734 The Marketing Book
environment, and that at least 5 per cent
consistently search for ethical labelling, recycle,
participate in boycotts and discuss green issues
in relation to the brands they buy. The identity,
characteristics and sincerity of these ‘green
consumers’ has been the dominant theme in
discussions about green marketing, but this
emphasis may be misplaced. Partly, this is
because the conventional concept of the green
consumer may be both an oxymoron and
poorly conceived. Secondly, the most important
impacts that environmental concern are having
are often in business-to-business marketing, not
in supplying the ultimate consumer (Drum-
wright, 1994; Morton, 1996).
Firms
As external concern about the socio-environ-
mental impacts grows, so companies large and
small are having to respond through changes
to a range of organizational dimensions.
Environmental management appointments, the
introduction of green auditing and reporting
systems, and changes to company policies and
facilities to reduce waste and pollution are
common responses. Corporate strategies and
cultures are increasingly seeking to address
green issues, often to reflect external stake-
holder pressure, but also to reflect the concerns
of employees and investors. For marketers,
pressure to address the eco-performance of the
products that they manage may stem from
external customers or regulatory requirements,
or it may reflect internal requirements to
pursue sustainability as a corporate goal.
Products
Environmental concern is creating demands for
new products (such as pollution control equip-
ment), and is causing existing products to be
reconsidered and in many cases redesigned,
reformulated or produced differently. The
impact on products will vary across markets. In
some, such as cars, cleaning products or paper
products, changes in response to the green
challenge are widespread. In others, such as
food, financial services or computers, examples
of change are more sporadic. There was a flurry
of green product introductions in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. In the USA, the proportion of
green products among new product introduc-
tions rose from 1.1 per cent in 1986 to a high of
13.4 per cent in 1991 (Ottman, 1994). Since that
high-water mark, the level of product introduc-
tions has decreased, mainly in response to
concerns about the validity of some of the green
claims involved (Carlson et al., 1993; Mohr et al.,
2001), increased levels of media and NGO
scrutiny, and mounting consumer scepticism.
By 1997, green products accounted for 9.5 per
cent of all new US product introductions, with
the highest proportion in the ‘household prod-
ucts’ category, accounting for 29.5 per cent of
product introductions (Fuller, 1999).
Environmental concern can also lead to the
repositioning of products. In response to con-
cern about exposure to ultraviolet radiation
and the risk of skin cancer, sun tan lotions have
changed from an emphasis on sun exposure
and beauty to an emphasis on skin protection.The greening of marketing strategy
The evolution of the green challenge has
brought about a change in the relationship
between marketing and the physical environ-
ment (for details, see Menon and Menon, 1997).
The environmental concern of the 1970s
inspired a raft of legislation and a relatively
reactive response among companies. The
emphasis was on compliance and bolting-on
‘end-of-pipe’ technologies to alleviate pollu-
tion. The focus was also generally on issues
relating to production, rather than on issues
relating to the scale and nature of consumption.
Therefore, for marketers it was easy to dismiss
the challenge as something to concern the
production engineers and corporate lawyers.
Environmental response was viewed as an