consumer. Although the
green product may cost the company less to produce, they sell at a premium to
cash in on consumer interest in green products.
4. Enviropreneur marketing – There are two types: Boutique Enviropreneur
products, here small start-up fi rms focus on bringing innovative green products to
market (The Bodyshop, Calico Moon, Ectopia). Corporate enviropreneurs, by
contrast, offer organized ranges alongside their regular products (Sainsbury, Boots).
5. Compliance marketing – Organizations limit environmental initiatives to planned
or expected regulation. They usually use compliance to promote their newly
adopted green credentials
• Organizations that practice green marketing in a truly socially
responsible manner are considered to exhibit four important
characteristics. They are:
1. Customer facing – They undertake market research into customer
wants, needs, attitudes and beliefs and knowledge. They research
the needs of the company’s other stakeholders and consider their
impact upon future generations of customers.
2. Have a long-term perspective .
3. Fully use company resources – Actions or policies of any part of
the company or its supply chain do not compromise the eco
performance of products
4. Innovative – In market structures and supporting services as well
as product and product system technology, this means considering
renting rather than selling products, improving product longevity,
offering service and maintenance, reducing environmental impact
through disposal by buying back and/or recycling.
 THE POTENTIAL AND LIMITATIONS OF
SUSTAINABLE MARKETING
• It is likely to have minimal impact because the underpinning philosophy which
drives sustainability not only, runs counter to the tenants of marketing
• The need for environmental sustainability and differing objectives and abilities
where economic, social and environmental protection/conservation are
concerned.
• Sustainability cannot be about balancing economic growth with environmental
protection, pitting society and its wants and needs against nature.
• Window-dress[ing] green strategies by company marketing departments will
ultimately fail and embarrass if they are not backed up by an integrated
approach throughout the whole organization
• What we need to rethink ‘a less is more attitude …’ changing individuals,
organizations, countries norms, beliefs, values and habits as consistently as
possible with each other to try and engender widespread social responsibility
for long term change.