Green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Green marketing incorporates product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, modifying advertising, hoodwinking consumers, and compliance constraints.
Green marketing is part of the new marketing approaches which do not just refocus, adjust or enhance existing marketing thinking and practice, but seek to challenge those approaches and provide a substantially different perspective.
Misleading or overstated claims can lead to regulatory or civil problems. The Federal Trade Commission provides some guidance on environmental marketing claims and constraints.
Half of Occidentals are willing to pay a little extra for green products. An important challenge facing green marketers is to identify which consumers are willing to pay more for green products. An enhanced knowledge of the profile of this segment of consumers would be very profitable.
CRITICAL FACTORS OF GREEN ADOPTABILITY
Relative advantage is the degree to which the new green behavior is believed to accrue more beneficial outcomes than current practice.
Observability is how easy it is to witness the outcomes of the new green behavior.
Trialability is the ease with which the new green behavior can be tested by an individual without making a full commitment.
Compatibility is the degree to which the new green behavior is consistent with current practice.
Complexity is how difficult the new green behavior is to implement.
EIGHT P’S OF GREEN MARKETING MIX
Product: A producer should offer ecological products which not only must not contaminate the environment but should protect it and even liquidate existing environmental damages.
Price: Prices for such products may be a little higher than conventional alternatives. But target groups are willing to pay extra for green products.
Place: A distribution logistics is of crucial importance; main focus is on ecological packaging. Marketing local and seasonal products, e.g. vegetables from regional farms, is more easy to be marketed green than products imported.
Promotion: A communication with the market should put stress on environmental aspects. This may be publicized to improve a firm’s image. Furthermore, the fact that a company spends expenditures on environmental protection should be advertised. Sponsoring the natural environment is also very important. Ecological products will probably require special sales promotions.
Publics: Effective Social Marketing knows its audience, and can appeal to multiple groups of people. Public is the external and internal groups involved in the program. External publics include the target audience, secondary audiences, policymakers, and gatekeepers, while the internal publics are those who are involved in some way with either approval or implementation of the program.
Partnership: Most social change issues, including green initiatives, are too complex for one person or group to handle. Associating with other groups and initiatives to team up strengthens the chance of efficacy.
Policy: Social marketing programs can do well in motivating individual behavior change, but that is difficult to sustain unless the environment they're in supports that change for the long run. Often, policy change is needed, and media advocacy programs can be an effective complement to a social marketing program.
Purse Strings: How much will this strategic effort cost? Who is funding the effort?
LEVERAGE OF STRATEGIC GREENING
Leverage of strategic greening may bewilder markets. A firm could make substantial changes in production processes but opt not to leverage them by positioning itself as an environmental leader. Although strategic greening is not necessarily strategically integrated into all marketing activities, it is nevertheless strategic in the product area.
Where marketers used to lump all green customers together into one indistinguishable, hemp-clad crowd, they now focus on differentiating amongst many shades of eco-minded buyers. But back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, green brands were fairly one dimensional — literally. A product made news if it had just one green attribute. With laundry and cleaning products, Procter & Gamble’s Downy fabric softener refill literally made marketing headlines. Many products that were touted as environmentally superior were simply familiar mainstream brands that had been greened up — Tide bottles were made of recycled content and the detergent inside labeled as biodegradable.
Today’s customers are much more demanding. With green marketers having sullied their images with all manner of greenwashing, today’s communications are likely to be accompanied by one or more of the three hundred ecolabels offered by trusted third parties — NGO’s, environmental groups, retailers, and government agencies — and even self declarations provided in the interest of transparency. The Clorox brand manager boasted of his company’s recognition from the U.S. EPA’s Design for Environment labeling program, as well as an endorsement from the Sierra Club. His competitor from S.C. Johnson pointed to his company’s website where consumers can find a list of ingredients for many of their brands.
Simple product labels and ingredient lists, however, are no longer enough. While green marketing has moved well beyond brands that appeal to the deep green niche, at the same time the relationship-building tools of social media allow marketers to tap into a gold mine of passionately green customers for market research tidbits.
Where once green cleaners gathered dust on health food store shelves, contemporary sustainable branders are finding an exciting new market opportunity in the mainstream.
What is your favorite established green product?
What is your favorite emerging green product?
What strategic greening has impressed you?
What green products are you using?
Is green marketing in the middle of a hype curve?
Are you willing to pay a green premium?
Could you think of other factors of green adoptability?
Could you think of other green P’s?
How do the 8 P’s apply to solar panels?
How do the 8 P’s apply to electric cars?
Would you blow your whistle on kleptocrats? Do you have a news tip, firsthand account of political corruption, or reliable information about a government foul-up? Please send your scoop to Basil Venitis at venitis@gmail.com for publication in http://themostsearched.blogspot.com
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