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Gurau and Ranchhod in the article International green marketing: A comparative study of British and Romanian firms, written in 2005 discussed that the most basic idea in green marketing is to promote ones product or operation, so that ones consumers will know that the company and its products are environmentally sustainable. Not only does the company have values which identify the need to conserve resources and preserve the ecosystem, as well as in most cases, have an environmentally sustainable product or operation, they also need to focus efforts into educating their target consumers about environmental issues.
If a company is successful labelling itself as an environmentally friendly company, it should be able to grow its customer base and on some occasions even gain access to new markets. Usually green marketing is strongly associated with expenses. However, this is not true in all cases, innovation and energy saving can lead to significant cost reductions when implemented properly, not to mention that the quality of the end product might increase.
Also, pro-green consumers are more acceptable to long-term relationships with proven companies. While one consumer might jump product if a cheaper option arises in the markets, a consumer buying ones product because of ones environmental efforts usually would not. Publicity and media recognition will also result, if the green marketing plan is carefully made, saving advertising costs and further increasing awareness of the company and their goal, serving the educational need as well.
Green marketing is a concept that is often brought up and compared to environmental marketing. Essentially these two things are the same, green marketing and environmental marketing are usually understood as only referring to promotion and advertising of products, services or processes with environmental aspects, this actually isnt the case. Usually eco labels and certificates, as well as terms like phosphate free, recyclable, refillable, ozone friendly, and environmentally friendly are terms associated with environmental marketing. While these terms certainly are marketing concepts, as previously mentioned, wholeness of environmental or green marketing is a much broader concept.
Green marketing should incorporate a broad range of activities, promotion and advertising are of course important but a company which really wants to to green , needs to also consider product modification, changes to production process, packaging changes, along with their values and policies, just to mention a few. Defining the whole concept is almost impossible; The American Marketing Association workshop definition of green marketing was the study of the positive and negative aspects of marketing activities on pollution, energy depletion and non-energy resources depletion . While one can argue that this definition might not be the best, it is one of many and none of them can be considered to be more correct than the other.
The writing style used by the authors in this article is highly practical due to the fact the writers maintained a highly focused and concise style of writing. All the information is provided only with the due explanation. Consider the way discussed that there are several driving forces to green marketing and they can be categorised into internal and external factors. Companies, which modify their policies due to external factors like governmental laws and regulations, are usually considered to have a shallow approach to environmentalism, their strategy overall being defensive and their goal simply to avoid costs.
Customer demand is also an external factor that can force a company to adapt green principles even if they rather wouldnt. Internal factors include things like changing the company values and to really embrace green marketing, but can also include changing their stance purely to PR reasons, which in some cases would still keep the company at a shallow approach. Usually when a company adopts green marketing it is going for the quick buck and would be considered opportunistic with consumers at most being only partly interested. When green marketing is honestly embraced it usually results in an aggressive strategy, which might result from customer demand and could lead to extensive profits and an opportunity to gain competitive advantage.
The writers were successful in maintaining the flow of information with the different set of informational data that make it easier for all sorts of audience having certain knowledge of field. Gurau and Ranchhod discuss that most commonly the decisions on whether to adapt green marketing depend on stakeholder interests and expectations. The most common stakeholders influencing company decisions around green marketing would usually include customers, the public, government, media, financiers, pressure groups and local and regional authorities.
The methodology should also be included the customers of different products that are sold by the organisations using green marketing. Customers are certainly the biggest driving force in any business, if the customers want something they will get it one way or the other. If there is the demand for a company to change their stance around green marketing, they must comply or someone else will and they lose their customers. The governments impact on a companys green policies mainly comes through legislation, which must be adhered to or the company could face extensive fines or threats to their operation. Today companies try to adopt certain standards in advance as the amount of rules and regulations have steadily risen and are projected to continue to rise in the future.
The findings are relevant to marketing theory and practice. The public, media and pressure groups create an external factor, which weight varies according to situation and which company is in question. Every company wants good PR, a shallow company might consider whether the PR is in balance with the costs of going green and a company which truly embraces environmentalism will probably consider them as a great bonus. Shell is probably a good example on how big stake holders pressure groups and media actually are. Shell received immense pressure from both the media and boycotts from consumers after their dubious operations in the early 1990s. Today Shell focuses millions of dollars on environmentalism and has been able to change the views of the consumers of today.
This article will help me in understanding the issue of the importance of green marketing while attaining my career as a marketer. An important reason why companies are forced to adopt green marketing is competition pressure. For example, Xerox, which is a major paper company, started using recyclable paper, which in essence forced the competition to do that too. Simply the competitive edge obtained in the industry in question was too high for other companies to ignore.
Social responsibility would also be classified as an incentive to go green , while this is usually a more pure reason to do it and certainly wont be the driving force of what could be considered shallow companies, still lots of companies do apply environmentalism to their values because of it. In this case, and actually in many more factors, it is more about whether the idea of being environmentally friendly or the idea of maximising profits by being environmentally friendly comes first.
Works Cited
Gurau, C. and Ranchhod, A. (2005) International green marketing: A comparative study of British and Romanian firms, International Marketing Review, 22(5), pp.547-561.
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