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Green Marketing Concept and Definition

Green marketing is the promotion of environmentally friendly products, services, and initiatives. Green marketing refers to an environmentally friendly practice, method, and strategy. Specifically, it is an environmentally friendly practice and method to promote goods or services. Other terms or phrases used are environmental marketing and ecological marketing. The American Marketing Association (AMA) conducted the first “Ecological Marketing” workshop in 1975. The workshop resulted in one of the first books on green marketing entitled “Ecological Marketing”.The World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need”, in Brundtland Report prepared in 1987. The concept of green marketing came in the 1980s first time. The milestones of green marketing came to form the published books, both of which were called ‘Green Marketing. They were by Ken Peattie (1992) in the United Kingdom and Jacquelyn Ottman (1993) in the United States of America. Marketing as a self-discipline has developed over a period where the conventional thought imparts that goods and services had been produced to be offered to the clients and contemporary marketing states that goods are produced following the needs, desires, and demands of the customers. Contemporary marketing emphasizes pleasing the desires of the clients without any environmental degradation. This green thought is developing over the last decade due to the social responsibilities of concerned counterparts towards the environment. Consumer concerns, government regulations, and environmental lobbies towards the environment are also influencing factors to have emerged this concept over the globe intensely.

Green marketing is also offering a new competitive benefit to companies that want to target their green consumers. The recent study aims to find out the concept of green marketing by discussing and analyzing the existing knowledge of the definition, dimensions, and their elements to frame the chronological development of the same. Green marketing is the promotion of products or services produced in a way of environmentally friendly. When people are deciding to buy goods or services, they care about what an industry stands for. This consists of social and environmental factors that can not have seemed significant in enterprise in the past. Consumers currently are looking for sustainable goods and services. Because of this demand, industries or corporations should make attention to their environmental impact to gain consumer loyalty. Because ecological education can be given as a desire for personal taste rather than a necessity, it can be an approach to attempt to extend capital from an advertising and marketing standpoint. When marketing a product or service it is essential that a commercial enterprise is really following through with environmental claims, and not simply pretending to be to obtain customers. False marketing leads to customer mistrust and can subsequently quit an industry or company.

What is Green Marketing?

Green marketing is the marketing of products that are assumed to be environmentally safe and sound. It comprises a wide range of activities, including product modification, modifications to the manufacturing process, sustainable packaging, as well as enhancing advertising. Defining green marketing is not an easy task where the various meanings intersect and contradict each other; an instance of this will be the existence of various social, environmental, and retail definitions connected to this term. Other comparable phrases used are environmental marketing and ecological marketing.

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), Green Marketing can be defined in three unique ways: First, Green marketing is the marketing of goods that are assumed to be environmentally protected (Retailing Definition). Second, Green Marketing is the development and marketing of goods designed to reduce bad results on the ecology or to enhance its standard (Social Marketing Definition). Third, Green Marketing is the efforts by institutions to produce, promote, package, and reclaim goods in a manner that is responsive to ecological concerns (Environmental Definition). Green marketing, also recognized as environmental marketing and sustainable marketing, refers to an institution’s efforts at designing, promoting, pricing, and delivering goods that will not affect the environment. Polanski (1994) has defined green marketing as all activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchanges supposed to fulfill human needs or desires, such that the pleasure of these wishes and needs occurs, with minimal detrimental impact on the natural environment.

Green, environmental, and Eco-marketing are sections of the new marketing procedures that do not simply refocus, regulate or enhance current marketing thought and practice, however, are looking to venture into these approaches and provide a considerably distinct perspective. Green, environmental, and eco-marketing belong to the group of approaches that search to address the lack of match between marketing as it is presently practiced and the ecological and social realities of the wider marketing environment. Today’s consumers are more informed about the goods and services that they ever buy. This is true when it comes to evaluating the environmental effect and sustainable practices of the brands they support. So, many of the world’s most treasured and successful companies are pursuing green marketing initiatives.

Importance of Green Marketing

Green marketing is a means of promoting products with the confidence that your enterprise operations are actively mitigating their negative impact on our planet. Eco-conscious customers want to decrease their footprint as much as possible and so these eco-standards, logos, trademarks, accreditation, and labels are essential to them. It is directly concerned with the manufacturing of goods that are to be environmentally friendly. It is quite difficult for companies to see that products are produced in a way that will not affect society and the environment but at the same time be profitable.

Green marketing has to be analyzed from a societal perspective as well. It would be all about the quality of a product (goods or a service). It means products (goods or services) are promoted in an eco-friendly way. This promotion ought to be designed on the standards of ethics and morality. Thus green marketing consists of a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the manufacturing process, packaging changes, as well as modifying the advertisement.

Green marketing influences positively the health of humans and the ecological environment. People are conscious of pure products and pure techniques of producing, using, and disposing of the products. It encourages efforts for purity in manufacturing and consumption as well. It is a marketing school of thought that promotes the manufacturing and promotion of pure (eco-friendly) products with the protection of ecological balance. Green marketing raises the voice in opposition to the production, consumption, and/or disposal of such products that anyway harm consumers, society, and the environment. Green marketing helps in making the earth a healthful and pleasant planet. We must undertake these green methods, then we will be living in the right place to live for future generations.

Green Marketing Strategies

Green marketing is turning into more popular as people are involved with environmental issues. To make an environmentally pleasant product, companies can enforce different approaches to create a strategy that capitalizes on the advantages of green marketing. Green companies take a long-term view of their businesses, prioritizing the well-being of the planet and future generations over short-term profits. The following is part of a green marketing strategy:

Using eco-friendly paper and inks for print marketing materials
Skipping printed materials altogether in favor of electronic marketing
Producing sustainable products
Adopting responsible waste disposal practices
Opting for digital advertising and marketing
Adopting sustainable business practices
Implementing eco-friendly strategies and practices
Using eco-friendly or recycled materials for product packaging
Seeking official certifications for sustainability
Using renewable electricity and sustainable agriculture practices
Taking steps to offset carbon emissions by investment.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from production processes

Conclusion

Green growth and nurturing a symbiotic relationship with society is an indispensable ingredient for companies to come up with green products and services. This will be a path not a quit to the long-lasting journey of mankind in the direction of a cleaner and sustainable environment that has to maintain evolving distinct ideas and practices that helps in providing a new platform for the green environment for future generations. It has to be undertaken through corporations or companies as a promotional measure however it has to be considered as a company’s social responsibility. As mankind will hold on progressing, different issues and challenges on the environment and societal aspects will maintain on surfacing. On the societal aspects, these challenges would be in the form of violation of ethics and ethical principles. Hence a holistic method of green marketing can be performed by using the concepts of green marketing in the marketing mix. Effective green marketing requires not solely the capability to speak up about a green message, but also the potential to research, analyze, plan, and coordinate the numerous aspects of that message in a profit-driven enterprise environment. A proper marketing plan with the abilities and knowledge can be accomplished these tasks efficiently.

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