738 The Marketing Book
to explain some of the inconsistencies in the
research findings into green consumer behav-
iour. The majority of consumers profess con-
cern for the environment, a desire to buy
greener products and a willingness to pay more
for them or accept technical performance
reductions. The numbers of consumers meas-
urably changing their purchasing behaviour to
buy green is much less, and this has generally
been interpreted as a failure to back up inten-
tions with purchase and a tendency to over-
report social and environmental concerns
(Wong et al., 1996). This undoubtedly explains
part of the discrepancy, but the missing element
is the confidence that customers have in com-
panies’ green marketing offerings. A BRMB/
Mintel survey found that 71 per cent of UK
consumers thought that companies were using
green issues as an excuse to charge higher
prices.
In trying to relate environmental knowl-
edge to green consumption, researchers are
making an assumption that increasing environ-
mental knowledge will lead to an increased
desire to purchase green products. The reverse
may be true, in that increasing environmental
knowledge can actually reduce the consumers’
confidence in the effectiveness of market-based
solutions for environmental challenges, and it
may make them more aware of the short-
comings of products seeking to market them-
selves on a green platform (Peattie, 2001).
Eco-performance
For proactive companies seeking to gain com-
petitive advantage, and for the more reactive
companies seeking to avoid the costs and
potential for competitive disadvantage asso-
ciated with environmental damage, the central
issue concerns their ‘eco-performance’. This
represents the impact that products and busi-
nesses have on the human and natural environ-
ment within which they exist, but it is not a
straightforward concept. A question like ‘What
constitutes a green product?’ has no simple
answer. Is it one that has achieved sustain-
ability? One that is better than its competitors?
One that is less harmful than the product it
replaces? Or one produced by a company with
an environmental management system?
The eco-performance of businesses and
products, like the demand of consumers, com-
prises many different shades of green. Trying to
identify a company as either green or ‘dirty’ is
rather misleading, in the same way as trying to
classify a company as marketing orientated or
not. Such ‘black or white’ distinctions are
inappropriate for a performance continuum,
and the relativity of eco-performance is reflec-
ted in Charter’s (1992) concept of ‘greener’
rather than ‘green’ marketing.
The pursuit of sustainability is the under-
lying principle of green marketing, and a
company can justifiably claim green credentials
if it is demonstrably and consistently moving
towards sustainability. Achieving sustainability
is not a prerequisite for a valid claim to be
green, just as 100 per cent customer satisfaction
is not a prerequisite to claim a marketing
orientation. In many markets, economic and
technical considerations preclude sustainability
as a short-term objective for green companies,
even though sustainability can be their ultimate
goal.
Measuring and managing the eco-perform-
ance of products is made difficult by the variety
of factors which can contribute to a good or bad
customer perception of eco-performance. Some
companies have run into problems by claiming
their products as ‘green’ by focusing simply on
the product itself, while ignoring the environ-
mental performance of the means of production
or the company as a whole. For example, the £8
million advertising campaign launching Ariel
Ultra as a green detergent was somewhat
negated by front page news coverage high-
lighting that it had been tested on animals.
Companies whose green strategy is product
orientated or one-dimensional, instead of holis-
tic, are prone to exposure by green interest
groups, to charges of hypocrisy and green